Tag Archives: Protests

Capilano U seizes instructor’s sculpture of president with poodle #bced #bcpoli #edstudies #censored

Capilano U faculty member George Rammell’ s caricature of the institution’s President Kris Bulcroft, “Blathering on in Krisendom”

Carlito Pablo, Georgia Straight, May 13, 2014– IT’S A WORK in progress: Capilano University president Kris Bulcroft wrapped in a U.S. flag, with a poodle, and all.

But it’s gone, and its creator, George Rammell, a CapU instructor of sculpture, wants the piece returned.

“It’s ridiculous!” Rammell told the Straight by phone today (May 12) about the seizure of his work from the university grounds.

“I mean, we live in Canada for God’s sakes,” Rammell continued. “We’re not living in China or Iran.”

In a news release, Rammell said that he discovered the unfinished sculpture titled Blathering on in Krisendom gone from CapU’s sculpture area last Wednesday (May 7).

“I immediately called security and the guard told me that orders were given by the top level of the Administration to seize it. I could hardly believe my ears. The Administration had ordered my piece removed off campus to an undisclosed location, without any consultation or prior discussion. I was shocked and not sure if this was Canada,” Rammell stated in the release.

He continued: “I called the RCMP to report the theft. The officer arrived and he said he had been talking to Administration: they had asked him if they would be liable if they destroyed the sculpture. They were making assumptions (with the aid of their lawyer), believing they owned the work because it was made on university property. They are concerned that if returned to me I’d continue to exhibit it.

“Last May President Bulcroft held a public forum where she asked everyone to forgive her violations of process and follow her into the future. She denounced my effigy as sexist, misogynist bullying. But several faculty members who teach Woman’s Studies didn’t see anything sexist about the piece whatsoever. In fact they chastised the President’s attempts to gain sympathy in such a manner.

“I started the project at the request of a faculty member and I had the financial support of my Faculty Association.

“I recently showed Blathering on in Krisendom at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art, and in a solo show in the Studio Art Gallery at Cap U, but I don’t consider the piece finished. As with much of my work it’s continuing to evolve. I now want my sculpture returned immediately so I can continue sculpting it. I have other exhibition intentions for this on-going project. I see the Administration’s illegal seizure as part of their ongoing assumption that they can ignore the basic rights of employees and ignore their responsibilities to consult. The BC Supreme Court ruled in favor of our faculty’s position that the university violated the University Act in making unilateral cuts to Programs. These art Programs carry a legacy across the country and will be impossible to replace.”

On the phone, Rammell explained that Bulcroft was brought in from the U.S. to head CapU, hence the American flag in the sculpture. He added that some of Bulcroft’s promotional materials show her with a poodle.

Brita Harrison Brooke, manager of stakeholder relations for CapU, didn’t have an immediate comment. Brooke wrote the Straight to say that the university’s vice president for finance and administration, Cindy Turner, will be speaking to Rammell.

CFP: Academic Mobbing (Special Issue of Workplace) #edstudies #criticaled #occupyed #bced #yteubc

LAST Call for Papers

Academic Mobbing
Special Issue
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Editors: Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross

Editors of Workplace are accepting manuscripts for a theme issue on Academic Mobbing.  Academic mobbing is defined by the Chronicle of Higher Education (11 June 2009) as: “a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague.” The Chronicle continues:

If rumors are circulating about the target’s supposed misdeeds, if the target is excluded from meetings or not named to committees, or if people are saying the target needs to be punished formally “to be taught a lesson,” it’s likely that mobbing is under way.

As Joan Friedenberg eloquently notes in The Anatomy of an Academic Mobbing, the toll taken is excessive.  Building on a long history of both analysis and neglect in academia, Workplace is interested in a range of scholarship on this practice, including theoretical frameworks, legal analyses, resistance narratives, reports from the trenches, and labor policy reviews.  We invite manuscripts that address, among other foci:

  • Effects of academic mobbing
  • History of academic mobbing
  • Sociology and ethnography of the practices of an academic mob
  • Social psychology of the academic mob leader or boss
  • Academic mobbing factions (facts & fictions) or short stories
  • Legal defense for academic mob victims and threats (e.g., Protectable political affiliation, race, religion)
  • Gender norms of an academic mob
  • Neo-McCarthyism and academic mobbing
  • Your story…

Contributions for Workplace should be 4000-6000 words in length and should conform to APA, Chicago, or MLA style.

FINAL Date for Papers: May 30, 2014

CFP: Educate, Agitate, Organize! Teacher Resistance Against Neoliberal Reforms (Special Issue of Workplace)

Call for Papers

Special Issue
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Guest Editors:
Mark Stern, Colgate University
Amy Brown, University of Pennsylvania
Khuram Hussain, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

I can tell you with confidence, one year later [from the Measure of Progress test boycott in Seattle schools], I know where our actions will lead: to the formation of a truly mass civil rights movement composed of parents, teachers, educational support staff, students, administrators, and community members who want to end high-stakes standardized testing and reclaim public education from corporate reformers.—Jesse Hagopian, History Teacher and Black Student Union Adviser at Garfield High School, Seattle

As many of us have documented in our scholarly work, the past five years have witnessed a full-fledged attack on public school teachers and their unions. With backing from Wall Street and venture philanthropists, the public imaginary has been saturated with images and rhetoric decrying teachers as the impediments to ‘real’ change in K-12 education. Docu-dramas like Waiting For ‘Superman,’ news stories like Steve Brill’s, “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand,” in The New York Times Magazineand high profile rhetoric like Michelle Rhee’s mantra that students, not adults, need to be “put first” in education reform, all point to this reality: teachers face an orchestrated, billion dollar assault on their professional status, their knowledge, and their abilities to facilitate dialogical spaces in classrooms. This assault has materialized and been compounded by an austerity environment that is characterized by waning federal support and a narrow corporate agenda. Tens of thousands of teachers have suffered job loss, while thousands more fear the same.

Far from being silent, teachers are putting up a fight. From the strike in Chicago, to grassroots mobilizing to wrest control of the United Federation of Teachers in New York, to public messaging campaigns in Philadelphia, from boycotts in Seattle to job action and strikes in British Columbia, teachers and their local allies are organizing, agitating and confronting school reform in the name of saving public education. In collaboration with parents, community activists, school staff, students, and administrators, teacher are naming various structures of oppression and working to reclaim the conversation and restore a sense of self-determination to their personal, professional, and civic lives.

This special issue of Workplace calls for proposals to document the resistance of teachers in the United States, Canada, and globally. Though much has been written about the plight of teachers under neoliberal draconianism, the reparative scholarship on teachers’ educating, organizing, and agitating is less abundant. This special issue is solely dedicated to mapping instances of resistance in hopes of serving as both resource and inspiration for the growing movement.

This issue will have three sections, with three different formats for scholarship/media. Examples might include:

I. Critical Research Papers (4000-6000 words)

  • Qualitative/ethnographic work documenting the process of teachers coming to critical consciousness.
  • Critical historiographies linking trajectories of political activism of teachers/unions across time and place.
  • Documenting and theorizing teacher praxis—protests, community education campaigns, critical agency in the classroom.
  • Critical examinations of how teachers, in specific locales, are drawing on and enacting critical theories of resistance (Feminist, Politics of Love/Caring/Cariño, Black Radical Traditions, Mother’s Movements, and so on).

II. Portraits of Resistance

  • Autobiographical sketches from the ground. (~2000 words)
  • Alternative/Artistic representations/Documentations of Refusal (poetry, visual art, photography, soundscapes)

III. Analysis and Synthesis of Various Media

  • Critical book, blog, art, periodical, music, movie reviews. (1500-2000 words)

400-word abstracts should be sent to Mark Stern (mstern@colgate.edu) by May 15, 2014. Please include name, affiliation, and a very brief (3-4 sentences) professional biography.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 15. Final drafts will be due October 1, 2014. Please note that having your proposal accepted does not guarantee publication. All final drafts will go through peer-review process. Authors will be notified of acceptance for publication by November 1.

Please direct all questions to Mark Stern (mstern@colgate.edu).

#CAUT begins censure of #UBC for course copyright policy #highered #bced #bcpoli #yteubc #criticaled

Faculty Association of UBC, March 20,  2014– At its meeting on March 14 & 15, the CAUT Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee considered UBC’s Policy 81 and all of the associated documentation.  Following that consideration, the committee voted unanimously to recommend to the CAUT Executive that it bring a motion to CAUT Council in early May to begin the censure process of the UBC Administration. If they approve the recommendation, the Executive would bring a motion to Council that “CAUT will censure the UBC Administration at its November 2014 Council meeting unless the University ends the policy that the University may use, revise, and allow other UBC Instructors to use and revise a faculty member’s teaching materials, unless the faculty member specifically prohibits such use.”
Read More:

#Berkeley students protest UC President Napolitano #highered #edstudies #occupyeducation #ubc #yteubc

Photo by Alejandra Gonzalez Ramirez

Sahil Chinoy and Adriann Dinolfo, Daily Californian, February 13, 2014–UC President Janet Napolitano has been protested across her tour of the UC system, and her visit to UC Berkeley proved no different as individuals from several campus coalitions coalesced in two separate demonstrations Thursday – one continuing into the night – to express their discontent.

As of 1 a.m., the demonstrations remained ongoing, although a diminished version of earlier iterations, with about 30 to 40 protesters outside the Blum Center for Developing Economies, inside of which nine students have locked themselves.

BAMN, a group that advocates for immigrant rights, began the first round of protests at 10 a.m. with a small group of about 15 people outside Sutardja Dai Hall. Three hours later, about 150 people gathered on Upper Sproul Plaza for another protest led by the Students of Color Solidarity Coalition.

Both groups expressed disapproval of Napolitano’s history of deportation as the former Secretary of Homeland Security and of her nonacademic background.

Jasmene del Aguila, a UC Berkeley freshman watching the Sproul Plaza protest, said she supported the demonstrators because she knows undocumented students attend the university, adding that these individuals should have the same opportunities as other students.

In comparison, Nic Jaber, a UC Berkeley sophomore who also observed the protest, was not convinced the SCSC had the right strategy.

“Whether or not she enforced immigration has nothing to do with her proclivity to be our UC president,” Jaber said. “She’s trying to work with us, and we just keep slapping her in the face.”

The protesters then marched through campus and blocked the entrance of the Blum Center, near where BAMN was still stationed.

Nine SCSC students entered the Blum Center about 2:40 p.m., chaining the door and locking themselves inside, according to SCSC organizer and UC Berkeley alumna Natalie Sanchez. She added that the students are risking arrest, and some are risking deportation.

The protesters have three demands to the administration: that individuals inside the building receive amnesty, that Chancellor Nicholas Dirks call for Napolitano’s resignation and that those in solidarity cancel classes Friday and “build a strike.”

Read More: Daily Californian

#Berkeley and the myth of the activist life #highered #occupyeducation #criticaled #edstudies #ubc #yteubc

Alexandra McGee, Counterpunch, February 14, 2014– On February 13th, 2014, I attended a UC Berkeley protest against the appointment of Janet Napolitano as President of the UC system.* The qualms against her appointment fall outside of my purview to describe here. This piece is much larger than Napolitano, or the protest itself. Instead, lets look at how systemic economic inequality has affected the mentality (and thereby the capability for action) of my generation.

Organized by the Associated Students of the University of California, the protest attracted upward of 500 people, purported thousands if you count onlookers and those who bore witness momentarily. With protest signs, cloth banners, megaphones and fists of solidarity, this crowd of young students had been protesting since 10 am. I started asking onlookers what their motivations were for being there and what they thought of the movement until I realized, this was no real protest.

Napolitano was in Sutardja Dai Hall. Protesters had taken the nearby Blum Center For Developing Economies. We stood, fists held high and shouting into a megaphone, all pointed in the opposite direction from our supposed target. Sutardja Dai Hall was inconveniently guarded, with five large men guarding the bottom entrance, doors locked on the second floor, three cops with shiny sunglasses glaring down at us from the top floor and two cops on bikes circling the building. News reporters stood aside, pointing their video camera into the disjointed group, many of whom were unaware of what our strategy was, or what our demands were.

Why aren’t we occupying Sutardja Dai Hall?

I began to ask those around me. The ASUC had emphasized that they were “not going to negotiate with Napolitano on the issue of her resignation.” But how would occupying a nearby building do anything at all? Why are we not engaging in constructive dialogue? “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” But how will chanting together do anything but stroke our own egos? “But this is Berkeley, radicals. All of us!” Pure ideological masturbation unless you do something provocative to cause change.

I am frustrated that Berkeley continues to perpetuate the myth of its activist lifestyle for economic gain. It sells an image of the rebel protester, the ideological martyr, to a generation of youth that cannot find their way four blocks north without GPS, never mind find their way past the bureaucratic labyrinth to create substantial change. With their tuition and the gradual privatization of education (see: millions of dollars from ecologically destructive corporations like BP), they perpetuate the inequality of wealth and even endorse human rights abusers, as they have by allowing Napolitano to be their system president.

If Mario Savio were amongst us, he would hang his head in absolute shame. Not just at the cafe on campus toting his name as a publicity stunt, but at our failure to question the status quo. To disturb the system, you don’t occupy a building which poses no strategical advantage, you don’t chant just to make yourself feel good, and you do not boast that you are creating community when really all you’re doing is attracting people who want to update their facebooks with a new “rebel” profile picture.

This frustration is also fueled by great hope that I once had in the Occupy movement. Surrounded by well-intentioned, intelligent people, I was sure that change was in our grasp, but we were outlasted in our patience, overcome by our fragmentation, and overconfident in our abilities. Now, I was ready to rush the police to occupy a space of power for those who couldn’t. To represent those who had been deported from their country because of Napolitano’s discriminatory policies. To recognize our own humanity in a space where we would not be welcome. To demand recognition and respect as a human being rather than an authorized citizen.

But doing so would require facing down strongmen of the establishment. To do so would put in jeopardy our clean police records with some nonsense charge of non-compliance. As a fellow protester said, she worried that if we actually tried to change something, she wouldn’t be able to get a job because it would show up on her record. She didn’t actually think anything would change.

Bulls eye. Compliance to capitalism fueled by fear. The threat of economic punishment if we are labeled as radical.

Read More: Counterpunch

#Berkeley protests and #occupy Napolitano #highered #edstudies

Doug Sovern, KCBS, February 13, 2014– University of California President Janet Napolitano spent Thursday meeting with students and faculty at UC Berkeley, though many were not pleased she was on campus.

A small, but noisy band of protesters shadowed Napolitano during her day of meetings on campus.

Cal graduate Justin Chiang said Napolitano’s tenure as head of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, makes her the wrong choice to lead the UC system.

We want to demand that the UC Regents, who hired Janet Napolitano, to remove her immediately, and replace her with a great educator, who can really champion public education,” he said.

Napolitano said she was too busy to respond to KCBS personally, but her spokeswoman, Dianne Klein, said she is not about to resign because of these kind of protests, and that it comes with the job.

“Berkeley is a cradle of free speech, as is the University of California in general,” Klein said. “This is part of the fabric of the university.”

Napolitano’s visit was her 10th and final stop of a UC campus listening tour that began last year, and she has been met with protesters throughout her tour of the system.

Aboriginal rights forum Dalhousie U #idlenomore #edstudies #bced #ubc #ubced #bcpoli

IDEALaw: Aboriginal Rights in the Spotlight

Canadian Civil Liberties Association–January 25, 2014–On January 24th-25th 2014 academics, practitioners, community members, and students have been gathering at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University to discuss and examine the state of Aboriginal rights in Canada. The biennial IDEALaw conference has never seen a comparable response in numbers and media interest. The line up of speakers, cultural events, and discussion focus of the conference has created a buzz in Halifax.

Organized by students, the conference attempts to address a number of pressing issues facing Aboriginals. Environmental concerns, poverty and criminal law issues, and police and institutional responses to protest are all on the bill. The conference was develped to encourage discussion and openness to new approaches, different perspectives, and engaging the public in legal and political action in response to community concerns. While the conference is ongoing, all talks thus far have addressed the chilling effects of organised and concerted rights abuses on the civil liberties and human rights of Aboriginals in Canada and abroad.

The conference opened with a fascinating and rousing talk by Sheila Watt-Cloutier on human rights. Her experience as head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and own experiences as an advocate for Inuit in Canada and overseas gave a fascinating and “on the ground” perspective on alternative ways to perceive climate change. Her commentary on and analysis of the success attached to the ICC’s Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States set the tone for continued discussion into the night. Of particular interest to most was the role of democratic and social rights and their protection in communities facing significant and overwhelming changes due to environmental impact.

Read More: CCLA

January 28 National Day of Teach-ins focused on First Nations Education Act #idlenomore #ubc #bced #bcploi #occupyeducation #edstudies

IDLE NO MORE + DEFENDERS OF THE LAND
TEACH-INS
JANUARY 28, 2014

Idle No More— As we begin a new year, we invite Idle No More groups to organize local teach-ins on January 28th based around the First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan that it represents.  We recognize that every Nation and community has their own unique stories, struggles, and practices and we hope that every teach-in is rooted in the on-the-ground realities that are the heart of the movement. When we include our local allies and supporters to attend, help, and promote local teach-ins we believe this adds strength to the bundle of arrows we continue to build through education.

As a support to teach-in organizers we are developing educational tools to use at local teach-ins that will focus on the  First Nation Education Act and the broader Termination Plan of the Canadian government.  Please feel free to use these tools, or to develop your own!  We are also hoping that each teach-in will create a quick list of local struggles or issues and that we can share these lists to help guide the Idle No More movement.

We need to support one another as we continue to fight for our lands, water, sovereignty, and our future generations.  We hope that these teach-ins help to deepen and strengthen our roots and prepare us for the work that lies ahead.

Read More: Idle No More

#IdleNoMore “Got Land? Thank An Indian” truth-telling protest Jan 28 #ubc #ubced #bced #bcpoli #criticaled

Idle No More + Defenders of the Land
Day of Action
January 28, 2014

Idle No More, For Immediate Release– Idle No More and Indigenous teen who wore “Got Land? Thank an Indian” shirt call on people everywhere to wear it as act of truth-telling protest

Tenelle Starr will appear as honorary guest at Neil Young concert in Regina on Friday

(Turtle Island/Canada ) – A 13 year old Indigenous teenager, Tenelle Starr, prevented initially from wearing a sweatshirt at her school in Balcarres near Regina that read “Got Land? Thank an Indian” is now calling, along with the Idle No More movement, for people everywhere to don the shirt as an act of truth-telling and protest.

Now and up to a January 28 Day of Action, Tenelle and Idle No More and Defenders of the Land are encouraging people across the country to make the shirt and wear them to their schools, workplaces, or neighbourhoods to spark conversations about Canada’s true record on Indigenous rights. They have created a website (http://www.idlenomore.ca/got_land) where people can get stencils to make a shirt, to buy it, and upload photos of themselves wearing it.

“Everyone can wear the shirt.  I think of it as a teaching tool that can help bring awareness to our treaty and land rights. The truth about Canada’s bad treatment of First Nations may make some people uncomfortable, but understanding it is the only way Canada will change and start respecting First Nations,” says Tenelle, an Idle No More supporter who has participated in many Idle No More rallies with her mother.

Tenelle will also be appearing as an honorary guest at the Neil Young Honour The Treaties concert in Regina on Friday night. Chief Allan Adam and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation have gifted her and her mom with tickets to pay respect to her courage.

Since the media started reporting on Tenelle’s acts, she has has been attacked on her facebook page by an online hate group that has threatened her safety, forcing her to disable her facebook account.

The January 28 National Day of Action is also a day of Teach-ins to raise awareness about the federal Harper government’s attack on native education through the First Nations Education Act and his continuing agenda to “terminate” or abolish Indigenous peoples rights, sovereignty and status as Nations and dispossess them of their lands and resources.

Read More: Idle No More

Oka joins national protests against oil sands pipeline #idlenomore #ubced #yteubc #davidsuzuki

Photo by Arij Riahi, July 12, 2013

Catherine Solyom, Montreal Gazette, November 16, 2013– About 130 communities across Canada held simultaneous protests Saturday against the expansion of oilsands production and of pipelines to bring the oil east from Alberta, including a protest in Oka, where Kanesatake residents want to stop the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9B pipeline.

Three buses left Montreal on Saturday morning to take part in the protest, where members of the Idle No More movement, representatives of Québec solidaire and prominent activist Ellen Gabriel addressed the crowd of a few hundred people.

Kanesatake Mohawks are opposed to the expansion of oilsands production in Alberta to the detriment of First Nations communities there, and to the reversal of the flow of Enbridge’s 9B pipeline through Mohawk territory.

The pipeline carries oil west, from Montreal to Westover, Ont., but Enbridge has applied to the National Energy Board to be allowed to ship oil from Western Canada to Montreal, where it would be processed in east-end refineries.

The NEB held public hearings on the project in Montreal and Toronto last month. A decision from the board is expected by January.

But after a year of demands by several Quebec municipalities, including the city of Montreal, and environmental groups for Quebec to hold its own hearings into the pipeline project, the Quebec government announced this week a parliamentary committee will hold hearings from Nov. 26 to Dec. 5, with a report to be submitted to the National Assembly by Dec. 6.

Opponents of the project, however, including the David Suzuki Foundation, the Association québecoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique and Équiterre, are not satisfied. They said only the government will be able to ask questions of Enbridge, the hearings are to be held only in Quebec City and the issue of greenhouse-gas emissions from oilsands production does not appear to be among issues that will be discussed.

In Oka on Saturday, where banners compared Enbridge to the Montreal & Maine Railway, which had a deadly train crash in Lac Mégantic, Québec solidaire president Andrés Fontecilla told the crowd they want the parliamentary commission to be given a wider mandate to look into all the potential environmental consequences of the project.

“What a paradox to see a minister for the environment set aside questions related to oil spills and greenhouse-gas emissions,” Fontecilla said, adding between 1999 and 2010, Enbridge has been responsible for 804 spills that sent 25.7 million litres of oil into the environment. “These consultations won’t expose the whole truth to the Mohawk community of Kanesatake nor to the whole population. We expect something different from a sovereignist Parti Québécois government than to act as an accomplice to the oil industry and the Harper government.”

The “Defend Our Climate” protests, which took place in communities from Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Labrador to Tofino, B.C., were intended to show a wall of opposition from coast to coast against the continuing expansion of the oil industry to the detriment of future generations, said Jean Léger of the Coalition vigilance oléoduc (COVO).

“We, our children and our grandchildren will not sit idly by while the oil industry dictates the level and growth rate of greenhouse-gas emissions in this country,” Léger said.

Read More: Montreal Gazette

Decolonizing initiatives to accompany police presence at #UBC #yteubc #idlenomore #bced #occupyeducation

Wei Laii, The Ubyssey, November 6, 2013– As a student who had studied at UBC, I am very displeased with the lack of new educational initiatives in response to the six reported cases of sexual assault against young women on the UBC campus.

I do not need armed officers with a saviour complex to harass me about how I can make their jobs easier and become more grateful by policing myself. I resist slut profiling, racial profiling and all other tactics informed by colonial oppression.

Granted, not all officers have been resistant to practicing anti-oppressive solidarity and responsibility. However, we need to look to recent news and examine our police force as an institution with an organizational culture of colonial oppressive values — including but not limited to gender policing, systemic sexual assault against indigenous women and the colonial construction of their bodies such acts require, and insidious systemic misogyny within the RCMP.

It’s important to acknowledge that we need a lot more than increased arrests, criminalization and demonization of perpetrators of violence. An increased police presence alone does not ensure students’ feelings and realities of safety, physical, emotional and cultural. At best, police presence is a bandage solution that makes some students feel safer, others less safe and retraumatized, and it may deter public acts of physical violence.

In our society, systems of oppression include but are not limited to white settler colonialism, ableism, Eurocentricism, heterosexism, cissexism and hegemonic masculinities.

In the cases of UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan, the operation of some of these systems on both campuses have been documented in “Implementing Inclusion,” a report released by UBC in May 2013. The report presents “the substance of concerns voiced to [UBC] during the consultation process that pertain to the lived experiences of students, alumni, staff and faculty at both campuses” and includes concerns about race and ethnicity, gender and transgender and disability. If not to become a place of advocacy in the world, UBC must at least become a place of good mind, by dealing with oppression in its own backyard where students are suffering and ill.

Read More: The Ubyssey and Tumblr

UBC Sauder admin should step up #ubcsauderschool #mba #bcpoli #bced #ubc #yteubc

Ubyssey Staff, The Ubyssey, November 6, 2013– Sauder School of Business dean Robert Helsley said at a press conference on Monday that he was still hopeful his students would fund the remaining $200,000 of the $250,000 commitment he coerced from the CUS leadership and told the the media about on Sept. 18 — before anyone had a chance to vote on whether to put the quarter of a million dollars toward unclear goals.

Since students just voted down the funding by a margin of three to one, this seems unlikely. And it’s understandable why they rejected the referendum: it’s a vague commitment to a vague and unnecessary position that was conceived only to placate the local and national media who pounced on Sauder after The Ubyssey broke the CUS FROSH rape cheer story.

This crude public relations stunt has failed. Stop trying to make fetch happen, Robert.

Anything Sauder does in response to the chant and the cultural problems it points to should be a well thought out and meaningful contribution to changing the atmosphere around sexual violence on campus and in the business school. The proposed curriculum changes Helsley has announced will require followup, but they seem like a good start.

Sauder also said they will bridge the gap in funding between what the CUS can pledge over their objection of their members — $50,000 this year, $100,000 over the next two years if they choose — and how much it would cost to hire a new counsellor, or whatever the money was planned to go toward. We’ll see.

“We’re looking for some leadership,” Helsley told the media.

Us too. Perhaps it’s time to look in the mirror, Bob.

Read More: The Ubyssey

An accountability cheer for UBC #ubcsauderschool #mba #bcpoli #bced #ubc #yteubc

The Ubyssey, November 6, 2013

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

A is for we like Accountability!
D is for it will be Deferred!
M is for the Money that runs the show!
I is always for I point the other way when the heat is on!

All together now!

UBC President Stephen Toope and Sauder School of Business dean Robert Helsley, how accountable is it to let two student executives of the Commerce Undergraduate Society (CUS) take the fall for the Sauder rape cheer?

At Saint Mary’s University, where a similar cheer took place, Student Union president Jared Perry said, “I tender my resignation.”

At UBC, Enzo Woo and Gillian Ong, president and VP engagement of the CUS respectively, resigned.

All together now: A.D.M.I.N.!

A is for we like Accountability!
D is for it will be Deferred!

A month and a rushed fact-finding report later, the administration at UBC remains entrenched solely in damage control. Curiously, the words “administration” and “administrator” do not appear in the fact-finding report [“student/s” appears 46 times].

Protect the brand! Especially now. Especially for commerce. No resignations, no accountability.

However, amidst the smoking guns and smoking pipes of politics back east, UBC’s rape chant is still making headlines.

On Oct. 31, the CUS rejected a referendum to approve a $200,000 allocation for student counselling and education on sexual abuse and violence.

Still talking but not walking, Helsley issued yet another statement that he was predictably “deeply disappointed.” Why? Maybe because it is time for Helsley to walk and for Toope to walk the talk.

From all optics, it is the students who are taking care of business — resigning, reflecting, self-governing, voting and regrouping. Students have realized that lines were crossed and are dealing with it. Given the rejection of the referendum, are the students simply saying they are dealing with their own behaviour?

Administrators, figure out what your role is for oversight of students in the 21st century. Enough of remaining “deeply disappointed” that students are not assuming your accountability.

There is an apparent culture of entitlement within Commerce. That may be why neither the president’s office nor the Sauder dean’s office have tendered resignations, cut salaries or revoked budget lines. We dare not conclude that atrocious chants originate or thrive within these cultures, yet one may draw conclusions that a culture of entitlement hurts accountability at the top in times like these.

This entitlement is apparent when faculty contracts are negotiated, with Sauder’s breakaway faculty association independently bargaining for bigger pieces of the pie for themselves; when the Sauder chief is appointed to oversee the University’s budget; and when its bloated administrative lines are sacred.

Yet to this moment in the throes of the rape chant controversy, not a single Commerce administrator has resigned, and the President has pulled not a single line.

Potentia ad Populum,

Stephen Petrina, professor

Read More: The Ubyssey

Add women to Canadian bank notes

We just signed the petition “Bank of Canada: Add women from Canadian history to Canadian bank notes” on Change.org. Will you please sign it too? Here’s the link:

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/bank-of-canada-add-women-from-canadian-history-to-canadian-bank-notes?share_id=MkLEXstYzR&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

Thank-you.

#IdleNoMore second wave planned for winter #occupyeducation

Charles Hamilton, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, October 13, 2013– Supporters of Idle No More say the movement is stronger than ever, even though it has largely disappeared from the media spotlight.

“Idle No More is not dead. It never was,” said Max FineDay, president of the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union.

“Just because you don’t see flash mobs in the middle of the street or in malls doesn’t mean the First Nations community isn’t working toward nation building, revitalizing language and culture, and all these things Idle No More stands for.”

FineDay was one of about 200 supporters who showed up Oct. 7 for a round dance on the university campus, which was organized via social media. The Idle No More movement spread to communities across Canada last winter, as aboriginal groups protested the federal government’s omnibus Bill C-45, which they say infringed on their sovereignty and relaxed important environmental protections. It passed, but organizers at the round dance said the movement is bigger than any one bill.

There are still bills going through Parliament that affect indigenous sovereignty and affect the lands and the water and that will affect all of us

“There are still bills going through Parliament that affect indigenous sovereignty and affect the lands and the water and that will affect all of us,” Sylvia McAdam, one of the four women who founded Idle No More, told the crowd after the dance.

The Saskatoon event was one of more than 50 actions that took place across the country and in the United States to mark the 250th anniversary of King George III’s Royal Proclamation, which set out policy for the Crown’s relationship with aboriginal people in North America.

The 1763 proclamation set rules for European settlement in North America, recognized First Nations’ land rights and laid the groundwork for the treaty process. Even though the Royal Proclamation was of special significance for aboriginal peoples living on the land that would become Canada, supporters and organizers say Idle No More now has global reach.

“Over the summer, the movement gained momentum on a global level,” said Alex Wilson, an Idle No More organizer and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

“I think one of the strengths of the movement is that each community can look at those global issues and can take action in their own way.”

Read More: Saskatoon StarPhoenix

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT : : UBC RALLY AND MARCH SPEAK OUT #ubc #bcpoli #bced #education #yteubc

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT
UBC RALLY AND MARCH SPEAK OUT
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2013
5 PM
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Unceded Coast Salish Territories

We will march to specific locations on campus, briefly state how the location relates to persisting rape culture on campus (with reference to its colonial history), and have an ongoing open mic for people to speak about their experiences. We march to heal, resist, and speak out (side note: if you have knowledge about the histories of these locations or would want to speak to them please contact us, we need your help here).

If you are unsure of speaking at the march/rally about your experiences with rape culture at UBC, PLEASE understand that you will be supported and heard. You will not be standing alone at any point, this march/rally is for those of you who are constantly silenced and harmed at this school. Take Back the Night is for you to reclaim voice in spaces that keep trying to suppress it, spaces keeping you unsafe.

If you want to speak at the march/rally, please message us or send us an email ubctakebackthenight@gmail.com. This is by no means necessary if you choose to speak at the march, it just helps us a lot for planning and time purposes

This TBTN event places great emphasis on history—both personal and societal. The march/rally will be a highly emotional and potentially triggering event; we will have crisis relief support for those who need it.

*very* rough schedule based on suggested locations (still working on security and accessibility):
5:00 Museum of Anthropology, Opening
5:40 Place Vanier Residence
6:10 Henry Angus Building (Sauder)
6:50 Fraternity Village
7:15 RCMP Campus Headquarters
7:40 Thunderbird Sports Centre
8:00 Engineering
8:25 Allard Hall (Law Building), Closing
8:30 Debriefing Space and Discussion, SUB 212, for female and woman identified people

UBC, CAMPUS SECURITY, AND THE RCMP: STOP BLAMING THE VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT!

Read More: Take Back the Night Rally at UBC in Protest of Six Recent Sexual Assaults on Vancouver Campus

The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students: new issue of Workplace #occupyeducation

The Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES) is extremely pleased to announce the launch of Workplace Issue #22, “The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students” (Guest Editors Bradley J. Porfilio, Julie A. Gorlewski & Shelley Pineo-Jensen).

 The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students

Articles:

  • The New Academic Labor Market and Graduate Students: Introduction to the Special Issue (Brad Porfilio, Julie Gorlewski, Shelley Pineo-Jensen)
  • Dismissing Academic Surplus: How Discursive Support for the Neoliberal Self Silences New Faculty (Julie Gorlewski)
  • Academia and the American Worker: Right to Work in an Era of Disaster Capitalism? (Paul Thomas)
  • Survival Guide Advice and the Spirit of Academic Entrepreneurship: Why Graduate Students Will Never Just Take Your Word for It (Paul Cook)
  • Standing Against Future Contingency: Activist Mentoring in Composition Studies (Casie Fedukovich)
  • From the New Deal to the Raw Deal: 21st Century Poetics and Academic Labor (Virginia Konchan)
  • How to Survive a Graduate Career (Roger Whitson)
  • In Every Way I’m Hustlin’: The Post-Graduate School Intersectional Experiences of Activist-Oriented Adjunct and Independent Scholars (Naomi Reed, Amy Brown)
  • Ivory Tower Graduates in the Red: The Role of Debt in Higher Education (Nicholas Hartlep, Lucille T. Eckrich)
  • Lines of Flight: the New Ph.D. as Migrant (Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim)

The scope and depth of scholarship within this Special Issue has direct and immediate relevance for graduate students and new and senior scholars alike. We encourage you to review the Table of Contents and articles of interest.

Our blogs and links to our Facebook timelines and Twitter stream can be found at https://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/ and https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/

 

Thank you for your ongoing support of Workplace,

Sandra Mathison, Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Directors
Institute for Critical Education Studies
Critical Education

Quebec intellectuals denounce Charter of Values

CTV Montreal, September 6, 2013– A group of 91 Quebec thinkers – mostly francophone academics – have signed a letter denouncing the PQ’s charter of values that is expected to be debated at the National Assembly as soon as next week.

Although the exact details of the soon-to-be proposed legislation remain unknown, the group is clear in its rejection of the project, as evidenced in its 1,000 word manifesto entitled “Our values exclude exclusion.”

The letter begins emphatically: “We are against any proposed Charter of Quebec Values. We share values such as equality between men and women and the secular nature of the state and public institutions.

The signatories include McGill academics Abby Lippman and Ethel Groffier, writer Norman Nawrocki and activist Will Prosper.

The letter defends what it calls “the rejection of racism,” and calls the bill a “repressive and divisive project.”

Read more: CTV Montreal

What Contingent Faculty Can Learn From Fast-Food Workers #bced #yteubc

Brian Haman, Counterpunch, August 30, 2013 — It has become a truism in American higher education: seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by contingent faculty1, most of whom lack health insurance,2carry onerous student debt,3 receive poverty-level compensation, and often rely on public assistance such as food stamps in order to make ends meet.4 This percentage translates into more than 1.3 million highly-educated, qualified, and competent, but poorly-paid, undervalued, and underappreciated American workers. Conversely, administrative costs at colleges have soared in recent years. The academic managerial class (provosts, vice and associate vice provosts, deans, presidents, vice presidents, etc.) routinely earn six-figure salaries, often with generous perks including vacation homes.5

According to U.S. Education Department data, “U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security”.6 Most new hires on American campuses never even set foot in the classroom simply because they are not teachers but administrators.7 Furthermore, the cost of a college degree in the U.S. has increased by 1,120 percent since 1978.8 The overwhelming majority of the academic labor force (to say nothing of students, who voluntarily submit to indentured servitude in the form of student debt) suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.

We find a similar dynamic in other segments of the American labor force, especially in the fast-food industry. Fast-food workers endure low wages (and indeed wage stagnation), few if any benefits, and a scarcity of full-time contracts.9 The marginalized and contingent workforce at places such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and KFC share similar concerns and face similar challenges such as starvation wages, reliance on government assistance, and job insecurity that academic workers endure at some of our nation’s leading universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Michigan.10 However, unlike the academy, the difference between CEO compensation and fast-food workers’ pay is truly breathtaking. David C. Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, which includes chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut, received a total annual compensation of $29.67 million in 2012.11

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Last year, McDonald’s gave [Dan] Thompson a compensation package worth $13.8 million, or more than 558 times what McDonald’s expects employees to make — from two jobs”.12 The national minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25 per hour and the top five largest employers (McDonald’s is among them) pay its workers at or near the minimum wage. We may reiterate the conclusion of the previous paragraph with one minor revision: The overwhelming majority of the fast-food labor force suffers disproportionately due to enormous concentrations of wealth in the hands of a small and privileged elite.

When faced with such systemic and structural inequalities, how have fast-food workers responded? The answer is quite instructive. They have staged local protests and walkouts in cities across the country and are planning a national walkout in order to fight for a higher minimum wage. As Professor Anne Kalleberg has noted, however, the protests are not union-sponsored but socially organized.13 Fast-food workers, just like their academic counterparts, often struggle to unionize due, at times, to explicit efforts by their employers to prevent them from doing so. Nevertheless, despite such grim circumstances, fast-food workers have pushed their plight quite successfully into the national consciousness just as Occupy movements have done.

Their campaign, entitled “Fast Food Forward”, articulates their purpose with self-assured clarity: “Fast Food Forward joins the momentum of the Black Friday strikes and other low-wage worker struggles to build community engagement, hold corporations and their CEOs accountable, and to raise wages so that all Americans can prosper”.14 Despite its origins in New York City, the movement is gaining momentum; many are now calling for a nationwide strike to take place on 29 August and even President Obama has addressed the issue.

How is all of this relevant for the contingent academic workforce? Well, for one thing, there is strength in numbers. Collective action is an especially effective instrument both to challenge and redress structural inequalities. If, as the aforementioned statistics indicate, seventy-five percent of undergraduate courses at U.S. colleges and universities are taught by adjuncts, then a walkout would bring the academy to a grinding halt. If fast-food workers with fewer career opportunities, less educational attainment, more grueling working conditions (e.g. fast-paced environments, high-temperature workplaces, etc.), and far more to lose can risk their only source of income for themselves and their families for the sake of the collective good, then what is preventing adjuncts from doing the same? The short answer is simple: nothing.

Alas, many adjuncts enable and perpetuate the “system” through their deferential subservience simply by participating in it (recent unionization efforts at Georgetown and elsewhere duly noted). As universities and departments downsize and the numbers of Ph.D. graduates outpace available jobs, many adjuncts accept grossly underpaid positions with long working hours and virtually no benefits with the expectation that a foot in the door will somehow lead to the promised land of a tenure-track position. Supply and demand dictates otherwise and the vast battalions of well-paid academic administrators are more than happy to continue to exploit such naïve and misguided expectations in the name of efficiency.

Surely, too, graduate programs inculcate (and indeed indoctrinate) students in the ways of the academy: publish or perish and do not rock the proverbial boat. On the one hand, academics are expected to challenge scholarly orthodoxies in their respective fields through creative, innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship. And yet in other aspects of their lives, namely those that deal with the contractual conditions under which they labor, they must conform and remain obedient in order to secure employment. It becomes an insidious and corrosive form of selection in which independent thought is filtered out of a system that was designed to protect it. Contradictions become self-evident: the imposition of an authorial canon in the humanities is anathema, whereas wage slavery becomes institutionalized.

Read more: Counterpunch