Wisconsin Abortion Clash Puts Student Govt In Spotlight

May 9, 2008 in Campus Protests, Civil Liberties, Religion, Reproductive Freedom, Student Government | by | Leave a comment

An anti-abortion group at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point put up a display of four thousand white crosses on a campus lawn last week, symbolizing the four thousand fetuses that they say are aborted each day. Stevens Point student Roderick King objected to the installation, saying that because abortion is a constitutional right, “you don’t have the right to challenge it. … Do not put this in front of all of us. This is not your right.” He then pulled several hundred of the crosses out of the ground before being convinced to leave peacefully.

This was by all accounts a minor event. Leaders in “Pointers for Life,” the group that put up the crosses, told the Wausau Daily Herald that their displays are often targeted by vandals. But the incident has received wide coverage among conservative blogs and media outlets, in part because King is one of nineteen members of the UWSP student senate. 

The prominent conservative legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy described King as a student government official in their story on the incident. Michelle Malkin identified him as a student government senator. Many other sites called him a student government leader or simply a student leader. The group that put up the crosses has called on King to resign or be removed from his student government office.

King has written a letter to the Stevens Point Journal rejecting the calls for his resignation, and saying that he was “not acting in the name of UWSP Student Government Association, but as an individual who believes one person’s right to freedom of speech stops when it infringes on another person’s right to a secular education.”

Tulane Ignored Rape Allegation Against Disgraced Frat

May 8, 2008 in Administration, Fraternities and Sororities, Police, Sexual Violence, Student Government, Student vs. Student | by | 3 comments

Ten members of Tulane University’s Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were arrested this week, and the fraternity was suspended, after a brutal hazing incident that sent two pledges to the hospital. In a statement, the university declared that it has “zero tolerance for any type of … incident which can potentially endanger the well-being of any student.”

But the Tulane student government urged the university to investigate Pi Kappa Alpha, known as PIKE, for drugging female attendees at its parties more than two years ago, and its complaint was ignored.

In March 2006 the undergraduate student government at Tulane sent a five-paragraph letter to the university administration raising concerns about Pi Kappa Alpha, stating that there was “legitimate reason to believe” that the frat had “served drugged beverages to unsuspecting guests” at a party the previous month.

According to the letter, such allegations had been made “every year” in “recent memory” by female guests at Pi Kappa Alpha parties, with attendees “suspect[ing] that they may have been date raped” while drugged.

The letter also charged that “numerous people were taken to the hospital or injured” as a result of incidents at Pi Kappa Alpha parties, and that the university had responded with “minor punishments and slaps on the wrist.” The fraternity was engaged in “egregious and continuous abuse of the students and the rules,” the letter said, and “the situation gets worse every year.”

In a statement this week, the Tulane administration said that there had “apparently” been “no response from Tulane to this letter.”

On April 26 of this year two Pi Kappa Alpha pledges were hospitalized with second- and third-degree burns after a five-hour hazing ordeal in which fraternity members poured boiling water, crab-boil, and cayenne pepper sauce on pledges’ bodies. Police learned of the incident this past weekend, and filed charges against ten fraternity members on Tuesday.

Tulane suspended the fraternity the same day.

Update: More on Tulane here and here.

Students Turned Away From Indiana Polls

May 7, 2008 in Civil Liberties, Politics, Voting Rights | by | Leave a comment

As we noted last week, the US Supreme Court recently upheld Indiana’s strict voter ID law, raising concerns about the disfranchisement of out-of-state college students. Reports from yesterday’s primary voting suggest that those concerns were at least partially warranted.

College students often vote in their college communities but maintain driver’s licenses from their states of origin. Under Indiana law, out-of-state licenses are not valid ID for voting.

Public university students with out-of-state licenses were able to vote without incident yesterday, as their college ID cards are regarded as “state-issued” identification for the purposes of the law. Student PIRG poll-watchers did, however, report a number of incidents in which private-college students were turned away. One PIRG representative further noted that news of the stringent ID requirements likely kept some students away from the polls altogether.

Students Locked Out of Finals for Unpaid Fees

May 7, 2008 in Campus Protests, International Students, Tuition and Fees | by | Leave a comment

Twenty international students at the University of Sussex in England have been banned from taking final exams because they have fallen behind in their tuition payments.

More than 150 Sussex students staged a protest against the decision late last week. The president of the university’s student union described the proposed payment schedules and the timing of the university’s action as unreasonable.

The protest follows a successful Facebook campaign on behalf of one of the students, Luqman Onikosi of Nigeria. When Onikosi’s sponsor in England died, he was unable to raise the money to pay the fees himself.

The university recently agreed to allow Onikosi to take his exams and put off payment until September.

Update: A follow-up protest is planned for this Friday, May 9.

75 SDSU Students Arrested in Drug Sting

May 7, 2008 in Civil Liberties, Drug Policy, Police, Students | by | Leave a comment

A major police operation on the San Diego State University campus led to the arrest of 75 students on drug charges yesterday. Fifty pounds of marijuana and four pounds of cocaine were seized in the sting, which involved seven SDSU fraternities.

The arrests were the culmination of six months of undercover work in SDSU’s frats, initiated after a 19-year-old student died of a cocaine and alcohol overdose last year. All of those arrested were men, and approximately twenty were charged with drug sales rather than possession.

On Tuesday SDSU suspended six fraternities — Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Theta, Theta Chi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Mu — that were implicated in the case. All of the arrested students have been suspended, and those who lived in campus housing are being evicted.

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.