Skip to content Skip to footer
|

Student Occupations at Five Campuses (Video)

Students at Tulane University sit in. (Screengrab: stopsweatshops)

When it comes to budget cuts and policies that hurt students and campus workers, student activists are refusing to sit down…unless it’s in their president’s office. This week and last, students at five universities staged sit-ins for student and worker rights, and this seems to be only the beginning.

For the past few years students across the country in United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have been running campaigns against budget cuts and salary freezes that hurt students and already underpaid workers. This spring that work has blown up. Students in USAS launched a national “Take Back Our Economy” project and mobilized in more than 30 cities March 2 and April 4 in support of workers’ rights.

Last week, USAS activists at two universities in the South simultaneously occupied their university presidents’ offices to demand justice for workers on their campuses. At Emory University in Atlanta, students staged a seven-hour sit-inafter more than 100 students rallied with Martin Luther King’s nephew Isaac Farris Jr. and State Senator Vincent Fort. They urged the president to terminate the school’s multi-million-dollar contract with food service giant Sodexo, exposed for human rights abuses globally.

Using Skype, the Emory activists teleconferenced with USASers at Virginia’s College of William and Mary, live from their own sit-in in the president’s office, where students sought resolution to a 10-year campaign by campus workers for living wages.

The William and Mary group was arrested after midnight, while Emory’s sit-in escalated into a sprawling “tent city” outside the administration building until Emory arrested seven students April 27.

In New Orleans, 21 students at Tulane University took over the president’s office (watch video), singing and chanting to demand that the school kick out Sodexo and protect campus workers’ rights. They left three hours later after administrators threatened discipline and brought in police.

April 26 the action came back to Madison, where 70 students occupied the office of University of WisconsinChancellor Biddy Martin to protest her promotion of a privatization scheme that would lead to skyrocketing tuition and outsourcing of good union jobs on campus.

And at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, 20 students continue their overnight building occupation to stop tuition hikes, support campus workers, and drop Rutgers’ deal with the Nike-dominated “Fair Labor” Association, which is supposed to—but doesn’t—improve conditions for workers abroad who make campus apparel.

Students are angry about universities and local governments implementing cuts and policies that hurt working people and students while they continue to invest in new construction projects and enormous salaries for administrators.

At William and Mary, the living wage campaign is part of a broader movement towards schools, workplaces, and an economy that works for us. Students are challenging policies that force campus workers to live in poverty and make education increasingly unaffordable. More information about the sit-in and arrest at William and Mary is here. Read about living wages and the history of the campaign here or email [email protected].

Kathleen Brower is Southeast regional organizer for USAS.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.