November 28: A Tale of Two Universities

[Earth_First]

Last week a massive General Assembly on the UC Davis campus called a student strike for today, November 28, on campuses across California. The strike was intended to call attention to police violence in UC, and to highlight student demonstrations against today’s meeting of the University of California Board of Regents.

The UC Regents were supposed to meet earlier this month at the system’s out-of-the-way Mission Bay campus, but that meeting was cancelled in the face of planned student demonstrations. Today’s rescheduled meeting will take place by teleconference, with regents scattered across the state. UC Davis is one of the meeting’s four physical locations, but as of the weekend only the board’s two student members (one of them non-voting) planned to be present at what has become the new center of resistance to the university’s capricious regulations and reprehensible institutional violence.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York are shutting down an entire campus building — a huge building — so that they can meet inside. Classes are being cancelled, staff are being placed on leave, a street is being prepared for barricading, all so the CUNY trustees can hold a regularly scheduled meeting.

When the governing bodies of two of the country’s greatest institutions of higher education are literally, physically walling themselves off from the students of those universities, something has gone deeply deeply wrong.

http://studentactivism.net/2011/11/28/tale-of-two-universitie/

[unhappycamper]

1. Picked this up on alternet today:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153229/inside_the_student_movement%3A_undeterred_by_crackdown%2C_activists_around_the_country_gear_up_for_bigger_actions_/?page=entire

[Earth_First]

3. Thanks for that...

Unbelievable.

Not only from the standpoint of the ever-increasing year-over-year costs to tuition, yet also the fact that they want health-insurance cuts to faculty, and millions more in security budget increases...

Is this effort to create a new brand of security guards into law enforcement agencies, and law enforcement agencies into highly militarized units part of a larger closed-door plan against the civilian insurrection against the powerful and elite?

It's absolutely scary what's going on in our country right now.

[rurallib]

2. This seems to be the university version of trickle down economics

Universities are supposed to be in existence as places of learning for students - who in trickle-down would be the customer.
As the customer, the student should have some say in how their supplier services them.
However, it looks like supplier sets the rule and the customer must abide or go elsewhere.

[bbgrunt]

4. calling students "the customer" of higher education validates

the business model of education. There are many "customers" of higher ed. including businesses, parents, and communities. Those who teach in these institutions are expected to maintain some level of standards. If students are "customers" then standards disappear. Might as well just sell degrees to the highest bidders.

[daleanime]

5. Insanity....

:banghead:

[qb]

6. Shutting down a University because the trustees are afraid of the students?

We should thank the trustees (& the UC regents) for generating more interest in the Occupy movement.