Student organizing

US Undergrads Are Getting A Crash Course In Labor Organizing

May 20, 2024 James Anderson, Truthout. Organize! Higher Education, Student organizing, Student Workers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When Grinnell College wanted to begin compensating community advisors (CA), who work to provide students living in residence halls with programming and support for personal and academic issues, on an hourly basis, undergraduates at the private liberal arts school in Iowa took collective action. They went on strike at the end of the spring semester in 2023. Hannah Sweet, a third-year student at the school who works as a CA, opposed the change because it would have amounted to a substantial pay cut given the 24/7 nature of the job. “One of the main things we did was we performed ‘structure tests’ leading up to the strike date,” said Sweet, who’s now co-president of the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW), which now represents all undergrad labor on campus.

Italian Students Are Rising Up Against Exploitation

April 3, 2022 Andreas Petrossiants And Giulia Sbaffi, ROAR Magazine. Organize! Italy, Structural Violence, Student organizing, Students

On January 21, 18-year-old Italian high school student Lorenzo Parelli died after being hit by a heavy metal beam while working at a factory in Lauzacco, a small town in northern Italy. The accident happened on the last day of Lorenzo’s alternanza scuola-lavoro (“school-work alternation”) internship as part of a mandatory work-placement program for high school students. In an attempt to individualize the responsibility for this tragedy, investigators are now wasting time and resources to determine who is to blame for Lorenzo’s death. Meanwhile, they are letting the neoliberal capitalist death machine that legitimized a program that forces young students into dangerous factory work off the hook. However, for the students who have been organizing throughout the country since his death, the real culprit of this tragedy is clear: “Lorenzo did not die. He was killed by the state through the alternanza scuola-lavoro,” as Niccolò De Luca, a member of the recently formed student movement La Lupa (“The Wolf”) put it.

Britain’s Largest Student Union Endorses BDS

December 21, 2016 Staff, www.tmiddleeastmonitor.com Resist! BDS, Student Activism, Student organizing, United Kingdom (UK)

By Staff of MEMO - The largest student union in Britain has officially endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in a significant success for Palestine solidarity activists. The University of Manchester’s Student Union Senate voted last Thursday to pass a motion in support of BDS. The motion won the backing of 60 per cent of the SU Senate, following an impassioned debate. The motion was put forward by Huda Ammori, President of Recognise Refugee Rights Society, and was supported by Etisha Choudhury, President of Action Palestine, and the BDS Campaigns Committee. In the three weeks prior to last week’s Senate meeting...

Criminalizing Student Organizing On-Campus

December 13, 2015 Tareq Radi, www.jadaliyya.com Strategize! Education, Palestine, Racism, Student organizing

By Tareq Radi for Status. This is Tareq Radi hosting Reclaiming Academic Freedom on Status Hour, where we expose violations of academic freedom and repression on campuses in both the region and the United States. For our third segment, we are focusing on the methods in which the university stifles political organizing by directly criminalizing activities that challenge the university’s decisions and policies. Joining us are four student organizers who have been incredibly active on their campuses: Khalil Antonio Velasquez, Mohammad Abou Ghazala, Omar Zahzah, and Tina Matar. Khalil begins with discussing both the global and local struggles for equality during the 2011 tuition hikes that were implemented in the City College of New York network.

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