Students End 30-Hour New School Sit-In

December 19, 2008 in Administration, Campus Protests, Student Power, Students | by | 4 comments

Students at NYC’s New School have ended a 30-hour sit-in at a campus dining hall, after winning concessions from university president Bob Kerrey. 

The students had initially demanded Mr. Kerrey’s resignation, but after internal discussions they replaced that demand with four others: student participation in the selection of a new provost, establishment of a new campus committee on socially responsible investment, changes in use of space in university buildings, and amnesty for all student protesters.

The protest ended at 3:30 this morning, an hour after the students got word that Kerrey had accepted their demands.

Saturday Update: I’ve posted a roundup of resources and information on the New School protests.

Michigan Law Student Speaks Out

December 18, 2008 in Access, Administration, Civil Liberties, Faculty, Feminism, Gender, Media, Police, Sexual Violence, Students | by | 1 comment

About a week ago, this story made the rounds.

A professor at the University of Michigan answered an ad on craigslist for sexual services placed by a woman who turned out to be a U of M law student. In the course of the encounter that followed, he hit her with a belt and slapped her face. She went to the cops, he claimed it was all consensual. The cops refused to charge him with assault, instead charging them both with misdemeanor offenses relating to the transaction itself, and one local (non-campus) cop made an extremely offensive public comment ridiculing the woman who had been beaten for going to the police.

I didn’t post about the story at the time because I didn’t have much of an angle on it, and because it’s often hard to know what to make of a crime story when it first breaks. It wasn’t clear what action the university was taking, or planning to take, for instance.

But now the law student has spoken out, and her statement is very much worth reading. Here it is.

Quote of the Day.

December 18, 2008 in Campus Protests, History, Politics, Quotes, Student Power, Youth | by | Leave a comment

“This article is being written with the belief that our experiences can be absorbed and used, and, what is most important, the Movement can go on to higher levels, evading old mistakes in order to commit the mistakes of the future.”

 — Mark Rudd, President of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society, 1969.


Quote of the Day.

December 17, 2008 in Administration, History, Politics, Quotes, Student Government, Student Power | by | Leave a comment

“Student government is a broken reed. If actual, it is capricious, impulsive, and unreliable; if not, it is a subterfuge and pretense.”

— Andrew S. Draper, President of the University of Illinois, 1904.

FIRE Finds Three Quarters of Universities Violate First Amendment

December 16, 2008 in Administration, Campus Press, Civil Liberties, Faculty, Litigation, Politics, Student Power | by | 3 comments

A new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education finds that 74.2 percent of American colleges and universities, and 77 percent of public higher ed institutions, “maintain policies that clearly restrict speech that, outside the borders of campus, is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

The 28-page report can be found online here.

Edit: As Ashley notes in comments, and as I should have mentioned up front, FAIR is a right-leaning organization. I posted about their report in the spirit of “here’s something to look at” rather than as an endorsement of them as an organization, or even of their report. See my comment below for a little more detail, and look for a longer update at the end of the week.

About This Blog

n7772graysmall
StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

To contact Angus, click here. For more about him, check out AngusJohnston.com.