Campus activism and protest. (News for Educational Workers).

Campus politics these days, after a period of identity politics holding center stage, now has refocused on workers rights, both on and off campus. This new interest in labor began with globalization issues like campaigns against sweatshops, but has now broadened to include supporting exploited workers in the U.S. and unionization on campus, initially for low-paid service employees, but now including graduate teaching, research assistants, and undergraduate resident assistants (In These Times, May 27, 2002).

On April 5, about 50 City University of New York (CUNY) students from the "CUNY for All" coalition rallied at City Hall to oppose heavy proposed cuts in the state Tuition Assistance Program (TAP). "Students Won't Buy McCollege" goes on to summarize the history of CUNY in the 70s from a free, basically white institution to a majority African American and Latino student body whose tuition continues to grow (www.indymedia.org).

On April 9, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC Berkeley helped to plan and organize a demonstration, with over 1200 students attending, that demanded that the University of California divest all assets connected to Israel and the Israeli military. During the course of this action, community members and students staged a nonviolent sit-in at Wheeler Hall, resulting in UC Berkeley suspending SJP as an organization on campus pending an investigation. Since no other student group participating in non-violent civil disobedience has been suspended, UC Berkeley students feel they are facing a systematic attempt to silence pro-Palestinian voices on campus. For more information, and to offer your help, email [e-mail].

CUNY students staged a three-day hunger strike on January 15-17 and picketed university headquarters to protest CUNY'S abrupt change in policy on undocumented students. In Fall 2001, CUNY ended a 12-year policy that allowed undocumented students who had established residency by living in New York State for a year to pay instate tuition. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, CUNY now requires that these students pay out-of-state tuition, a steep increase from $1600 to $3400 per semester, which will make it difficult or impossible for many students to continue their studies (NACLA, March/April 2002).

Students for Fair Trade, a student group out of Western Washington University, has collected over 2,000 signatures on a petition urging campus food-service officials to provide coffee on campus that is fair-trade certified. In the past year, student groups at the University of Puget Sound, the University of Washington, and UCLA have successfully gotten more fair-trade coffee on campus. To be certified, third-party monitors must have confirmed that farmers were paid a fair price for their beans (The Seattle Times, March 17, 2002).

The American Freshman Survey, based this year on responses from 281,064 students at 421 four-year colleges and universities, found that more college freshmen today describe themselves as politically liberal than at any time since the Vietnam War. About half the class of 2005 view themselves as "middle of the road" politically, about 20.7% consider themselves conservative or "far right", while 29.9%, the highest figure since 1975, say they are liberal or "far left" (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-0l28O2frosh.story, January 28, 2002).

The Bluffton College Peace Club fasted and camped out from March 11 to March 16 to raise money and consciousness about the plight of refugees in Afghanistan. As other residents of this small town of Bluffton, Ohio, pitched their tents alongside the students' cardboard boxes, the students' gesture of solidarity grew into a miniature tent city (The Nonviolent Activist, May-June, 2002).

Some MIT and Harvard professors, to pressure Israel to comply with international conventions of human rights, wrote a divestment petition, held a teach-in on May 6, and created a website (http://www.harvardmitdivest.org) to encourage an open and critical discussion of the Israeli occupation and U.S. support.