StudentNation

University of Tennessee Shuts Down 'Sex Week'

Christine Dickason and StudentNation on March 20, 2013 - 3:22 PM ET

This article was originally published by Campus Progress.

Students at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville said they were disappointed, frustrated and enraged when their university's administration announced late Wednesday that it was pulling state funding from Sex Week.

Sex Week is an event that explores concepts of love, gender identity, relationships, sexual orientation and sex. Without state funding, the event will be down $11,145, or two-thirds, of the event’s budget.

No Human Being Is Illegal

Luis Feliz and StudentNation on March 19, 2013 - 7:31 PM ET

In February, just as the Pima Community College (PCC) Governing Board in Tucson, Arizona, was ruling on whether to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, members of the Mexican Studies youth coalition United Non-Discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our Studies (UNIDOS) seized the moment to demand that the board drop the word “illegal” from its curriculum and update its anti-Hate Speech and anti-Harassment policies, signaling the confidence of the young people who comprise the immigrant rights movement.

The demand was related to a campaign lauched in September of 2010 by the Applied Research Center and its news site, Colorlines, to drop the i-word from public discourse under the banner of “no human being is illegal.” Since then, the campaign has garnered wide support from civil rights groups and media outlets, ranging from Fox News Latino to ABC News to Ms. magazine to Feministing to In These Times to The Nation.

“We are calling on Pima College to support Scholarships A-Z tuition proposal and to symbolically rip out this ugly and dehumanizing word “illegal” from your institutional culture,” said Danny Montoya, 20, a sophomore at Pima Community College, at the hearing. Pointing to the class underpinnings of undocumented labor and the discrepancies between enforcement and human rights, Montoya added: “Unless you are willing to stigmatize US business owners as ‘illegals’ when they hire undocumented workers; unless you are willing to attack US policy makers as ‘illegals’ when their Border Patrol agents commit brutal violence against migrants, then no one should degrade people as ‘illegals’ just for committing a civil infraction for crossing an international borderline unauthorized.”

Dispatches From the US Student Movement: March 15

StudentNation on March 15, 2013 - 11:23 AM ET

Occidental students protest the university’s broken promises on sexual assault policy. (The Occidental Weekly/Chris Ellis)

E-mail questions, tips or proposals to studentmovement@thenation.com. For more dispatches, check out earlier posts from January 18, February 1, February 15 and March 1.

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Interns' Favorite Articles of the Week (3/15/13)

StudentNation on March 14, 2013 - 5:41 PM ET

With warrior cops, Massive Open Online Courses, mulling mullahs and a new Great Game in the Arctic, this week's articles are full of powerful images, phrases and ideas, some exciting and most disquieting. And to wash it all down, there's even a piece on Mayor Bloomberg's soda ban.

— Alleen Brown focuses on education.

Columbia Students Come Out for Campus Workers' Rights

George Joseph and StudentNation on March 14, 2013 - 5:35 PM ET

“The Columbia administration always has the same attitude. They’re always anti-union, acting in the most anti-social, corporate way. There’s always been student support for workers at Columbia and that support is essential.”
—Professor Eric Foner, speaking at a Student Worker Solidarity rally for the
Faculty House restaurant workers  

UVM Faculty Senate Vote to Support Divestment

StudentNation on March 13, 2013 - 2:20 PM ET

A large majority of UVM’s faculty senate passed a resolution in favor of removing fossil fuel companies from the endowment at its meeting on March 11, making it the first faculty senate in the nation to formally support divestment.

"This is a true milestone for our campaign," first-year Brian Thompson told the Vermont Cynic. “The fact that we have been able to get such support from the community definitely shows that the idea of divestment has pretty clear consensus on campus.”

The resolution requested that the board of trustees eliminate all stock holdings in the top 200 fossil fuel companies by February 2017, most notably from the Blackrock All-Cap Energy portfolio that is “most heavily” invested in fossil fuels, the resolution stated.

Maple Spring Part Deux?

Zachary A. Bell and StudentNation on March 11, 2013 - 12:53 PM ET

Students protested tuition increases at a March 5 demonstration in Montreal. (Photo: Zach Bell)

This piece originally appeared at Waging Nonviolence and is reposted with the author’s permission.

Interns' Favorite Articles of the Week (3/8/13)

StudentNation on March 9, 2013 - 11:18 AM ET

This week witnessed widespread school closings in Philadelphia, the threat of war with Iran, the death of Hugo Chávez and the exploits of the Russian (and American) secret police. The media looked into the tea leaves (in the case of Putin's empire, quite literally!). Is this a moment of emergent working-class consciousness? Political scientist Adolph Reed ponders. What'll happen if Congress lets us unlock our phones? Surely, a techno-revolution.

— Alleen Brown focuses on education.

Anatomy of a Failed Campus: What Happened At NYU's Tisch Asia?

Zoë Schlanger and StudentNation on March 6, 2013 - 2:05 PM ET

Photo via Olivia Briggs.

This article originally appeared in NYU Local, the independent student publication of NYU, and is reposted here with permission.

Re-examining Divestment

Isaac Lederman and StudentNation on March 5, 2013 - 7:55 PM ET

This article was originally published in the student-run Daily Princetonian.

Change is tough. Sociologist Max Weber famously remarked that “politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards.” Progress, in other words, does not come easily: One must fight tooth and nail.

Sometimes, however, change does come. Consider what happened in the 1980s, when 55 colleges and universities either fully or partially divested from South Africa, which suffered under a cruel apartheid regime. Of this campaign, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a renowned opponent of apartheid, said the following in a New York Times op-ed: “There is no greater testament to the basic dignity of ordinary people everywhere than the divestment movement of the 1980s.” In other words, divestment in no small way contributed to the downfall of the horrific apartheid regime.