Student Activism

Why The Movement To Opt Out Of Common Core Tests Is A Big Deal

May 5, 2015 Valerie Strauss, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Education, New York (NY), Student Activism, Testing

It was evident that the state would be far below the 95 percent federal participation rate as soon as the 3-8 English Language Arts tests began. When math testing started, the numbers climbed higher still. In the Brentwood School District, a 49 percent opt-out rate for ELA rose to 57 percent during math tests. These rates defy the stereotype that the movement is a rebellion of petulant “white suburban moms.” Ninety-one percent of Brentwood students are black or Latino, and 81 percent are economically disadvantaged. Brentwood is not unique–Amityville (90 percent black or Latino, 77 percent economically disadvantaged) had an opt-out rate of 36.4 percent; Greenport (49 percent black or Latino, 56 percent economically disadvantaged) had an opt-out rate that exceeded 61 percent; and South Country opt outs (50 percent black or Latino and 51 percent economically disadvantaged) exceeded 64 percent. New York’s rejection of the Common Core tests crosses geographical, socio-economic and racial lines.

Alumni Occupy Oxford Uni To Protest Fossil-Fuel Indecision

May 5, 2015 Ric Lander, www.bright-green.org Resist! Divestment, Education, Environment, Fossil Fuel, Student Activism

Alumni of the University of Oxford are occupying the university in protest over its failure to divest from fossil-fuels. The University, under pressure to act on its major investments in fossil-fuels, announced today it was postponing a decision on what to do with its investments until May. Oxford University has the UK’s second largest endowment fund, valued at £855 million in 2012, with a further £2.9 billion of investments controlled by its colleges. Occupying alumni included the University’s own former Finance Director, John Clements. The BBC quoted him saying: “we are bitterly disappointed about the university’s failure to come to a decision. Oxford should be leading the move away from investment in all world-destroying fossil fuel companies to more sustainable forms of energy.”

Students, Profs Decry Cornell Police Interview Of Activists

May 1, 2015 Jeff Stein, www.ithacavoice.com Resist! Education, Police, Student Activism

More than 100 students and professors are accusing the Cornell police of conducting threatening interviews with student activists because of their involvement in a protest of the university’s Board of Trustees. Cornell police, however, say that the students were interviewed because of a reported crime. Officers are charged with investigating criminal acts regardless of the political motivation of who committed them, and it would be wrong to give preferential treatment to only certain people because they are student activists, Chief Kathy Zoner said. At around 1 a.m. on March 26, the night before the Board of Trustees meeting, someone broke into the Statler Hall Auditorium and used a private computer in the room, according to Chief Zoner.

Montreal Students Now Fighting Austerity With ‘Occupy’ Reboot

April 25, 2015 Brigitte Noel and Simon Coutu, www.vice.com Resist! Dissent, Occupy, Quebec, Student Activism

In an effort to breathe new life into the somewhat dwindling anti-austerity movement, nearly 100 students have set up a makeshift campsite outside a Montreal CÉGEP school. In Quebec, protests against the provincial Liberal government's austerity measures have been becoming smaller yet increasingly creative, with events like a non-mixed feminist march, the UQAM occupation—which led to violent mayhem and the arrest of more than a dozen students—and a "die-in" in opposition to health-care cuts that would threaten access to abortion. But CÉGEP de Saint Laurent students—most between 16 and 20 years old—claim these methods are no longer cutting it, and have opted to build a more "permanent" symbol of their dissent. As of Thursday, more than 60 tents lined the school grounds.

Koch Brothers’ Quiet Takeover Of Universities

April 24, 2015 Kalin Jordan, www.prwatch.org Educate! Capitalism, Education, Student Activism

Our work with UnKochMyCampus has shown us that transparency removes the smoke and mirrors that cloud the debate, leaving ordinary people ill-equipped to develop informed opinions on research and policy around the most important issues of the day. Our policy is being shaped by corporations, for corporations - and that’s a huge problem. There was a time when the public engaged in a seemingly-legitimate debate about whether smoking caused cancer. Then we learned that the studies claiming cigarettes were safe were funded by the tobacco industry. Once the cat was out of the bag, people saw that “debate” for what it was - a farce.

Lifting The Veil Of Silence On Standardized Testing

April 21, 2015 Steven Singer, www.badassteachers.blogspot.com Educate! Education, Student Activism, Teachers, Testing

So the first act of testing is a threat of legal consequences and possible fines. There are no such warnings on my own teacher-created tests. Sure I don’t want students to cheat, but I don’t threaten to take them to court if they do. The school has a plagiarism policy in place – as just almost every public school does – which was created and approved by the local school board and administration. The first infraction merits a warning. The second one results in a zero on the assignment, and so on. Moreover, this is something we go over once at the beginning of the year. We do not reiterate it with every test. It would be counterproductive to remind students of the dire consequences of misbehavior right before you’re asking them to perform at their peak ability.

Harvard Students Heat Up Campaign For Divestment

April 20, 2015 Kelsey Erickson, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Climate Change, Divestment, Oil and Gas, Student Activism

Hundreds of Harvard students, alumni and faculty participated in a week-long sit-in within the gaze of John Harvard’s statue to call on their university to divest from the fossil fuel industry. They maintained a blockade of Massachusetts Hall as a peaceful means of opening dialogue with President Faust. Many of the students set up camp to guard all three entrances to the building overnight. The student-run fossil fuel divestment campaign known as Divest Harvard has been ongoing for three years and is one of hundreds of divestment campaigns around the country that have been launched by colleges and universities, churches and even cities. Just last week, Syracuse University committed to divestment in the company of many other institutions have including the First Parish in Cambridge that is directly across the street from Massachusetts Hall.

Lessons And Tactics From Past Debt Resistance Movements

April 19, 2015 Devon Douglas-Bowers, www.occupy.com Strategize! Student Activism, Student Debt, Student Loans, Student Protests, Youth

What are the lessons we can take from these movements that apply to today? With regards to Shays' Rebellion, we can look at two things: • The protesters had a clear, coherent message and stuck with it • They escalated the situation over time. With regards to a clear message, the best thing student debt activists can do today is to get on the same page with one another so that there is one, coherent message that gets repeated again and again. This will help serve as a guiding point for the goal that is to be achieved. This means activists can up the ante and bring more attention to their cause by doing things like blocking roads and disrupting the status quo in a variety of peaceful, nonviolent ways.

Why Students Are Marching For Better Wages

April 19, 2015 Rebecca Nathanson, www.rollingstone.com Resist! Fight for 15, Student Activism, Student Debt, Student Protests

Among the protesters rallying this week were students at more than 200 college campuses across the country. In New York, undergrads, high schoolers, grad students, adjunct professors and campus workers from around the city gathered at Columbia University to discuss their experiences in low-wage industries and the need for better wages and working conditions. Some drew connections between economic justice and movements including Black Lives Matter, environmental justice and improving resources for sexual violence survivors. A few participants held a long banner with a black prohibition sign covering Ronald McDonald's image. Below the drawing, the banner read, "FIGHT FOR $15." Above it, "STUDENTS ARE NOT LOVIN IT." For many students, raising the minimum wage is more than an abstract political issue. Some students work low-wage jobs to help pay tuition or cover their living expenses; others might do so after graduation, when they will have an average of almost $30,000 in student loan debt.

Student Faces School Sanctions For Moral Monday Protest

April 18, 2015 Greg Bluestein, www.politics.blog.ajc.com Educate! Equality, Health Care, Student Activism

A University of Georgia student faces sanctions from the school’s student judiciary board after he was arrested in Atlanta for protesting on the steps of the state Capital. Adam Veale, a 20-year-old political science major, said in an interview he was stunned to learn he faced two violations from UGA’s Office of Student Conduct after the March 2 arrest in Atlanta. He was offered a deal with the school that would have included 16 hours of community service and lunches with faculty members, but turned it down. Instead, he said, he’ll take his chances with a hearing before a judiciary panel on April 24. “I was unsatisfied with that offer. We weren’t being reckless. This was an act of symbolic speech,” said Veale. “We were saying we’re not going to stand idly by while the governor and the Legislature refuses to expand Medicaid.”

Opt-Out Movement Is Growing

April 18, 2015 Patrick Wall and Geoff Decker, www.ny.chalkbeat.org Resist! Education, Student Activism, Testing

As students wrapped up this week’s state English exams, advocates said more city parents than ever refused to let their children take the tests at schools with active “opt-out” movements, while other parents brought the boycott to schools that are new to the cause. In District 15, Brooklyn’s opt-out hotspot, P.S. 321 saw its refusal rate rocket from about 4 percent last year to 36 percent this year, and P.S. 58 went from one boycotter to 50, parents and teachers said. Meanwhile, in southeast Brooklyn, an area not usually associated with anti-testing fervor, 10 students for the first time handed in opt-out letters at P.S. 203. “It’s small,” said parent Charmaine Dixon, “but it’s big for us, because it’s never happened before.” Advocates were still gathering city opt-out numbers Thursday, and while some predicted an increase from last year’s total of about 1,900 families that formally refused the exams, they will still represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 420,000 city test-takers.

Protests Lead To President’s Support Of Prison Divestment

April 18, 2015 University Business Magazine, www.google.com Resist! Divestment, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Prison, Student Activism

37 Wesleyan students sat in on President Michael Roth’s office yesterday and today demanding divestment from fossil fuels, the Israeli occupation and the prison industrial complex. This morning, they left with Roth’s endorsement of prison divestment and commitment to further dialogue on divestment from fossil fuels and the Israeli occupation. President Roth agreed to investigate the current status of the university’s investments in private prisons, to publicly state his endorsement of prison divestment, and proceed to support divestment of any holdings Wesleyan may have. Students arrived in the president’s office at noon on Thursday, marking the anniversary of President Roth’s participation in a sit-in for divestment from South African Apartheid as a Wesleyan student in 1978.

Tuition Hikes, Nova Scotia Students Occupy Finance Minister’s Office

April 16, 2015 Evan Webster, www.thechronicleherald.ca Resist! Canada, Student Activism, Student Debt, Tuition

A group of disgruntled Halifax university students brought their issues with the new provincial budget right to Finance Minister Diana Whalen’s doorstep. Coming from Dalhousie and St. Mary’s universities, as well as the University of King’s College and NSCAD University, the group of about 15 students held a study-in on Monday at Whalen’s constituency office on Lacewood Drive. “We’re here because this government has proposed the most radical changes to tuition policy in our lifetime, the total deregulation of fees,” said John Hutton, 25, a Dal economics and international development student. “Nova Scotia’s students already graduate, on average, $35,000 in debt. This budget will only make what’s already a crisis worse.”

Protests For $15 Minimum Wage Are Heating Up

April 16, 2015 Candice Choi, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Fight for 15, Living Wage, police brutality, Student Activism, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Fight for $15 campaign to win higher pay and a union for fast-food workers is expanding to represent a variety of low-wage workers and become more of a social justice movement. In New York City on Wednesday, more than 100 chanting protesters gathered outside a McDonald's around noon, prompting the store to lock its doors to prevent the crowd from streaming in. Demonstrators laid on the sidewalk outside to stage a "die-in," which became popular during the "Black Lives Matter" protests after recent police shootings of black men. Several wore sweatshirts that said "I Can't Breathe," a nod to the last words of a black man in New York City who died after he was put in a police chokehold.

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