Got an email a moment ago telling me students have occupied the graduate building at the New School in New York, barricading themselves in until the president and vice-president of the school resign.
Background here.
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Update: Police have ejected the protesters.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:56AM
I bet the protesters get expelled.
Meanwhile, in a nearby classroom, 5 plagiarists get 13 more chances to learn how to use quotation marks.
Which group should the university be more proud of?
April 11th, 2009 at 8:36AM
I don’t know if I’d expel them, but I would certainly recommend remedial education. The exam will be one question:
1). Are you more likely to bring about change in your university by being:
A) a group of the endlessly interchangeable parade of students, gone in some five or six years anyway, who throw a public tantrum in a building instead of going to class and in so doing confirm the opinion of a large segment of the public who feels you are a pampered set of folks without enough to do, or
B) grind away on those stinking books in those boring econ and engineering and science classes, graduate, grind away in a job until you make some money and then start to use that monetary tool — in a way your classes may have talked about — in order to get the university officials to do pretty much what you want, up to and including sit up and beg?
A college education is no guarantee of wealth, nor should wealth be the reason for obtaining the education. But I feel pretty confident that such an education is a more certain path to fiscal success than is being "a catalyst for escalating action to reclaim our school." And I feel even more confident that the presidents, trustee board chairs and other officials of universities that are either cash-starved or just plain greedy beyond belief will almost always listen more closely to the voices of checks with many zeros than they will to students to whom they can bid farewell today and replace tomorrow.
Such selective hearing may not be right, but that might be another item on the agenda of someone who desires a change and acquires the means to bring it about.