Student Activism

This is amazing news. The 4 to 5 Movement (a project of the Progressive Student Alliance) did a great job and I think they mobilized more support than ever before.

Two articles:
A big step

President Jenkins interview

This is a twitter based map on the daily demonstrations in Montreal by the Quebec Student Movement. They are getting their exercise! So far 9 miles tonight.

The Quebec Student General Strike is now in its 13th week as students oppose proposed dramatic increases in tuition. Quebec students have the lowest tuition in Canada and also have the most active and radical student movement. Today the conservative Quebec government just announced that it was closing the colleges and universities on strike until August as negotiations with the students were unsuccessful.

You can follow the demonstrations in Montreal on
CUTV on LiveStream

I founded the Notre Dame Progressive Student Alliance in 1998.

For the past twenty-five years the Notre Dame community has campaigned for non-discrimination for LGBTQ students, faculty and staff every two years. We have petitioned, won every single student and faculty government vote, got national media, rallied, worn t-shirts, hunger struck and yet we have never won.

I think the administration no longer seriously considers the issue. (They did consider it in 1995-1997 - when they had a taskforce on the nondiscrimination clause whose conclusion they rejected.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement has gone to Occupy Everywhere with occupation projects at possibly 300 locations. And now there is a movement to get students involved with Occupy Colleges. 75+ schools had a walkout today (Oct 5th) and it will get larger. I predict tent cities!

Years ago for several months, I tried to serve as the regional coordinator for the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) for Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. I contacted a bunch of people and groups, but the regional network never amounted to that much. Since then, I've seen SEAC (up until several years ago) spend a large amount of time trying to recruit regional coordinators for the entire US and build regional (or state) networks. We used to have a big map of the United States in our office with our 17 regions outlined and stick pins in it for groups and coordinators.

I think there has been a dramatic increase in the popularity of Disorientation Guides.

These date back to the Sixties, when activists started handing out an alternative guide to the university and community to counter the propaganda of the administration (and the regular student manual).

They continued to be popular in the 80s and 90s due to the efforts of the Progressive Student Network and later the Movement for Democracy and Education.

I think Students for a Free Culture is about as new of a new student movement as you can get!

I'm stealing the term from "new social movement" - which really dates back to the seventies so I added a second "new" to it.

The open source movement has been around for a relatively long time, however it looks like it will reach into mainstream culture by transforming itself into a Transparency movement that addresses the need to open up our culture and institutions of power, while maintaining our right to privacy.

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.

Yesterday, the Notre Dame president rejected the goals of the Campaign for Human Dignity: inclusion of sexual orientation in the non-discrimination clause, and the recognition of the LGBT student group.

There's a nice picture.

http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper660/news/2009/03/31/News/No.Changes.Made.To.Discrimination.Clause-3688938.shtml