libcom.org: Barbados teachers wildcat strike against pay docking
Teachers at the Alexandra School in Barbados launched a wildcat strike after bosses attempted to deduct a day’s pay for their attendance at a union event.
Amanda Lynch-Foster reported on nationnews.com that teachers, saying they were “fed up” with the behaviour of principal Jeffrey Broomes, took industrial action yesterday morning.
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Posted in International, K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Green Left Weekly: The ‘Battle of Oaxaca’ Intensifies
A five-kilometer-long “mega-march” of hundreds of thousands of protesters took place in the state of Oaxaca on Nov. 5. It demanded the resignation of the hated state governor, Ulises Ruíz Ortíz (known as URO). Only a few days earlier, on Nov. 2, there was a battle to keep control of Benito Juárez University from federal troops that occupied the city of Oaxaca, the state’s capital, on Oct. 29. These were just the latest events in a popular revolt in the southern Mexican state aimed at ousting the governor after he used savage repression to curb a teachers’ strike in July.
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Posted in International, K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Cyprus Mail: Teachers union set to call off strike
SECONDARY school teachers’ union OELMEK look set to call off the strike planned for later this month after last-minute intervention by the House Education Committee to smooth out the situation between teachers and the Education Ministry yesterday proved a success.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
The York Dispatch: City school union authorizes strike
York City School District’s 250-member support staff union is planning a strike that some officials said would shut down the city’s schools.
The union — which includes teacher and health aides, maintenance and janitorial workers, secretaries and hall monitors — took its second vote during a meeting Thursday night authorizing a strike.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
World War 4 Report: Oaxaca: Ruiz and APPO both reconsider strategy
The Oaxaca People’s Assembly (APPO) resumed their organizational congress on Saturday in Oaxaca City, while the state’s embattled governor announced the beginning of a massive Cabinet overhaul in hopes of preserving his job.
The APPO congress suffered fits and starts during Friday’s session as participants awaited the arrival of delegates and guest observers from across the country.
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Posted in International, K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Call for Session Leaders and Active Participants
hosts
March 1-4, 2007
Wayne State University
Detroit Michigan
This interactive conference will focus on the question of building a caring education community while, at the same time, building serious resistance to inequality, racism, sexism, imperialism, and war-in schools and out. This conference is designed to connect reflection and action, reason and organizing, teaching and social change. Please come prepared to both lead and participate.
We ask that you offer sessions that begin with critical questions, and prepare to lead discussions. Please understand that some workshops may be combined, depending on space limitations and attendance. We will communicate with all session leaders for consensus on combinations.
Possible Session Proposals Could Include:
Tentative Schedule:
Thursday Evening: Ground Zen, a play by Bill Boyer followed by a discussion centered on the purpose of the conference.
Friday and Saturday: Workshops during the day, followed by a brief plenary each day.
Ground Zen each evening.
Luncheon Speakers scheduled: Susan Ohanian, E. Wayne Ross, Patrick Shannon, Rich Gibson, George Schmidt
Sunday: Plenary: Organizing and proposals for action
Presenters: please email proposals to Rich Gibson at rgibson2@pipeline.com
Registration: $25 donation, or more. No one will be turned away for registration fees.
You may preregister at PayPal (below) , or email Rich Gibson at rgibson2@pipeline.com
Child care will be available. Request housing information at registration.
Exhibitors welcomed.
Email: rgibson2@pipeline.com
http://www.RougeForum.org
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Posted in CFPs
Dear Friends and Colleagues of the Center for Study of Working Class Life
I am pleased to circulate the call for papers for the 2007 annual
conference of the Working-Class Studies Association, which will be at
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. next June (instead of Youngstown
State University, where odd-number-year conferences have been held in the
past). The How Class Works – 2008 conference will again be at Stony Brook
in June 2008. I hope to see you at Macalester next year, and then again
at Stony Brook. Please also consider joining the Working-Class Studies
Association if you have not already done so.
Michael Zweig
Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life
CALL FOR PAPERS
June14-17, 2007
Class Matters:
Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture
Annual Conference of the Working-Class Studies Association
Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota
Dormitory housing available
This conference will explore working-class culture in all its forms –
activism, pop culture, the arts, storytelling, and more. Working-class
culture can be a source of unity as well as division, and it is
constructed in the workplace as well as in the realms of “leisure” and
popular culture. At this conference, we hope to explore the relationships
between “cultural workers” and their audiences, control over the means of
cultural production (publishers, music producers, universities, etc.), and
the commodification of working-class culture, among other issues. We are
eager to provide a venue in which scholars of working-class culture using
Humanities and Social Science frames and lenses can come together with
each other, and with creators of working-class culture.
How has working-class culture changed over time? Is there is a diasporic,
transnational, and/or global working-class culture? How do working-class
people use representations, organizations, and everyday life to resist the
dominant culture? How does working-class culture reflect divisions among
working-class people?
We invite proposals for presentations, panels, posters, roundtables, and
performances. Submit 1-page abstracts with a brief biographical statement
January 15, 2007 to:
Peter Rachleff
History Department
Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55105
Or by email to rachleff@macalester.edu.
For more information, contact Peter Rachleff, rachleff@macalester.edu, or
by phone at 651-696-6371.
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Posted in CFPs
IndyStar.com: Black students at IUPUI set new deadline
Black students issued a new deadline Sunday for university officials at IUPUI to answer their call to improve race relations on campus.
IUPUI black student representatives set a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline to meet their demands. In their final statement, “You Didn’t Listen,” given at a town hall forum Sunday night, they said that if the university doesn’t meet the deadline, they would call for the immediate resignation of certain administration, campus and community life staff members.
At a town hall forum Sunday night, black student leaders said the administration so far has responded inadequately to requests made 10 days ago.
Those demands — including a campus center for black students, an African-American studies program and $78,000 for black groups — must now be met by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
If the university misses the deadline, the students will call for the resignation of certain administration and campus staff members. The black student leaders would not say who those officials might be or comment about their earlier threats to sue.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Inside Higher Ed: Making Nice in Texas
What started as a nasty quarrel three years ago has blossomed into an apparently blissful relationship. The Texas State Technical College System and the Texas Faculty Association are putting the finishing touches on a dispute resolution system that is aimed at ensuring peace between professors and administrators and that will likely head off potential lawsuits.
TSTC is Texas’s only state-supported system of technical colleges and has four accredited colleges. TFA formed in 1985 to protect faculty rights (the State of Texas does not allow public employees to unionize) and has 1,500 members.
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Posted in Unions
Star Ledger: At UMDNJ, an attempt to cover up $36M fraud
The state’s medical university took in $36 million in illegal Medicare and Medicaid payments as part of a kickback scheme designed to bolster its troubled cardiac surgery program, and top school officials conspired to cover it all up, according to the school’s federal monitor.
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Posted in Administration
The Chronicle: 2 Prominent Members of Gallaudet U. Board of Trustees, Including a U.S. Senator, Quit
The acting chair of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University resigned this week, a day after Sen. John McCain also stepped down from the board. Both indicated they were disappointed by the board’s decision, just over a week earlier, to rescind the appointment of a new president in the face of determined protests by students, professors, and alumni.
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Posted in Administration
Inside Higher Ed: Still Fighting for Affirmative Action
The day after Michigan voters approved a ban on affirmative action by public colleges and universities, the president of the University of Michigan said that her institution was exploring legal challenges it might make to the referendum.
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Posted in Equity
Reuters: Students at Calif. College ban Pledge of Allegiance
Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.
The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.
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Posted in Students
Akron Beacon Journal: College probes thesis plagiarism
Ohio University plans to examine additional theses and dissertations in its investigation of possible plagiarism committed by engineering graduates.
David Koonce, an industrial engineer at the university, will pull a random sample of the 1,500 papers submitted since 1980 and then compare them with papers that have similar titles, advisers and departments.
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Posted in Academics
American-Statesman: UT students bristle at oversight proposal for publications
Since 1971, University of Texas administrators have had the last word over what is printed in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper. The paper’s editors and reporters, as well as other students who oversee student publications, have long chafed at the restriction.
Now, a yearlong effort by students to eliminate such “prior review” has instead resulted in a proposal from the University of Texas System that the students say would not only continue the practice, but would expand it to all student media, including radio, TV and electronic publications.
Houston Chronicle: UT newspaper editors requesting autonomy
A group of University of Texas at Austin student journalists want their school newspaper back.
The students say they want greater autonomy in producing The Daily Texan, the 106-year-old newspaper that publishes Monday through Friday.
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Posted in Free speech
The Boston Globe: Capella Education shares jump after IPO
Shares of Capella Education Co. leaped Friday, as the online university had its trading debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The shares rose $5.11, or 25.55 percent, to close Friday at $25.11 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Capella sold 4 million shares at an initial public offering price of $20 a share. That was slightly above the expected, per-share price range of $17.50 to $19.50 set by underwriter Credit Suisse Group. The shares had opened at $25.
Capella, which is based in Minneapolis, is an accredited university that offers all its courses online, and derives about 67 percent of its revenue from federal Title IV funding for student aid.
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Posted in Corporate University
Sacramento Bee: CSUS faculty told to outline academic cuts
With fewer part-time professors, students at California State University, Sacramento, will be cramming into larger classes next semester, staying home to take online courses, or listening to lectures on iPods.
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Posted in Academics, Contingent labor, Faculty
The Salt Lake Tribune: Educator urges mobility for degrees, proof of skills
When today’s sixth-graders graduate from college, they’ll get a plastic card instead of a diploma. It will embody aspects of a degree, transcript, résumé and recommendation letter. At least that’s the vision of Clifford Adelman, a senior analyst at the Institute for Higher Education Policy who spoke to Utah’s higher education leaders Friday. He urged them to embrace a movement toward more transparent degrees that is well under way in Europe, but not in America.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Washington Post: Saudis Again Head to U.S. Campuses
A record number of nearly 11,000 Saudis are pursuing higher education in the United States, reversing a years-long decline in students coming from the oil-rich kingdom, particularly after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
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Posted in International, Students
Globe and Mail: Universities move to hide work from U.S. eyes
Patriot Act prompts institutions to switch to Canadian server for online research
CAROLINE ALPHONSO
EDUCATION REPORTER
Concerned about the U.S. government’s prying eyes, a number of Canadian universities are changing the way their professors and students conduct online research.
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Posted in Government, International
