Quote of the Day: UC Student Power in the 1880s

August 12, 2012 in Administration, Campus Communities, Campus Life, Campus Protests, Governance, History, Quotes, Student Power | by | Leave a comment

“The University of California was a young, comparatively small institution when I entered there in 1885 as a freshman. … My class numbered about one hundred boys and girls, mostly boys, who came from all parts of the State and represented all sorts of people and occupations. … We found already formed at Berkeley the typical undergraduate customs, rights, and privileged vices which we had to respect ourselves and defend against the faculty, regents, and the State government.

“One evening, before I had matriculated, I was taken out by some upper classmen to teach the president a lesson. He had been the head of a private preparatory school and was trying to govern the private lives and the public morals of university “men” as he had those of his schoolboys. Fetching a long ladder, the upper classmen thrust it through a front window of Prexy’s house and, to the chant of obscene songs, swung it back and forth, up and down, round and round, till everything breakable within sounded broken and the drunken indignation outside was satisfied or tired.

“This turned out to be one of the last battles in the war for liberty against that president. He was allowed to resign soon thereafter and I noticed that not only the students but many of the faculty and regents rejoiced in his downfall and turned with us to face and fight the new president when, after a lot of politics, he was appointed and presented. We learned somehow a good deal about the considerations that governed our college government. They were not only academic. The government of a university was — like the State government and horse-racing and so many other things — not what I had been led to expect. And a college education wasn’t either, nor the student mind.”

—The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens

New Student Labor History Resource

August 10, 2012 in Class, History, Labor, Organizing, Student Power | by | Leave a comment

This is really cool.

The Student Labor Action Project, a group that works with students across the US on economic justice organizing, has just completed a year-by-year history of its work. Here’s a sample, chosen pretty much at random:

2006

SLAP students at Temple University and University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia waged a campaign against security guard firm, AlliedBarton. Philly SLAP and the city’s Jobs with Justice coalition held numerous marches and protests to try and secure a living wage and benefits for security officers working on campuses and throughout the city. In Vermont, SLAP students also ran a living wage campaign for campuses workers. The National Student Labor Week of Action featured 250 actions on campuses. In addition to living wage campaigns going on throughout the nation, SLAP students also held actions against American Eagle and in solidarity with the Justice at Smithfield campaign.

In 2006, the Living Wage Action Coalition was founded to coordinate living wage campaigns taking place across the country. LWAC grew out of a living wage campaign at Georgetown University, and the students who ran that campaign hoped to create a larger network that could provide trainings, resources, and supports for struggles across the country. SLAP was a major partner with LWAC and provided its expertise to the assist the movement for a living wage.

Carlos Jimenez was hired as the fifth SLAP Coordinator.

This kind of narrative history is crucial to any movement, and student activists may be less likely to produce it than any other group. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to mention something about an organization or movement in a larger work, but had to drop it or cut it down because I couldn’t find a solid overview source and didn’t have time to build one from scratch.

My dissertation was intended to fill one such gap, but there are a ridiculous number of others, many of them huge. Here’s to filling gaps.

There’s Nothing Left to Like About Walter White

August 7, 2012 in Media | by | Leave a comment

I’ll try to make this quick…

Matt Yglesias writes of last week’s Breaking Bad ep that he’s on Walt’s “side” in the Whites’ mushrooming marital conflict:

If Skyler felt that Walt’s post-Fring attitude didn’t adequately consider the risks to their children, she should have just said so plainly. Instead she visited Ted in the hospital, then fell into a dayslong depression during which she was totally noncommunicative with her husband. Then she drops an atom bomb into the family dynamic with a cry-for-help suicide attempt. It’s just not a great way to raise marital issues.

This is one of those “Are we watching the same show?” moments for me. What had Skyler rattled wasn’t that Walt wasn’t “adequately considering risks,” it was her dawning realization that the man she loved, the man she had two kids with, is a monster. That he kills people and likes it. That he’s become so obsessed with the deadly game he’s playing that nothing else matters to him. Not his marriage, not his friends, not his children. (And of course we know that Skyler doesn’t know the worst of it.)

Yglesias’s clipped summary of the next scene between the two of them — “when Walt confronted her directly, suddenly the nonresponsiveness was gone” — is even weirder. Because there are no gray areas in what follows:

Skyler believes that Walt is putting her children in danger. She appeals to him to let her get them out of harm’s way, and he refuses to entertain the idea. Every case she makes, he dismisses. He’s not interested in having a discussion, only in winning the argument. And when she realizes this, and indicates she’s willing to act without his approval, he attacks, viciously. He threatens her — with the police, with institutionalization, with the loss of her children. And he wins.

Skyler wants out. She desperately wants out.

And he won’t let her go.

There’s no “Walter’s side” to this one. There’s no case to be made on his behalf. He’s an abusive husband, clinging to the shell of a marriage through threats and intimidation, and Skyler is rightly scared to death of him. There’s nothing left to like about Walter White, and this episode makes it clearer than ever that the creators of the show want you to know that.

National Student Power Convergence, August 10-14

August 6, 2012 in Access, Organizing, Student Power | by | 1 comment

It seems like I just got back from one national student gathering, and I’m about to hit the road for another.

This Friday, August 10, a National Student Power Convergence kicks off in Columbus, Ohio:

The Convergence intends to be a space of shared resources, building connections among campus communities through grassroots organizing, as well as utilizing social capital generated through many progressive organizations. Through the Convergence we hope to augment individual organizing efforts; allow students and youth to draw larger, deeper connections to the work they are doing on their campuses; and contextualize their work in the narrative of the broader movement.

The convergence already has more than 250 registrants, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than a few drop-ins as well. I know a bunch of the folks involved, both organizers and participants, and I couldn’t be more excited to see what they all come up with.

You can see the full schedule here, the convergence website here, and their Twitter feed and Facebook page here and here. The conference hashtag is #HereUsNow.

I’ll be arriving in Columbus on Saturday afternoon, I think, and staying until Tuesday morning. On Monday afternoon at 4:30 I’m appearing on a panel on student activist history with 1960s SDS leader Carl Davidson.

Can’t wait.

What the Chick-Fil-A Protests Tell Us About Students and the Campus

August 3, 2012 in Campus Communities, Campus Life, History, Student Power | by | Leave a comment

I was quoted pretty extensively in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed story on campus protests against Chick-Fil-A, and one of the nice things about being interviewed by a sharp journalist is that it prompts you to articulate things you wouldn’t ordinarily have occasion to say.

A lot of what I write is in response to specific circumstances, and for a particular audience, and because of all that some basic stuff often goes unspoken. Here’s an example from the IHE piece:

“Students feel a sense of ownership over, or citizenship in, the campus. They don’t see themselves as consumers of a product. [The Chick-Fil-A protesters are] responding out of that sense of community, that sense of obligation.”

The concept of students as consumers of a higher education product isn’t one that students came up with. It was invented by university administrators in the early 1970s as a way of blunting student demands for an active role in governance while meeting the administrative challenges posed by new consumer protection laws and the decline of in loco parentis. To the extent that it’s been adopted by students in the decades since, it’s only hesitantly, conditionally, and under duress.

That’s worth remembering.

About This Blog

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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.