Category Archives: Students

Concordia Student Union Votes to Strike

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Concordia Student Union Votes to Strike

Students at the Concordia Student Union General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a one-week strike to begin 15 March.  A second motion passed in the GA sets the stage for students to block entry of students and professors wanting to cross the line and enter classrooms.  Both motions build on the student movement in Quebec against rising tuition costs.  The vote was by simultaneous show of hands in four venues on campus, as secret ballot was unfeasible.

The Concordia VP External conceded that “at the end of the day, the students spoke.”  The students are considering weekly GAs to extend the strike as necessary.  More at The Link.

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Posted in Organizing, Protests, Strikes, Student Movement, Students

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Students 1-day Occupy Montreal Street and University

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Students 1-day Occupy Montreal Street and University

Last week ended in violence as police clamped down on students in Montreal.  The student movement in Quebec is in full career, now three weeks in, as protests escalate against rising tuition and other costs to education.

Image from The Link

This week began with L’Université du Québec à Montréal students occupying a campus building and street. “When the administration caught wind of the students’ idea, they closed the building that the demonstrators planned on using.  They responded by breaking into the building, taking back their art supplies for the “creativity night” and moving the event to the DS building on Ste. Catherine and Sanguinet St.”  More at The Link.

 

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Posted in Free speech, Government, Organizing, Protests, Student Movement, Students

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Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

The Chronicle: In California and Beyond, the Changing Nature of Campus Protests Frustrates Administrators

Campus protests don’t always arise locally or focus on discrete issues or demands. Sometimes, they’re not even led by students.

Those characteristics vex some senior student-affairs administrators in the University of California system, where a tumultuous combination of steep tuition increases and the high-profile national “Occupy” movement resulted in demonstrations that have ensnared at least two campuses—Berkeley and Davis—in lawsuits.

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Dave Zirin interview with UVA Football Player Joseph WIlliams, Hunger Striking for Campus Workers

Posted on March 5, 2012 by | Comments Off on Dave Zirin interview with UVA Football Player Joseph WIlliams, Hunger Striking for Campus Workers

The Nation: Our Interview with UVA Football Player Joseph WIlliams, Hunger Striking for Campus Workers

Rare are the times when an NCAA football player at a Division 1 Bowl Championship Series eligible school stands up for issues related to social justice. The reasons for this silence are manifold. From their legal and organizational powerlessness as “student-athletes,” to the annual renewal needed for their scholarships, to just the sheer amount of time players are asked to invest in their teams along with their isolation from the broader campus, silence is often the easiest option. This is the first part of what makes the case of University of Virginia football player Joseph Williams so exceptional. Williams, along with a group of fellow classmates, is currently engaged in a hunger strike organized by the Living Wage Campaign. The group is demanding that the service employees who work on the campus receive wages that keep up with the cost of living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Williams is doing nothing less than risking his football career and his health in order to stand up for the voiceless on campus.

What makes this story even more remarkable is Williams’s own voice. His essay on why he joined the hunger strike makes for powerful reading. Our interview with him was no less impressive. This is a jock for justice, laying it on the line for a cause deeply personal to him. If publicity of his stand inspires other college football players to be heard, the NCAA will find itself in difficult and unchartered waters.

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Posted in Campus Life, Solidarity, Students

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Concordia Students Say Let the Strikes Begin

Posted on March 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Concordia Students Say Let the Strikes Begin

6,380 Concordia students are on strike with more departmental general assemblies discussing strike action.  A Concordia Student Union vote is set for 7 March and a planned, four-day strike begins on 26 March. See The Link for more…

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Posted in Organizing, Protests, Solidarity, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students, Unions

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BC Secondary Students Walk Out in Protest

Posted on March 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on BC Secondary Students Walk Out in Protest

It takes a ton of courage for a student to walk out of school and today these young citizens demonstrated en masse across the province.  Every teacher should stand proud as their students stand side by side with one voice.  Every parent of these kids should feel the payoff.  And the students themselves have to know they make the difference for all of us.  This is education (see slide show below).

At the Vancouver Art Gallery, at least 1,500 students convened around 2:00 and stood, spoke, and shouted in solidarity with teachers and the BCTF.  Students at Eric Hamber Secondary seem to have been the first group, exiting the school around 11:00 this morning.  Despite the typically uncooperative weather (5C and rainy), the students were still protesting through the late afternoon.

It has been quite some time since BC saw a student movement but what struck me most was how many showed up and how well organized the demonstration was.  These kids know their politics and how to win hearts.  Signs everywhere with the critique of the BC government’s decision-making loud and clear, a young woman kicked things off: “BC” she shouted and 1,500 hollered back “students”… “BC” she shouted and 1,500 screamed “teachers.”  That’s a solid show of force.

As post-secondary students in BC deal with compounding challenges that seem relentless, let’s hope the high school students spark this from grass roots to an all out BC student movement.  Quebec post-secondary students are putting everything on the line right now.  Time to take inspiration from the younger crowd to stand up and be heard BC post-secondary students!

BC Students Walk Out March 2012 Slide Show (photos by S. Petrina)

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Posted in BC Education, Protests, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students

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BC Students Walking Out on Government

Posted on March 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on BC Students Walking Out on Government

Thousands of BC students are set to walk out this afternoon in support of public education and their teachers, and in protest of the government’s draconian legislation Bill 22.  They’re making “their voices heard in the prolonged teachers’ dispute with the province.”

See updates at CBC and Facebook

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Posted in BC Education, K-12 issues, Strikes, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Student Movement, Students

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Quebec Students Met with Police Force

Posted on March 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quebec Students Met with Police Force

As thousands of students protested tuition hikes outside the provincial legislature in Quebec City today, they were met with police force and tear gas. The protest was initially peaceful but when a group of students crossed barriers erected around the national assembly, the riot squad pushed back and deployed tear gas.

Photo (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Read more: CTV News

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Concordia Students 5-Day Sleep-In Protest

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | Comments Off on Concordia Students 5-Day Sleep-In Protest

Beginning today, students at Concordia University will be moving en masse to the W. McConnell Library and staying for the remainder of the week.  The 5-day sleep-in is in protest of pending tuition hikes and increasing burdens trickled and poured down on students within an economy that is failing.  About 48,000 students throughout Quebec are  boycotting classes, “many indefinitely,” in protest.

Photograph by: Phil Carpenter , Montreal Gazette files. Read more: Montreal Gazette

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Student Activism Gathers Force in Montreal

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | Comments Off on Student Activism Gathers Force in Montreal

MONTREAL – About 15,000 students rallied Thursday afternoon at Phillip’s Square to protest tuition hikes.

On Tuesday, about 36,000 students took part in an unlimited strike to oppose tuition hikes – about 16,000 of them from CEGEPs and the rest from departments at the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université Laval à Québec.

Organizers claim more than 65,000 students are on strike in Quebec.

Read more: Montreal Gazette

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Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Race-Conscious Admissions at U. of Texas

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | Comments Off on Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Race-Conscious Admissions at U. of Texas

The Chronicle: Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Race-Conscious Admissions at U. of Texas

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would take up a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas, setting the stage for it to reconsider affirmative-action policies that it had ruled constitutional in 2003, before its composition significantly changed.

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Posted in Legal issues, Students

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Michigan Senate Approves Bill to Block Unions by Graduate Research Assistants

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | Comments Off on Michigan Senate Approves Bill to Block Unions by Graduate Research Assistants

The Chronicle: Michigan Senate Approves Bill to Block Unions by Graduate Research Assistants

A Republican-sponsored bill that would bar graduate research assistants at Michigan’s public universities from unionizing has been approved by the State Senate. Consideration of the bill coincides with debates over whether research assistants at the University of Michigan should be classified as students, not as employees entitled to collective-bargaining rights. The bill, which now heads to the House, threatens to upend a case pending before an administrative-law judge, who is scheduled to deliver her recommendation to the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on March 13.

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Posted in Legal issues, Organizing, Students, Unions

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McGill Students Occupy Office Against Administration’s Autocracy

Posted on February 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on McGill Students Occupy Office Against Administration’s Autocracy

Occupy McGill The occupiers explain the circumstances for this action in a communiqué:
“In the summer of 2010, Dr. Morton Mendelson (Deputy Provost, Student Life & Learning who is mandated to represent the interests of students to the administration) shut down the beloved Architecture Cafe, taking away our biggest student-run cafe and giving Aramark – a company that provides food to most US prisons and the US military – a monopoly on food services on campus. Last year, he and the administration forced all clubs and services to remove “McGill” from their name,as if we, the students of this university, have no right to associate with the brand they wish to put forward. Then, this winter, Mendelson announced the administration would ignore and seek to invalidate the overwhelmingly clear results of the CKUT and QPIRG fall referendum question. […]
There is no doubt in our mind that this administration – and Dr. Mendelson in particular – need to understand the consequences of their actions towards students. We are here to hold them accountable. We have undertaken this action in full knowledge of its potential consequences, yet maintain that, given the current context of administrative disregard for student autonomy by the administration and the radical imbalance of power between students and administrators, this action is justified.”

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WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY

Posted on December 13, 2011 by | Comments Off on WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY
TO WAKE THE NLRB FROM ITS COMA,
HELP IT RECOGNIZE THAT GRAD LABOR COUNTS!

Chicago, IL, December 13, 2011 — Today at noon, Chicago-area graduate students and their supporters will demonstrate outside the Chicago branch office of the National Labor Relations Board (209 S. LaSalle St.) and present a petition calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma of inaction and recognize private university graduate student teaching and research assistants as employees with a legal right to unionize and collectively bargain.

The rally, organized by Graduate Students United, the graduate employee union at the University of Chicago, and the national Grad Labor Counts! campaign, will feature a dramatic skit in which the NLRB is presented as a comatose hospital patient to reflect its record of inaction and danger of imminent demise. The Grad Labor Counts! campaign has been endorsed by the 1.4 million-strong American Federation of Teachers and the 70,000-member American Association of University Professors.

“We’re calling for for urgent medical attention to the ailing patient from President Obama and Congress, who have the power to restore the NLRB by appointing a new member in 2012,” explained Dasha Polzik, a member of Graduate Students United and an organizer of the Grad Labor Counts! campaign.

“We’re also calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma and issue a ruling on a case that has sat before it since April 2010 concerning the employee status of graduate students at private universities,” added Greg Goodman, another GSU member. Graduate student teaching and research assistants were first recognized as employees by a unanimous NLRB ruling in 2000, and then stripped of their employee status by a later Bush-era ruling in 2004.

Representatives from Grad Labor Counts! will deliver a petition with over 2,700 signatures from across the country calling on the NLRB to rule on the case and recognize graduate student teaching and research assistants at private universities as employees. Details on the Grad Labor Counts! campaign and petition are available at http://gradlaborcounts.org.

Graduate Students United (AFT-AAUP) at the University of Chicago
http://uchicagogsu.org
# # #

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Posted in Students, Unions

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State Attorney General Seeks to Thwart Union for U. of Michigan Graduate Researchers

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | Comments Off on State Attorney General Seeks to Thwart Union for U. of Michigan Graduate Researchers

The Chronicle: State Attorney General Seeks to Thwart Union for U. of Michigan Graduate Researchers

Michigan’s attorney general, Bill Schuette, is seeking to intervene in proceedings before that state’s Employment Relations Commission to try to get it to block graduate-student research assistants at the University of Michigan from unionizing. In a motion submitted to the commission on Wednesday, Mr. Schuette argues that the case “involves matters of significant public interest” because the unionization of the university’s graduate research assistants “has the potential to significantly damage” its reputation as a research institution. Leaders of the union drive responded by issuing a statement arguing that graduate researchers have a right to decide whether to unionize without outside interference. When the commission meets on December 13, it is expected to vote on asking an administrative-law judge to conduct a faculty inquiry into whether the university’s graduate-student research assistants should be thought of as employees eligible for unionization, or simply considered as students.

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Protesters occupy building on Sacramento campus

Posted on April 14, 2011 by | Comments Off on Protesters occupy building on Sacramento campus

San Diego Union-Tribune: Protesters occupy building on Sacramento campus

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than 100 faculty members, students and staff have occupied a building at California State University, Sacramento as part of a statewide mobilization against pending cuts to higher education.

An early afternoon rally on Wednesday began with more than 600 protesters, who blamed CSU Chancellor Charles Reed for not doing enough to oppose cuts California lawmakers are using to close the state’s $26.6 billion budget deficit.

Gov. Jerry Brown already signed into law a $1 billion reduction to higher education, but that number could grow if taxes are not increased, as the Democratic governor wants.

The protestors marched from the school’s library quad to an administrative building to present a set of petitions. Law enforcement officials were inside, but it is unclear whether university administrators were prepared for the occupation.

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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Faculty, Protests, Students

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Maryland Approves In-State Tuition Break for Undocumented Students

Posted on April 12, 2011 by | Comments Off on Maryland Approves In-State Tuition Break for Undocumented Students

The Chronicle: Maryland Approves In-State Tuition Break for Undocumented Students

Maryland will become the 11th state to extend in-state college-tuition breaks to illegal immigrants under a measure state legislators approved late Monday, the Baltimore Sun reported. The bill will enable undocumented students who have attended Maryland high schools for at least three years, and whose families pay state taxes, to pay cheaper in-state tuition rates at community colleges. After completing 60 credit hours, students could transfer to a four-year state college, also at the in-state rate. Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to sign the measure into law on Tuesday.

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Labor Board Gives NYU Graduate Students Another Shot at Union Vote

Posted on October 28, 2010 by | Comments Off on Labor Board Gives NYU Graduate Students Another Shot at Union Vote

The Chronicle: Labor Board Gives NYU Graduate Students Another Shot at Union Vote

The National Labor Relations Board this week reversed a regional director’s decision that had stymied efforts by graduate teaching and research assistants at New York University to vote on union representation.

Monday’s 2-to-1 decision does not give the graduate assistants the green light to engage in collective bargaining, but it does say that they deserve a full hearing on their request for a union vote. The regional director had rejected that request in June without a hearing, citing a 2004 decision by the national board that halted unionization of teaching assistants at private colleges on the grounds that they were students, not workers.

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Posted in Organizing, Students, Unions

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SO YOU WANT TO GET A PHD IN THE HUMANITIES

Posted on October 27, 2010 by | Comments Off on SO YOU WANT TO GET A PHD IN THE HUMANITIES

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Posted in Faculty, Job market, Students, Working conditions

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A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation.

Posted on September 20, 2010 by | Comments Off on A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

This issue launches the Critical Education article series A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation, edited by Adam Renner and Doug Selwyn.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison, Co-Editor
E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editor
Critical Education
University of British Columbia
wayne.ross@ubc.ca

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 7 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/18

Articles
——–
A Return to Educational Apartheid?
Adam Renner, Doug Selwyn

A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

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Posted in Diversity, Faculty, K-12 issues, Publications, Students

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