StudentNation | The Nation

This week: Gender segmentation still prevails in the workplace, the greenery of West Virginia hides the scars of strip mining and Canada's border service holds off on capturing terror suspects until new terrorism legislation is up for debate. Speaking of terrorists, Americans are as likely to be killed by them as by their own furniture.

— Alleen Brown focuses on education.

In March, a bill was introduced in the California State Senate that, if passed, could radically redefine the role of online learning in American higher education. The proposed legislation, SB 520, would require state colleges and universities to grant credit to students who, unable to register for core classes at their home universities due to “bottleneck” conditions at the entry level, opt to register for massive open online courses (MOOCs) instead.

The bill is packaged by its champions as a necessary measure designed to defend the best interests of a student body under siege. “We want to be the first state in the nation to make this promise,” said Darrell Steinberg, the State Senate president. “No college student in California will be denied the right to move through their education because they couldn’t get a seat in the course they needed.” Detractors, however, attack it as a top-down effort to allow private companies to profit from public institutions of higher learning—what some have labeled the University of Phoenixization of the U Cal system.

Whatever the outcome, this bill has direct implications for the City University of New York (CUNY) as well as other public universities nationwide. The debate in California arrives during a period in which CUNY’s public system has come under great strain from rolling budget cuts, privatization measures and major battles between administrators and faculty over curricular decision-making and control. The potential embrace of MOOCs could well contribute to further contention.

Students rally against hate speech at Oberlin. (Courtesy of Aaron Braun.)

On Monday, March 4 Oberlin College in Ohio suspended classes in response to predawn reports that an individual dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia was seen walking near residential dorms on the south side of campus, including Afrikan Heritage House and the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgender People. The alleged sighting followed a monthlong series of racist and sexist vandalism, which included swastika graffiti, the replacement of “black” with racial slurs on Black History Month Flyers, the defacement of LGBTQ posters, and a “Whites Only” sign above a school water fountain. (Full list via The Oberlin Review here.) Instead of attending classes that Monday, students gathered in Oberlin’s campus chapel for a teach-in led by the Africana Studies Department, and participated in a student-organized day of solidarity.

Students form a giant sun in Washington Square Park. (Photo courtesy of Williams Agate.)

This post was originally published in NYU Local, the independant student news site of NYU. Check out photos of the event here. This post is republished with permission.