Running around today, but wanted to at least quickly follow up on the student protests in Sacramento and Albany yesterday.

The New York Times has a good overview of the Albany action. Excerpt:

About 300 students, most of them from public universities in New York, rattled the Capitol on Monday with an outburst of loud protests, in the gallery of the Senate Chamber and outside the governor’s office.

The students, part of a statewide coalition of campus organizations called New York Students Rising, were objecting to the tuition hikes that were approved last year under a measure that permits public universities in New York to increase tuition by up to 5 percent per year over the next five years. The research universities at Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton and Stony Brook are permitted an additional 3 percent tuition increase each year.

The bill also allows the universities to form partnerships with private corporations for development, a change that Alexi Shalom, a student atHunter College, said he feared would bring for-profit enterprises into the public universities.

“It’s a public university,” he said. “It’s supposed to be funded by tax dollars. We oppose corporations and big business being involved in our education.”

New York Students Rising, who mounted the protest, put together an exhaustive media roundup.

For Sacramento, Occupy Education CA had a liveblog and the Berkeley Daily Cal had a solid writeup:

As California Highway Patrol officers stood guard at the entrance of the state Capitol building’s rotunda Monday afternoon, protesters inside the building kicked off a 7-hour occupation that resulted in at least 72 arrests.

The occupation followed a rally on the Capitol building’s steps in which thousands of protesters from across the state called for lawmakers to end the recent trend of decreased funding to the state’s public higher education systems.

 Feel free to add links to additional coverage and analysis in comments.

 

This is kind of astonishing.

A mere 12 hours before it was due to be released online, the official UC Davis report on last November’s pepper-spray incident has been pulled indefinitely as a result of threatened legal action by the UCD police department.

The report, commissioned by UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi in November and originally slated for a December release, had already been delayed multiple times. Police had previously refused to allow investigators access to Davis police chief Annette Spicuzza or either of the two officers who sprayed the activists.

According to the Associated Press, “the officers involved in the Nov. 18 incident where 10 protesters were pepper-sprayed don’t want their names and confidential information they told investigators” released, and planed a morning filing for a Temporary Restraining Order.

Former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso, head of the investigating committee, said that the report’s release was being delayed on the advice of university lawyers. He added, however, that he remained “undeterred in my commitment to release the complete and unredacted work of the Task Force, a view shared by President Yudof.” Yudof himself said that “the entire UC Davis community deserves a fully transparent and unexpurgated accounting of the incidents in question,” and that he had “asked the UC General Counsel’s office to do everything in its power in court to turn back this attempt to stifle these reports.”

Today is a major day of action in the state capitals of California and New York, with students and allies from across each state descending on Sacramento and Albany.

In New York, #M5 events kick off with a two o’clock press conference at the Million Dollar Staircase in the capitol, followed by teach-ins, a march, and an evening rally.

In California, plans are proceeding along two parallel tracks, with university officials and Democratic officials planning a traditional lobby day while activists — including a group completing a 99-mile weekend march from Oakland — preparing for direct action.

Check out the map…

Three days after causing a huge uproar by calling Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut,” a “prostitute,” and a “feminazi,” Rush Limbaugh has apologized. But his statement makes clear that he has absolutely no clue what Fluke said in her testimony to Democratic members of Congress, or what her arguments on the subject of contraceptive coverage actually were. Either that, or he’s intentionally smearing her again by misrepresenting her position.

Here. Take a look. Judge for yourself:

Limbaugh: “I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.”

Fluke made no reference to her own sexual history in her congressional testimony. She spoke not on the basis of her own personal experience of birth control use, but in her position as past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice.

Limbaugh: “I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.”

Fluke was not advocating for public financing of contraceptives, but for a policy mandating “contraception coverage in [the Georgetown] student health plan.” There was no contemplation of a government contraceptive entitlement program in Fluke’s testimony, or in the Obama administration proposal she spoke in favor of.

Limbaugh: “What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line?”

As Fluke made abundantly clear, coverage of contraceptive services is a matter that affects students who do not use the prescriptions for birth control. She spoke movingly and at length of a friend at Georgetown who “has polycystic ovarian syndrome and has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries.” Her insurance claim “was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy,” despite the fact that she is a lesbian.

Limbaugh: “If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?”

Again, the question at hand is not what “taxpayers should pay” for, but what services will be covered under insurance plans established by institutions for employees, students, and other beneficiaries. There’s no issue of taxpayer funding on the table at all.

Limbaugh: “In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom…”

Actually, Mr. Limbaugh, you not only discussed Ms. Fluke’s sex life — a subject which she had made literally no reference to in her testimony — at length and in graphic detail, you also demanded that she “post the videos online so we can all watch.”

This is worth underscoring. Sandra Fluke made no reference to her own sexual behavior in her congressional testimony. She said nothing to indicate that she has ever had heterosexual sex in her thirty years on the planet. Mr. Limbaugh’s extensive, repeated, prurient allegations and speculations as to her history and her proclivities had literally no basis in anything she had said to the members of Congress she addressed.

Limbaugh: “…nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.”

The president’s February 10 announcement of his contraceptive coverage policy made no reference to anyone’s sexual behavior. In fact it, like Ms. Fluke’s testimony, emphasized the importance of contraception “as a way to reduce the risks of ovarian and other cancers, and treat a variety of different ailments.”

The president also recognized the significance of prescription contraceptives as a method of birth control, of course, but given that — as he noted — “nearly 99 percent of all women have relied on contraception at some point in their lives” — the prudent course for those who are uninterested in public discussion of “what is going on in anyone’s bedroom” is to make contraception universally available to those who need it.

Limbaugh: “My choice of words was not the best…”

“She must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception … she’s having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk.”

Limbaugh: “…and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

Cool story, bro.


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

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