Over the last few days, Twitter has come under growing criticism for its failure to do more to curb misogynist abuse and threats of violence against women, particularly feminists, who use the service. The push to convince Twitter to act was mounted in response to a barrage of rape threats and other harassment launched against a British woman who was a leader in, of all things, a campaign to put Jane Austen’s face on the ten pound note.

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on Twitter knows that sexist (and racist, and homophobic, and transphobic, and ableist…) abuse is a major problem at the site, but many have questioned some of the campaign’s proposals for reform, which have included paywalls, non-anonymity policies, and a one-click “report abuse” button.

Twitter is a complex ecosystem, and making big changes to the way it works is bound to have unintended consequences. The bigger the changes, the bigger the consequences, and each of these three ideas has serious flaws.

To turn Twitter into a paid site would, as many have noted, impose obvious financial barriers for low-income users. Beyond that, it would necessarily leave the site’s signup process more complex and less straightforward, making it more difficult for people to sign up on short notice in response to breaking news or similarly time-sensitive prods. The need to confirm identity and payment mechanisms would also pose logistical difficulties for people without credit cards or bank accounts — not just the poor, but also the young and others.

To end anonymity on Twitter would drive away many marginalized and oppressed people who depend on the site’s privacy for their safety — political dissidents, student activists, survivors of violence and abuse, sex workers, and so on and on. The ability to use Twitter without disclosing your identity is one of the site’s core features, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

The idea of a one-click “Report Abuse” button has less of an obvious downside; Twitter already has a similar mechanism for reporting spam, after all. But spam is a problem that can be detected and addressed objectively, even automatically — it’s not hard to construct an algorithm to determine which accounts are spam accounts, and the reporting button is primarily just a mechanism for directing Twitter to initiate that process.

Abuse is much more complex, and subjective. There’s no algorithm that will reliably and effectively distinguish between true abuse and tweeters who are quoting others’ abusive comments, discussing the problem of abusive language, or just joking around with friends. (Caitlin Moran, the spearhead of the current campaign, herself jokingly threatened to sexually mutilate someone she considered a Twitter troll just two months ago.)

If Twitter installs a one-click “Report Abuse” button, the effect will be to encourage anyone who feels slighted, dissed, or harassed on the service — or who just doesn’t like what someone else is saying — to report them. Inevitably, some folks with high profiles will encourage their followers to report annoying users en masse, with the effect of swamping the complaint system and making it more difficult for complaints to be processed quickly and effectively. (Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine some users launching coordinated campaigns for just that purpose.)

There’s no easy fix to the problem of abuse on Twitter, in other words. But there is more that the site can be doing, and today they took a welcome step in that direction.

This weekend Twitter announced that they were rolling out a “Report Tweet” button on their iPhone platform for broader adoption in the future. Here’s how it works on the phone:

When you click on the “…” (more) button while viewing a tweet, it brings up a screen with three options: “Copy link to Tweet,” “Mail Tweet,” and (in red) “Report Tweet.” Clicking on that button lets you select whether you want to make a report based on spam, abuse, or a hacked account. If you then click the option for abuse, it lets you choose among impersonation, trademark infringement, harassment, spam, concern about self-harm, or advertising as the issue. Clicking “Harassment” there takes you to Twitter’s abuse reporting webpage, where you’re asked to identify the nature of the harassment, identify the account and tweet, and answer a series of questions about the nature of the activity.

This is what an abuse reporting process should look like — straightforward to initiate, but specific as to the nature of the accusation, and as a result not suited to casual false reporting. The button is a step in the right direction, and I hope to see it adopted across platforms.

Tomorrow the United States Student Association convenes for it’s 66th annual membership meeting, the National Student Congress. USSA is the organization that first brought me into student organizing on a national scale, and the group on which I wrote my doctoral dissertation. It’s a big part of the reason why I’m a historian, a teacher, and an activist.

For the last few years USSA has been inviting me out to the Congress every summer to lend a hand — running workshops, facilitating discussions, chairing plenary sessions, and serving as a sort of roving informal adviser. It’s one of the most rewarding, and most challenging, things I do every year.

This summer’s Congress is shaping up to be a fascinating one, for reasons I’ll be talking more about in the coming days. USSA is going through a period of reinvention right now, and lots of folks will be coming to the Congress with proposals for action and reform. All signs suggest that there’s going to be at least one really interesting officer race, too.

As for me, I’ll be arriving in New Jersey around lunchtime dinnertime tomorrow. On Saturday at 3:20 I’ll be facilitating the Association’s People of Color Ally Space, on Sunday at 1:30 I’ll be co-presenting a workshop on parliamentary procedure, and for most of Monday and Tuesday I’ll be at or near the plenary chair’s podium. Other than that I’ll be mostly making myself available to whoever for whatever, so if you’re there and you see me and you’ve got a question or an idea — or just want to say hi — please do. That’s what I’m there for.

USSA is the country’s oldest and largest student-run student activist organization. It’s been a force for grassroots organizing, activist training, and legislative lobbying since the 1940s, and the coming year is going to be a big one on all three fronts. Can’t wait to watch it unfold.

Yesterday the students who had been occupying the office of the president of Cooper Union round-the-clock for sixty-five days announced that they had ended their occupation with a negotiated settlement. Though most observers hailed the agreement as a victory — at least a partial one — in the Free Cooper Union campaign to reverse the administration’s tuition plans and bring other reforms to the institution, at least a few were considerably less enthusiastic.

“In our experience,” the folks at Reclaim UC tweeted this morning, “negotiations and working groups tend to be administrative strategies of misdirection and neutralization.” Over at the Free Cooper Union Facebook page, one commenter declared the plans for “an exploratory working group” to be “the oldest evasion in the playbook.” He continued, “I’m sorry, but if you don’t acknowledge your failures, you can’t learn anything.”

Both of these commenters make solid points. When administrators offer to create a committee to look into a student demand, it’s presumptively a trap. Committees sap the momentum of the moment, and momentum is often the student organizer’s greatest weapon. By slowing things down, shunting things off to a smaller group, creating a bureaucratized process, administrators move the struggle onto terrain where they have all the advantages.

So yeah, there’s a lot of reason to be skeptical about such agreements. History and experience tell us that they’re frequently disastrous. But there are a number of reasons to think that this particular agreement could turn out to be an exception.

To start with, there’s the fact that the prospects for reversing the tuition policy through occupation alone were never particularly strong. Cooper Union’s trustees imposed it over sustained vocal opposition from throughout the Cooper community, and they did so in the face of what is by all accounts a serious financial crisis. As well-organized and impressive as this occupation was, it was launched at the end of the spring semester and carried over into the summer months when student power is always weakest. The question, at least in the short term, was never whether this occupation was going to win the war, but how the occupation was going to position Free Cooper Union for the next battle.

Relatedly, there’s the fact that an occupation, especially a long-term open-ended occupation, particularly a long-term open-ended occupation in the summer, isn’t without personal and institutional costs to the occupiers. After sixty-five days in the president’s office, Free Cooper Union may well find the end of the occupation revitalizing.

But those are really just reasons why ending the occupation now may have been prudent, whether the administration’s concessions were meaningful or not. So let’s take a look at the specifics of those concessions and see what meaning we can find in them.

Though the working group got most of the attention yesterday, it wasn’t the only concession. There were three others:

First, the trustees committed to a timetable and structure for placing a student trustee on the Cooper Union board. Though this had been agreed to in principle last month, the occupation agreement established that the student trustee will be chosen by direct student election and will be seated for the December trustee meeting.

Direct election of the student trustee is a very big deal. In many colleges and university systems, student trustees are appointed by administrators or politicians, and are thus accountable only to the same non-student institutional actors represented by the rest of the board. The creation of a student-controlled student trustee seat is a significant step forward for democratic governance and institutional transparency, and the commitment to have the student trustee in place before the end of the semester will strengthen the students’ hand in the coming year’s struggles.

Second, the students have been granted space for meeting and organizing on campus. Though this is not as momentous a development as the establishment of the trustee seat, it’s not insignificant. Creating a permanent, stable space for students to use as a staging area for this and future projects will enhance activists’ visibility on campus, encourage continuity in organizing, and facilitate recruitment and mobilization of students.

Finally, the occupying students have been granted amnesty, which is no small thing. Though the terms of that amnesty remain somewhat ambiguous, as of now the students involved in the occupation stand protected from administration retribution.

And what of the working group itself?

To begin with, it should be said that this is no ordinary low-level committee. The question of Cooper Union’s future is one that has galvanized the campus community, riveted higher education activists around the country, and drawn considerable media attention. This working group, which has been given a clear mission and a concrete, accelerated timeline, isn’t going to just fade away.

The composition of the working group is also significant, if not completely resolved. It will consist of sixteen members, three of whom will be elected by the Cooper Union student councils and four of whom will be elected by the college’s full-time faculty. That adds up to seven, and if the working group’s three alumni members are chosen through a democratic process, it means that a majority of the group will represent the Cooper Union community rather than the administration. If that majority — or even a strong multi-constituency minority — endorses a concrete proposal to roll back the planned tuition fees, it will garner national attention and put substantial new pressure on the college administration and trustees.

Another potentially significant feature of the working group is its promised access to confidential financial data. Although the extent of this access has not been publicly delineated, the commitment itself opens up new avenues for organizing and bringing public pressure in the fall. If real fiscal transparency does emerge, it will be both a boon to the tuition campaign and a powerful precedent for future efforts both at Cooper Union and beyond.

More broadly, if Free Cooper Union wins more victories in the fall it will be by using the working group and the student trustee seat and the organizing space and the amnesty as tools in a larger organizing project — by conceptualizing the agreement’s provisions as steps on the ladder rather than as ends in themselves. Seen in that light, the stated mission of the working group — “to explore ways in which Cooper Union may revert to providing full-tuition scholarships for all enrolled students” — is itself a win, serving to foreground and center the occupiers in discussions of the institution’s future. “Facing an outcry from students,” yesterday’s article on the agreement at prominent news site NY1 began, “Cooper Union is rethinking its decision to begin charging tuition.”

Free Cooper Union, who immediately and gleefully tweeted a link to the story, couldn’t have asked for a better spin.

So what’s the upshot? In many ways, it’s too soon to tell. There’s some really strong stuff in the agreement. Other provisions — the selection procedure for alumni members of the working group, the particulars of financial disclosure, the specific terms of the amnesty, the location of the permanent community space — will require close scrutiny going forward. And the working group itself could prove to be a pivotal stage in the struggle or a complete bust.

But Free Cooper Union walked out of their occupation under their own power, carrying real victories and a roadmap to a stronger campus movement with them. In the United States in the second decade of the 21st century, that’s a pretty rare outcome, and a welcome one.

Anyway, that’s my sense. I’m really eager to hear what y’all think.

The students who have been occupying the office of the Cooper Union president in opposition to the college’s plan to impose tuition fees for the first time in more than a century have ended their occupation with a negotiated agreement.

The Cooper Union students announced the terms of that agreement this morning, and while they did not succeed in rolling back the tuition plan — yet — the concessions from the administration are significant. Here’s what they won:

• A working group of students, faculty, alumni, administrators, and trustees is to be established to “to explore ways in which Cooper Union may revert to providing full-tuition scholarships for all enrolled students.” Student and faculty representatives on the committee will be democratically elected, and will together make up seven of the committee’s sixteen members. (Alumni will account for another three of the members, but it has not yet been announced how they will be chosen.)

• The working group will, according to the students, “have access to all of the information needed to analyze and model operational and financial alternatives,” potentially including confidential financial data not available to the public.

• An elected student member of the Cooper Union board of trustees will be installed by December of this year under procedures approved by the trustees at their September meeting.

• Space for a Cooper Union “community commons” has been pledged by the college, to provide meeting and working space for campus activists. A room in the administration building has been set aside for that purpose during the summer, with a permanent commons space made available before the start of the fall semester.

• All occupiers have been granted full amnesty.

In addition, students announced this morning plans to establish an independent Free Cooper Union non-profit corporation “that will enable us to kick off our own parallel fundraising campaign for a tuition-free school.  Free Cooper Union will, they say, be “a collaborative effort comprised of the Students for the Free Cooper Union, Faculty for a Free Cooper Union, and Alumni for a Free Cooper Union that will revive and uphold the mission of our beloved school.”

Update | A good piece on the process that led to the settlement.

Second Update | Coverage from Art In America.

Third Update | More good coverage, this time from The Village Voice: “This group [the working group] is going to try to work out a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose situation.”

Fourth Update | Some on Twitter and Facebook have expressed concern about the terms of the amnesty granted to the occupiers. Here’s the deal: In the document linked above, it was stated that if the occupiers “agreed…in principle” to the terms of the agreement, vacated the president’s office by a Friday deadline, and “commit[ed] to complying with, and cooperating with the enforcement of, all laws and Cooper Union policies,” then “all individuals who violated laws or Cooper Union policies in the course of the occupation will be granted amnesty.”

Whether the amnesty was made contingent solely on the students’ “commit[ment]” to compliance with “all laws and Cooper Union policies” or to their compliance with such laws and policies in perpetuity is, by my reading, ambiguous.

Last week prominent sci-fi author John Scalzi made a pretty big splash when he announced that he will no longer accept invitations to fan conventions (more commonly known as “cons“) that don’t have clear, well-publicized anti-harassment policies.

The problem of harassment at cons has been getting a lot of attention recently, with a growing number of people speaking up about bad experiences. There’s been quite a bit of really ugly pushback, though, including some from very high places. The whole discussion has illustrated the extent of the casual harassment (sexual and other) that goes on at such events, as well as underscoring the importance of having solid reporting and response procedures in place.

It’s a discussion that needs to be foregrounded in political environments as well.

The problem of sexual harassment and sexual violence in movement spaces was a focus of considerable reporting in the Occupy movement. Some of those claims of bad behavior were invented or exaggerated by Occupy’s critics, but the issue itself wasn’t an invented one — sexual predation is a particular threat in informal, countercultural, communal environments, and the complexity of addressing that threat is compounded by Occupy’s anti-heirarchical, anti-authoritarian politics.

Harassment among activists isn’t just an Occupy issue, though. From campus occupations to student government retreats, activist spaces carry the potential for bad behavior, and there’s often aversion to — or just confusion as to how one would go about — implementing formal policies on what’s out-of-bounds and how to address it.

Whatever the challenges of addressing sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other harassing and violent acts in movement spaces, however, the first step in the process is clear — folks in positions of responsibility in those spaces need to develop, implement, and publicize procedures for addressing such behavior when it occurs. Taking that step is a necessary part of making your movement and your organization one that everyone can feel safe participating in.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be attending the National Student Congress of the United States Student Association, an annual conference that brings together student activists and student government leaders from around the country for six days of intensive, energizing, exhausting work. I’m happy to say that USSA has a harassment policy for its conferences, and sad to say that it’s not anywhere near as good as it should be.

I can say both of those things because I was the policy’s primary author.

The USSA harassment policy was written, as best as I can recall, during my last USSA Congress as an undergraduate. I had been asked to serve on the Congress Steering Committee, the conference’s primary governing body. A student went to the USSA leadership to report that she was being sexually harassed by a member of her campus delegation, and one of the officers brought the complaint to us. In investigating the charges, we quickly discovered that we had little to work with in the organization’s governing documents. Harassment, stalking, even assault — as long as they took place off of the plenary floor — were not violations of USSA policy.

My recollection is that we found some general language in the Congress Rules that we interpreted as empowering us to address the  complaint that had been lodged, and then sat down to write a policy to apply at future conferences. We had no guidance, no templates, no formal process — we just brainstormed for a while, and then I went off in a corner and put our notes into formal language.

We did an okay job, given the circumstances. Well enough, at least, that the policy has survived the intervening years largely intact. But there are obvious weaknesses — omissions, imprecise wording, questionable procedures — that are the inevitable result of the ad hoc process we employed. Given that, I encourage the folks who will be in attendance at the Congress to consider taking another look at the rules, and to make use of the resources at the bottom of this post when they do.

More broadly, I’d strongly encourage anyone reading this who is involved in an organization or coalition that conducts conferences, demonstrations, retreats, lengthy meetings, occupations, or other relevant gatherings or actions to take a moment to review the group’s harassment policies, if they exist, and to consider crafting them if they don’t.

I say “consider” here because of the wide variety of settings and situations in play. Appropriate rules for a student government retreat aren’t the same as those for a student government meeting. Rules for a one-hour demonstration aren’t the same as those for a one-week occupation. Rules for the offices of a statewide student association aren’t the same as those for a campus club. Questions of authority and enforcement and appropriate limits are going to shake out in very different ways in different circumstances.

Given all that, I’m not sure that it makes sense for me to take precisely the same stand that Scalzi has. Most of my speaking engagements aren’t at formal conferences, and many are arranged on short enough notice that even if harassment policies were called for it wouldn’t be practical to insist on the drafting, approval, and implementation of new policies as a pre-condition of my agreeing to participate.

I will, however, from here on out, be asking everyone who invites me to speak at events about relevant harassment policies, and where appropriate asking them to put such policies in place before I arrive on site.

September 2013 Update | I’ve formalized my position on this a bit more — I’m now asking every conference I speak at to have a robust anti-harassment policy in place. (More details can be found on my guide to bringing me to campus, which is linked at this page.) To further that process, I’ve posted links to resources on drafting policies below.

I’d also like to see this conversation continue, and to assist with it however I can. If any of you have suggestions or experiences to offer, or questions about how to proceed, please share them in comments. Also, if your organization does have a harassment policy in place, please share that, and I’ll post it (or a link) for others to draw on.

Some resources to get the ball rolling:

• Geek Feminism Wiki’s hub for info on conference anti-harassment policies
• A sample policy from Geek Feminism Wiki
• Occupy Baltimore’s Sexual Offense Policy
• Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How-To
• A Scalzi post explaining his new policy (includes links and FAQ)
• The Con Anti-Harassment Project
• The Backup Project
• A MetaFilter discussion about the complexities of addressing harassment in informal spaces