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Student Activism

Students Stage Walkout To Support School’s First Black Principal

September 13, 2021 Elizabeth Campbell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. , , ,
Colleyville - Over 100 students walked out of their Friday morning classes at Colleyville Heritage High School to show their support of James Whitfield, the high school’s first Black principal who was placed on paid administrative leave last month. They want answers from school administrators as to why Whitfield is on leave. Students carried signs and wrote “We stand with Dr. Whitfield” in chalk on the sidewalks at the high school. They also marched around the school chanting, “Dr. Whitfield’s here to stay.” Sunehra Chowdhury, a senior at Colleyville Heritage who helped organize the walkout, said she and other students are not backing down or giving up on supporting Whitfield. She said the school board has contributed to the criticism and hostility toward Whitfield and his family.

At Schools Named For Robert E. Lee, Students Led The Way Toward Change

July 15, 2021 Coshandra Dillard, Learning For Justice. , , ,
Gertrude “Trude” Lamb, 16, describes herself as a shy person. She never wanted to be the center of attention. But, in the summer of 2020, when Trude became the face of a movement to rename Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler, Texas, she was suddenly in a spotlight she’d never imagined. A friend nudged her to join a local campaign and send a letter to the school board, but she wasn’t sure why. Trude, who emigrated from Ghana in 2014, wasn’t familiar with Lee or anything related to the Confederacy. So, she began to research. “At school, they usually just teach the good part about somebody,” she says. “They don’t teach the bad part.” A star athlete on her school’s varsity cross-country team, she’d penned a letter to school board members stating she’d no longer wear a jersey that bore the name of an enslaver.

Oxford University Has Pledged To Divest From Fossil Fuels

April 25, 2021 Brigitte Wear, DeSmog International. , , ,
There are signs Oxford University is slowly “getting it” when it comes to climate change. Last year, it committed to selling its multimillion-pound investments in oil and gas companies, after years of student campaigning, and more recently it launched an ambitious Sustainability Strategy. But a 12-month-long investigation we’ve just published shows how much deeper the ties between the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the industry run.  We knew departments in our university took money from fossil fuel companies, but we were shocked by the sheer scale: since 2015, Oxford has received over £8.2 million in research grants and £3.7 million in donations from the sector. And numerous academics hold positions within the industry at the same time as teaching and conducting research at the university.

Ohio Students Sit-in To Demand University Cut Ties With Police

April 22, 2021 Graeme Massie, The Independent. , , ,
Students at Ohio State staged a sit-in protest and demanded that the university cut ties with Columbus Police in the wake of the killing of Ma’Khia Bryant. The protest took place one day after a police officer shot and killed the 16-year-old girl in the city, just as the verdict in the George Floyd trial was reached. Students staged their Wednesday protest in the Ohio Union before taking to the streets to march. Some carried signs with the victim’s name, along with phrases like “say her name”, while another student had a sign that said, “Being Black shouldn’t be a death sentence.” “Ohio State supports the right of our students, faculty and staff to peacefully express their views and to speak out about issues that are important to them,” the university said in a statement.

College Athletes Demand NCAA Pull Championships From States With Anti-Trans Sports Legislation

March 11, 2021 Julie Kliegman, SI.com. , , ,
Nearly 550 collegiate athletes from across the nation signed onto a letter sent to the NCAA on Wednesday demanding that the association stop holding championships and events in states that have passed or are considering passing laws that effectively ban transgender women and girls—and, in at least one case, trans boys and men—from participating in youth and college sports aligned with their gender identity. Idaho passed such a bill last year, while ones in Mississippi and South Dakota are awaiting governors’ signatures. Similar laws in other states are expected to follow. “We, the undersigned NCAA student-athletes, are extremely frustrated and disappointed by the lack of action taken by the NCAA to recognize the dangers of hosting events in states that create a hostile environment for student-athletes,” the letter opened. Addressing NCAA President Mark Emmert and the NCAA Board of Governors, it continued...

College Students Hold Statewide Day Of Action To Stop Line 3

March 5, 2021 Priscilla Trinh, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Minnesota - Today, hundreds of Minnesota college and university students are staging demonstrations on their campuses to raise awareness of the Line 3 pipeline, and to call on their institutions to divest from fossil fuel industry projects. Students from the University of Minnesota Morris, UMD, UMN Twin Cities, Carleton College, St Olaf College, The College of St Benedict’s, Gustavus Adolphus College, and Macalester College have been collaborating to plan this day of action for months.  Emily Wittkop, a junior at the University of Minnesota Morris said, “I'm fighting Line 3 for several reasons - the danger to our environment, the violation of Minnesota's treaties, the impact of oil on the world's political climate. I'm also pushing the University of Minnesota to begin fossil fuel divestment so that the financial investments of UMN matches their stated mission and the will of the student population that pay so much for their education here.”

Students At Fordham University Fight For Their Right To Support Palestine

February 27, 2021 Alex Kane, +972 Magazine. , , ,
Veer Shetty wants what hundreds of other college students have: a school club that speaks out for Palestine on campus.  Shetty grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a close Palestinian friend who told him horror stories about the Israeli occupation. So when he started school at New York’s Fordham University, he was determined to get active in the struggle for Palestinian rights. For the past year and a half, the college senior has had the chance to do so. As vice-president of Fordham’s Students for Justice in Palestine club, Shetty has helped to organize various Palestine-related cultural and political events for his fellow students. “Having a budget and being a sanctioned club, we did what we wanted to do: showing movies and having awesome speakers come in and further the discourse on the Israel-Palestine issue on campus,” Shetty told +972.

Study Finds Increase In Anti-Zionism At US Universities

February 12, 2021 Middle East Monitor. , , ,
The past few years have witnessed a significant rise in anti-Zionism across colleges and universities in the United States, a new study has found. Professor of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, Miriam Elman, said in a study published by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University that a majority of universities in the United States have turned into incubators of anti-Zionism, which contributes to creating a negative atmosphere against Jews on campus. Elman claimed that university and college officials respond to this by viewing it as political expression that does not justify any interference from authorities.

Fences, Protesters Return To Berkeley’s People’s Park

February 11, 2021 Don Ford, CBS SF Bay Area. , , ,
Fences and protesters on Monday again returned to People’s Park, a famous site of resistance on the UC Berkeley campus, as the campus again mulls possible student housing on the site. It was just after 5 a.m. when the fences started going up and dozens of protesters mobilized in response. The University of California, which owns the land, wants to build student housing, while protesters are opposed to the plan. A small section of the park was fenced off to allow soil samples before construction. That means several homeless campers had to be moved. “So, they took down a few tents. Students had heard about it and came out and, about 30 or 40 people, and they were ready to mobilize,” said Aidan Hill, a protester and former Berkeley mayoral candidate.

Students Continue To Pressure Northwestern University To Abolish The Police

January 31, 2021 Binah Schatsky, Daily Northwestern. , , ,
After several months of continuous pressure on Northwestern administration to abolish University Police and divest from policing and other militarized entities, NUCNC is continuing their work into the new quarter. Since their campaign of more than 30 days of consecutive actions, the group has not held any mass protests or demonstrations, but they continue to pressure the University and practice mutual aid — a core tenet of prison-industrial complex abolition. “Prisons are the biggest social service we have,” NUCNC member Eliza Gonring said. “So poor people, homeless people, Black people are just getting funneled into prisons and if we want that to stop, if we don’t want people to get preyed upon, we’re going to need to start supporting people.”

Strikes Loom For Public Schools

January 29, 2021 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. , , ,
Across the country, a growing number of students, teachers, and parents are resisting pressure to return to the classroom before all teachers and students are vaccinated—and in Baltimore, students are preparing to strike in support of their teachers’ safety. During a Jan. 26 school board meeting, 18-year-old high school senior Joshua Lynn, a former student school board commissioner, announced plans for a student strike against in-person instruction until teachers are vaccinated. “Reopening … should not be followed through …. unless all teachers are FULLY vaccinated,” Lynn, who recently recovered from COVID-19, told The Real News.

UF Students Announce Boycott Against Aramark

January 23, 2021 Juliana Ferrie, Alligator.org. , , ,
Four organizations are taking a stand against UF’s official food service provider to protest its use of prison labor.  The Gainesville Chapter of the Dream Defenders, UF NAACP, the UF Black Student Union and the Coalition to Abolish Prison Slavery at UF launched a monetary boycott against Aramark, the food service giant, Tuesday. The goal is to pressure the university to contract a new food supplier that doesn’t use prison labor, Dream Defenders member Ava Kaplan wrote in an email.  UF Graduate Assistants United also announced its support for the Reitz Union Boycott Thursday through a Facebook post.  Aramark has been UF’s official food provider since 1995...

‘When You Come To School, You Forfeit Your Rights’

January 21, 2021 Courtney Napier, Scalawag Magazine. , , ,
Yakob Lemma and classmate Victoria Smith were just seven months into their freshman year at Enloe High School, a high-performing magnet known for its racial and socioeconomic diversity in downtown Raleigh, when the Parkland Shooting happened. One of the deadliest mass school shootings, elected officials scrambled to respond nationwide. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper formed a Special Committee on School Shootings, and the next year suggested that there should be an armed officer in every school in the state.  Smith and Lemma shared Honors English and civics classes. As two of only a few Black students, connecting was easy—and necessary.

Lessons From A Decade Of Student Activism In The UK

January 13, 2021 Hector Rios-Jara, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
Ten years ago, tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of London protesting against fees, cuts and demanding free public education in the biggest student demonstration in British history. They took over the Conservative Party headquarters, hanging red and black flags from the rooftop and surrounding the building with barricades. The demonstration marked the rebirth of the British student movement and the beginning of a new generation of activists that would confront marketization and austerity over the coming decade. Though students could not stop the further commodification of higher education, they succeeded in generating a culture of anti-market resistance, popularized the demand for public free education and contributed to the rise of democratic socialism in the UK.

University Of Michigan Strike Showed The Power Of Student Organizing

January 7, 2021 Kalena Thomhave and Matt Sehrsweeney, Waging Nonviolence.  , , ,
As the winter university semester is set to begin, the coronavirus is surging. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, like many universities reliant on tuition dollars, tried to reopen in September with a “public health-informed” semester, as the university called it. That meant a mix of in-person and remote classes and dormitories operating at about 70 percent capacity. Throughout the summer, the graduate workers union at the University of Michigan, the Graduate Employees Organization, or GEO, and Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers, had also been preparing for the fall semester by organizing against an unsafe campus opening in the face of a global pandemic.
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