Student Activism

Latest SDS Newsletter is Out

The summer is an excellent time to write a
Disorientation Guide (our archive).

Since the Sixties, possibly starting at Berkeley, student activists have been publishing Disorientation Guides - generally in the fall - to let incoming students know how they can get involved in movements for progressive social change at their school.

You can distribute the guides to every new student, or in smaller numbers.

As the school years winds down for most students, now is an opportune time to think BIG.

You should consider writing a history of student activism at your school!

Ten years after I worked on this campaign, the group I started is trying once again to include "sexual orientation" in the University of Notre Dame's non-discrimination clause.

They're off to an excellent start!

http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper660/news/2008/04/30/News/Psa-To.Submit.Petition.To.Office.Of.The.President-3357806.shtml

Students from the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) will deliver a petition to the Office of the President Wednesday to add sexual orientation to Notre Dame's Non-Discrimination, PSA member Mike McCann said.

Students for a Democratic Society put out their first News Bulletin. This is a good sign.

10 weeks after its summer conference, SDS still hasn't approved an organizational structure for itself, nor does it have any people officially filling positions. Though apparently this doesn't seem to be a problem for most of its members - as group and member levels are, I'm guessing, likely very high =)

Two people recently released a paper on the

Social and Political Views of American Professors which shows a strong liberal bias (and one that has probably existed since the early seventies), particularly in the social sciences. It is worth reading (or at least skimming).

Unfortunately, while they do a lot of cross-tabulations, they do not do any linear regression models that would allow one to get a multi-variable analysis of what is going on (perhaps they have plans to do that later - as this is only a "working paper").

The Campus Climate Challenge nicely released a copy of their survey results providing an insightful look at who is active in the student climate change movement.

The results show the lack of diversity that is typical of the student environmental movement (and to a lesser extent of other student movements). Particularly worrisome is the degree of race and class stratification.

Geographical Diversity
Students are from liberal states - like the northeast, and less so from southern states. For instance, Texas has about 7% of the combined US/Canada but only 0.6% of respondents. Florida has 5.4% of the US/Canada population, but only 2.4% of respondents.

This is an old link, but I just saw it.

Counter Cartographies Collective UNC 2006 Disorientation Guide

Ever since the spring of 1999, I've been interested the tactic of a student sit-in, and I wrote my thesis on this topic.

Now you can see videos of them: YouTube Sit-in Videos

The new SDS is in the news with articles in

The Nation

and

Left Turn

The Nation claims that SDS has over 100 chapters. Left Turn says 250. In fact I'd guess that SDS has between 15 and 50 chapters (by which I mean chapters with regular meetings). This number is particularly important for SDS as the organization is already built upon historically based hype - so being grounded in reality is good.