Last night students at UC Davis went back to Mrak Hall, where 52 people were arrested last Thursday, and launched the week’s eighth UC building occupation.

This takeover was shorter than several of its predecessors, but dramatic — it was the first in this wave of occupations to end with a written commitment by the administration to honor a set of protest demands.

The students began the occupation with a lengthy list of demands, but negotiated a suspension of the occupation on the basis of five: the university committed to conducting a review of one previous campus arrest, to urging the district attorney to “strongly consider … not filing charges” against the 52 Thursday arrestees, to dropping any disciplinary action against those students, to pursuing “further discussion” about co-op housing on campus based on “a mutual desire to promote sustainable, affordable cooperative living facilities,” and to holding “further discussions on all other demands with a representative group, as early as Monday, November 30.”

There’s nothing earth-shattering here, of course, but it’s still significant in at least three ways.

First, it gives students throughout the UC system a precedent for negotiated settlement of an occupation. There has been some resistance to that approach from both sides in the last week — from students who conducted “demandless” occupations, and from administrators who refused to enter into dialogue. Last night’s agreement affirms that negotiation is a live option in this series of actions.

Second, it provides a template for such negotiations. The Davis administration’s biggest concession was its agreement to forego disciplinary action against the Thursday demonstrators (and, implicitly, against last night’s demonstrators as well). That concession sets up amnesty as an achievable demand in future occupations.

Third, it opens up ongoing negotiations on local campus issues. A single university’s administrators have no direct power to roll back fees or reform the UC board of regents — such demands are aimed at off campus targets, and winning full victories on them is not a project for a single day. But local concessions can be won in a single action, and ongoing negotiations are a mechanism for refining and sharpening such demands to the point that more substantive victories become more likely.

In the NYU and New School occupations of 2008-09, those universities’ administrations shifted away from negotiation and toward punitive legal action as the students’ campaigns developed. The resolution of yesterday’s Mrak Hall occupation is the strongest evidence yet that the University of California is now moving in the opposite direction.

Update | Here is the UC Davis administration’s official statement on the occupation. Note that it describes the takeover as beginning with a study-in at eight o’clock yesterday morning, that it says that 150 demonstrators were present in Mrak at the end of the night, and that it strikes a conciliatory, respectful tone throughout. Note also that it binds the university to a new commitment beyond the five agreed to last night — the presence of Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi at a meeting with students next Monday.

Second Update | Commenter Cynthia D. notes that the Monday student meeting with the chancellor is actually a long-planned, regularly scheduled event. She also has a perspective on the administration’s behavior during the occupation that’s worth reading, so click through and read it.

Third Update | The Yolo County District Attorney announced on Friday that charges against 51 of the 52 Mrak Hall demonstrators have been dropped, with the only exception being the student charged with assault and resisting arrest. This is obviously a further victory for the second occupation.

Fourth Update | The third update above, based on a report from a local news station’s website, is inaccurate. Charges against the Mrak 51 have not been dropped, they’ve just been set aside, and they can be re-instated at any time in the next year.

The occupiers of UCSC’s Kerr Hall were barely out of the building Sunday morning when the Santa Cruz administration launched a line of attack that’ll be familiar to observers of last year’s NYU and New School occupations: they said the students trashed the place.

On Sunday, a university spokesman claimed that the occupiers had done thousands of dollars in damage, and those costs, he said, would require the university to divert money “from budgets already strained by budget cuts.”

On Monday, administrators upped the ante. The students had done more than fifty thousand dollars of damage to the building, they said, not including labor costs for cleanup. They posted photos of the mess on the university’s website, and said that some items appeared to have been stolen.

On Tuesday activist Brian Malone posted an open letter in response to the administration’s claims. He said that most of the photos showed “little more than some leftover food and a bunch of paper products in need of recycling,” and that the rest — an overturned refrigerator, some teleconference equipment dumped on the floor, a broken table — would be easily easily fixed or replaced.

Now, I don’t doubt that UCSC is exaggerating its damage estimates. They have no reason to lowball their figures, and every reason to inflate them. As to whether the telecom equipment was “ripped out,” as UCSC claims, or “disconnected,” as Malone suggests, I can’t say either way. The occupiers apparently did use furniture and equipment as material for their barricades, so I expect there was some damage done there.

But I’m not interested in second-guessing strategies or tactics. That’s a big question, and it’s a question for another post. What I do want to offer is one small, simple piece of advice.

If you’re in a long-term occupation, clean up after yourself.

Malone says that tidying up the garbage the Kerr Hall occupiers left behind “would take a small crew no more than one or two hours.” But there were seventy students in that building for three days, and they knew that the cops could bust in at any time. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have been cleaning things up as they went.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to one of the students who occupied the school of the humanities and fine arts at the University of Zagreb for thirty-five days this spring. He said that the students in that occupation prided themselves on keeping the place sparkling — they swept and mopped every morning, broken equipment was repaired, replaced, or put in storage, and every occupier was expected to clean up his or her messes as he or she created them. Their occupation was based on the premise that this was the students’ university, he said,  and they wanted to show the media and the community that they cared for that university enough to keep it clean, organized, and in working order.

Any time you’re occupying university space, you’re at risk of being evicted or arrested on a moment’s notice. If you’re dumped out and you’ve left the place a mess, you can expect that the administration will carefully photograph every tipped-over Solo cup and crumpled bread wrapper, and post the photos on the net. That’s their job, and that’s what they’re going to do. You can choose to give them that ammunition, or you can choose not to.

Choose not to.

Tomorrow is the one-week anniversary of the first University of California protests (and arrests) against the regents’ decision to impose huge new fees on the students of the system, and UC’s activists show no signs of letting up.

Today saw a rally and march on the main administration building at UC Irvine, and the first arrest of the week at that campus. It also saw a candlelight vigil — still ongoing — at UC Berkeley, in the wake of the news that the university will be investigating charges of excessive police force at protests there last week.

And at UC Davis, where 52 protesters were arrested in an occupation of administration building Mrak Hall last Thursday, students are hunkering down for the night at Mrak again. The Davis activists’ blog reports that between sixty and seventy students are in Mrak now, and they’ve “made a commitment to stay the night.” They’re dancing, they’ve ordered pizza, and they’re settling in to chat about demands.

8:10 pm | Liveblogging of the Mrak Hall occupation is here.

9:45 pm | A Twitterer on the scene says negotiations are happening at Mrak.

9:50 pm | The student newspaper’s Twitter feed says the occupiers have three demands: An apology for police violence on Thursday, action to save student co-ops, and amnesty for Thursday’s arrestees. They say they’re staying until at least two of the three demands are met. Another Twitterer says the cops are refusing to negotiate, but allowing occupiers to leave without arrest if they leave now.

10:20 pm | Via the student newspaper’s Twitter feed (@CaliforniaAggie), the administration is making a new offer: “Police will review alleged violence, even without formal complaint; students won’t be punished by school and admins will ask DA for leniency for those arrested Thurs.; and admins will meet with a representative group about student co-op closure. Protestors say this is not enough. They demand full amnesty for those arrested and a full apology for alleged police violence.”

11:15 pm | There has been a negotiated settlement of the occupation, and the students have left Mrak Hall. More in the morning.

Wednesday | Here’s my follow-up post on what the university agreed to last night, and why this occupation is a milestone in the UC student movement.

In the spring of this year a wave of campus occupations swept Croatia, beginning with the takeover of the school of humanities and social sciences at the University of Zagreb on April 20. The protesters demanded free and universally available higher education, and by the end of their campaign all or part of twenty universities in eight Croatian cities had been occupied.

I had a chance to talk to some of the leaders of the Croatian occupations when I was in Zagreb earlier this month, and those conversations (and others I had there) were a real crash course in the student movements that have swept Europe this year. Much of what I learned is highly relevant to the American situation, particularly now that campus occupations are becoming a regular occurrence here.

The U of Zagreb occupation lasted for thirty-five days this spring. It took place not behind barricades but in a freely accessible building, with democratic governance meetings open to all, regular teach-ins and seminars — even a daily morning yoga session.

Today at a noon mass gathering, or plenum, Zagreb’s student activists voted to take up their occupation again. Occupations are also underway at the Universities of Pula and Rijeka, with a meeting scheduled for tomorrow at Split to consider similar action.

There hasn’t been much coverage of the current European wave of student protest in the United States, and what there has been has often been fragmented and decontextualized. I’m going to make an effort to overcome those problems in the coming days, using Croatia’s occupations — those of this spring and those going on now — as a case study and a starting point for broader discussion. Stay tuned!

The web journal Inside Higher Ed is a go-to source for anyone interested in the American university. Founded in 2004 as a competitor to the well-regarded but stodgy Chronicle of Higher Education, IHE is an indespensible daily guide to the nation’s campuses.

So why isn’t it covering the biggest student story of the year?

We’re now five days into the wave of student protest that has engulfed California since the UC regents approved huge fee increases for their system’s students. Since then thousands have demonstrated on campuses across the state, often clashing with police. Six university buildings at five universities have been occupied. More than a hundred students have been arrested. And IHE has given the story a total of four words.

“As students protested outside, the University of California’s Board of Regents on Thursday reluctantly approved a 32 percent increase in ‘fees’ …” That’s how the IHE opened a one-paragraph piece on the fee increases in its “Quick Takes” section on Friday. That one clause, “as students protested outside,” was the only mention of student organizing in the piece, and the IHE has yet to return to the topic.

At the time the IHE put up that story, students had taken over four UC buildings in response to the fee hikes. Three of those occupations were still ongoing as of Friday morning, and the fourth had ended with mass arrests. Fourteen students had been arrested within the regents meeting itself, and several — despite UCLA’s initial denials — had been Tasered by campus police during the demonstrations that accompanied it. After the meeting, students blockaded the building in which it had been held, blocking the regents’ exit and at one point compelling them to abandon the van in which they were attempting to leave campus.

Since Friday morning, IHE has covered a lawsuit filed by a woman who was fired by the University of Nebraska when they learned she was a witch. It has published a lengthy piece on academic plagiarism. It has written about a physical fitness requirement for obese students at Lincoln University and an athletics director who quit after applying for reimbursement for expenses relating to an extramarital affair. It has run two stories on tax issues.

But on the largest student uprising in recent American history? Nothing so far.

Now, granted, it’s Sunday, and IHE generally doesn’t publish on the weekends. Only one of the stories I list above went up yesterday, and that one was a blog post. But as I say, this was a huge story by Friday morning, and it only got bigger as that day went on.

I’ll be eager to see what they have on it tomorrow.

Monday morning update | Well, it’s tomorrow, and IHE has a 108-word “Quick Takes” story up reporting on Friday’s events at three universities.

The piece makes no mention of the 52 arrests at UC Davis on Thursday, and declares that UCSC’s Kerr Hall “remains occupied,” even though that occupation ended on Sunday morning. Meanwhile, the journal finds room for 645 words on the end of football at Northeastern.

It’s seven thirty on Sunday morning in California, and news is beginning to roll in from the two building occupations at UC Santa Cruz.

There were  reports last night that the UCSC campus had been locked down, and claims that the police were planning to retake Kerr Hall and Kresge Town hall at midnight, but that deadline, real or imaginary, came and went without incident. Twitter reports this morning suggest that preparations for police action may be underway, though.

Another tidbit recently posted on Twitter is the news that UCSC professor Bettina Aptheker is planning to enter occupied Kerr Hall. No confirmation on that one either, yet, but Aptheker has made public statements in support of the activists. “I don’t understand why we’re afraid of students,” she said on Friday, reminding the university the protesters are committed to nonviolence.

Kresge Town Hall has been occupied since Wednesday night, and Kerr Hall since Thursday. The occupiers initially released a flamboyant 35-point list of demands, but on Friday they trimmed that back to a more moderate — and shorter — list.

Administrators turned off internet access to Kerr Hall on Friday evening, but communication with the outside world, previously minimal, picked up on Saturday anyway. One student on the scene kept up an ongoing liveblog Saturday evening, and as many as half a dozen Twitterers on the campus have been providing updates — you can find those feeds in the Student Activism UCWalkout2 Twitter list.

7:45 am | Multiple sources, including the UCSC student newspaper, confirm new police activity at Kerr Hall. One unconfirmed Twitter report says riot police have stormed the occupation.

8:05 am | Twitterer @geoffwildanger says the Kerr occupiers have rejected a request from police on the scene to remove the barricades they have set up.

8:25 am | Fifteen minutes after tweeting that the Kerr occupiers had chosen to hunker down behind their barricades, rejecting an offer from the police to end the occupation peacefully,@geoffwildanger tweets that the Kerr occupation has ended without arrests. I’m going to hold off on making any more updates until I get reliable, detailed new info.

9:05 am | New updates at Occupy California and Indybay shed light on the situation. According to OccupyCA, police breached the barricades at Kerr, but occupiers were then allowed to leave without charges. The group — of about fifty — marched en masse to Kresge, which is still under occupation. Indybay tells a similar story, adding the detail that an anthropology professor, Marc Anderson, “fell off a 12 foot staircase as police were forcing students and faculty off of the Kerr patio” and was removed from the scene by emergency personnel.

9:25 am | A new Santa Cruz Sentinel article quotes history professor Emily Honig, who was at Kerr since five o’clock this morning, as saying that “the way in which police force was called out in full gear and weaponry” was “regrettable,” and that she didn’t “think the situation demanded it.”

2:45 pm | The Santa Cruz Sentinel is reporting that Professor Anderson has been released from the hospital and has no major injuries. The Associated Press reports that students involved with the demonstration may still face criminal or disciplinary charges.

4:10 pm | The Kerr hall occupiers have released a statement giving their account of the end of the occupation. They say that the professor’s fall from the balcony was caused by “the administration’s use of force,” and that it took place at a moment when “students and neutral faculty observers were cornered by riot police on an outdoor balcony.” Responding to administration claims that Kerr Hall was left damaged or dirtied, they say that “over 75 students have already volunteered to help clean the space.”

Early this morning several dozen students launched a takeover of Wheeler Hall, a building on the University of California’s Berkeley campus. Their occupation is the fifth in the last two days in the UC system, and comes in response to yesterday’s vote by the UC regents to raise student fees by 32%.

Wheeler Hall, which houses a 760-seat auditorium and dozens of classrooms, including many large lecture halls, is one of the most prominent buildings on the Berkeley campus. It has been the site of many student demonstrations in the past, including occupations calling for university divestment from South Africa in 1977 and Israel in 2002.

Police reportedly confronted students as they were attempting to occupy the building, making three arrests and using pepper spray and batons on protesters. A group of students was able to make their way to the second floor, however, and to barricade themselves inside.

The Wheeler occupiers have hung a banner from two upper-story windows that reads “32% FEE HIKE 1900 LAYOFFS NO CLASS.” They have also been using a bullhorn to address students outside the building. Police have cordoned off the entire building at this hour.

9:20 am | Twitter reports from the protesters suggest that there are about three dozen activists inside the building, and that police are attempting to disassemble doors to the rooms that are being occupied.

9:30 am | Another Twitter report, citing sources among the activists currently occupying Wheeler, says that the students arrested this morning have been charged with burglary. Also, the Daily Cal student newspaper is now liveblogging the occupation.

9:45 am | A statement from the UC Berkeley administration says that Wheeler Hall is closed “until further notice.” It confirms that three people have been arrested, including one non-student. The title of the statement is “Protest Action Closes Wheeler Hall.”

9:50 am | Twitterer @ucbprotest writes: “The protesters inside Wheeler Hall demand the janitors jobs be reinstated and the protesters inside and those arrested this morning go free.” Another tweet: “The protestors demands, again, are that the 38 AFSCME workers that were laid off are re-hired, and that the protestors receive amnesty.”

10:00 am | The Daily Cal has a new story up on the occupation. It quotes an organizer as saying that the group entered the building at about nine o’clock last night, not this morning as has been reported elsewhere.

10:55 am | Multiple reports on Twitter that fire alarms have been pulled in one or more buildings around campus.

11:00 am | A newly posted article says that “several hundred” students are gathered in front of Wheeler Hall to support the occupation. Also, a new statement from the occupiers is now online.

11:55 am | The Daily Cal is now reporting that fire alarms went off in five campus buildings this morning, causing all five buildings to be evacuated.

3:15 pm | I’ve been away from the computer for the last three hours, following the situation via Twitter on my iPhone. It appears that the occupation may be moving toward a negotiated settlement, but the situation is still fluid. You can follow my UCWalkout2 Twitter list to see the feeds of fifty activists, journalists, and others involved in the situation, and watch the story there as it develops.

3:20 pm | The occupiers are squelching the idea that any negotiated settlement is imminent.

4:20 pm | The students in Wheeler have been jousting with the administration over the terms and conditions of any negotiations. Meanwhile, the occupation continues, and the outside support action seems to be going strong.

4:50 pm | Word has come via Twitter that UC Davis’ Dutton Hall is now occupied. This is the sixth UC building occupation in two days, and the fourth to be still going simultaneously at this hour.

5:00 pm | A Twitterer inside the occupation suggests that the cops are breaking down the barricades.

5:05 pm | Multiple reports on Twitter of police use of force against demonstrators outside Wheeler.

5:15 pm | Police seem to be arresting the occupiers. I’ll hold off on posting more until I have detailed, confirmed news to report.

5:25 pm | Police are inside the building arresting students.

6:20 pm | Berkeley is saying that forty-one students were arrested at Wheeler tonight. Fifty-two were arrested at UC Davis yesterday, and fourteen at the Regents meeting at UCLA on Wednesday. That’s more than a hundred UC students arrested in budget protests in just three days.

7:30 pm | The occupiers have been given citations, and are being released into the crowd that still surrounds Wheeler. No bail, no trip to the police station, no headaches trying to figure out how to get the arrestees past the outside demonstrators. The occupiers are being released a few at a time, and the first group was released just moments ago.

I’ve just put up a short think piece about the events of the last few days at the University of California, but those events are worth describing in detail — particularly since they’re a long way from over. Here’s what happened yesterday:

The UC Regents, as expected, voted to impose huge fee increase on undergraduate and graduate students in the university. These new fees represent a tripling of undergraduate costs in the last decade, and a 50% jump since 2007.

After the vote students at UCLA surrounded Covel Hall, where the meeting had taken place, trapping the regents inside. When a group of regents tried to leave campus students surrounded their van, forcing them to retreat to a nearby building. It would be nearly three hours before they, and UC president Mark Yudof, were able to make their escape.

Even before the vote students had occupied two buildings in the UC system, and the afternoon saw two more takeovers.

Fifty-two students were arrested Thursday night at Mrak Hall, the UC Davis administration building, after they defied police orders to clear the building. One local media source said this morning that “dozens” of those arrested were held overnight.

Students at UC Santa Cruz had occupied Kresge Town Hall, an auditorium, on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday they expanded their action to include Kerr Hall, an administration building. Students in Kerr released a 35-point list of demands on Thursday night, and both occupations were apparently still ongoing as of early this morning.

At UCLA itself an occupation generated some controversy, as activists took over Campbell Hall, a building that houses tutoring facilities and services for students of color on campus, in the early morning hours before the regents’ vote. An article in the Daily Bruin suggested that the takeover was initiated primarily by non-UCLA students, and that local and non-local activists disagreed about the wisdom of occupying that building. The Campbell occupation ended peacefully last night with no arrests.

Afternoon update: The Campbell Hall occupiers have issued a response to their critics, and it’s well worth reading. You can find it here.

Yesterday’s events broke through into the national media in a way that student protests rarely do, gaining major coverage at CNN, the New York Times, and USA Today.

8:00 am | Several dozen students have apparently barricaded themselves inside Wheeler Hall in Berkeley, making that the fifth building occupation in the UC system in the last two days.

There is always more activism happening on the American campus than outside observers can see. Even during quiet times, students organize day in and day out on all sorts of issues in all sorts of campaigns, changing their universities and the society in all sorts of ways.

And these are not quiet times.

The University of California Regents’ decision to raise student fees was made long ago, and no student organizing effort was ever going to alter it. But the amount of student protest on display yesterday — the depth and breadth of students’ commitment to their cause — must have come as a shock. The reverberations of that explosion of passion and power are being felt this morning in Sacramento, in Washington DC, and on campuses and in government offices from coast to coast.

Even if California had been quiet for the last few days, this week would still have been a dramatic one for American student activists. On Tuesday United Students Against Sweatshops won a stunning victory in their yearlong campaign for worker justice at campus apparel manufacturer Russell Athletic, even as research assistants and teaching assistants at the University of Illinois Chicago concluded a two-day strike that guaranteed the preservation of tuition waivers for graduate student workers there — a major win on tuition policy in a year that has until now been marked by defeats.

Each of these victories is significant on its own merits, and each reflects the growing strength and savvy of American student organizing in our time of national crisis. Either would have been the lead story at this site in an ordinary week.

This was no ordinary week.

Saturday morning update: The UCSC occupations are still going on, and the occupiers have trimmed down their list of demands.

The students occupying Campbell Hall at UCLA have declined to present any demands to the administration. The students occupying Kerr Hall and Kresge Town Hall at UC Santa Cruz have … well, they’ve gone in another direction.

Twenty-four short-term demands, ranging from a repeal of today’s fee increases to a total disarming of all UC police. Eleven more long-term demands, including the abolition of the regents and a tripling of state support for the UC system.

Good stuff. Here’s the list:

Demands:
1. Repeal the 32% fee increase
2. Stop all current construction on campus
3. UC funds and budget are made transparent
4. Verbal and written commitment to Master Plan
5. Total amnesty to all people occupying buildings and involved in student protest concerning budget cuts including: Doug G., and Brian Glasscock and Olivia Egan Rudolph
6. Keep all resource centers open: engaging education, women’s resource center, and all other diversity centers
7. Keep the campus child-care center open
8. Repeal cuts to the Community Studies Field Program
9. Re-funding the CMMU field studies coordinator positions
10. Get verbal and written agreement from admins to shut-down campus for one day for the purpose of educating students on the budget cuts
11. Said support for AB656
12. Said commitment to work-study for all who are eligible
13. Making UC Santa Cruz a safe campus for all undocumented (AB540) students and workers
14. Keeping LALS professors Guillermo Delgado & Susan Jonas
15. Repeal all furloughs to all campus employees, renege the 15% cut in labor time for custodians
16. Stop the gutting of funding for fellowships and TAships and the re-instatement of TAs who lost their jobs due the budget cuts from this quarter
17. Re-prioritizing funding so that essential student services i.e. the library get adequate funding to ensure regular library hours
18. Censure Mark Yudof
19. Un-arming UC police of all weapons including tasers
20. NO SCPD police allowed on campus
21. An apology from the regents and the state
22. Creating a free and permanent organizing space on campus for student activists and organizers (first options: Kresge Town Hall)
23. Due process for students:
a. trial by peers
b. constitutional rights for students tried under the UC judicial system
24. Making rent affordable for Family Student Housing, ensuring that the price does not exceed that of operating costs

Long Term:
1. no student fees
2. return to master plan
3. abolition of regents’ positions
4. abolition of all student debts
5. tripling of funds from the state to public universities
6. all eligible students get work-study
7. highest UC salaries are tied proportionally to the lowest waged workers
8. Impeach Mark Yudof
9. Representation of students and faculty equal to UCOP/UC Regents
10. All UCSC tuition fees stay at UCSC
11. UC Money is only invested to education
a. cut ties with Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos & Livermore National Labs

Note | This post is from Wednesday, November 18. For news of the events of the 19th, including the student takeover of a building on the UCLA campus, click here. For news on the November 20th occupation of a building on the Berkeley campus, click here.

A little before noon today, University of California Students Association president Victor Sanchez posted on Twitter that campus police had used Tasers and batons on student protesters at the UCLA meeting of the UC regents. Sanchez’s post was retweeted more than forty times over the course of the afternoon, but he provided no details then or later.

It wasn’t clear from Sanchez’s post whether he was an eyewitness to the events, and early media reports provided no corroboration. About an hour later, in fact, the UCLA Daily Bruin used Twitter to post a flat denial from Lynn Tierney, director of communications for the UC president, that any student had been Tasered at the protest. The Bruin soon expanded upon that denial in an article, saying Tierney had told them that “police [had] not used tear gas, Tasers or rubber bullets” on the crowd, and that there had been no injuries to student demonstrators.

Within a few hours, however, it had become clear that Tierney’s denial was false, and that Sanchez’s post was accurate.

In a mid-afternoon press release, UCLA admitted that two campus police officers had used tasers “in light stun mode” against student protesters, and that two students had been injured in the protests — though it claimed that those injuries had not been caused by tasers.

Sanchez’s claim that cops had used batons on protesters was confirmed more directly. In a video posted to YouTube this evening, a police officer angrily lashed students with a baton before being restrained by a colleague.

Photos posted at the Daily Bruin website also show campus cops’ aggressive stance on campus. One showed an officer pointing a pellet weapon at protesters, while another showed a different officer threatening a student with a Taser.

Police use of Tasers in non-emergency situations has become far too common in recent years, and such casual violence has at times had tragic results. The students of UCLA deserve an honest accounting of today’s events.

November 20 | A post at LAist notes that UCLA recently settled a lawsuit with a student who was wrongly Tasered on campus in 2006. They wound up paying the guy $220,000.

The blog also posts a photo of a UCLA protester being Tasered in the chest, and notes that just last month the Taser company warned customers that if you Taser someone in the chest, “a lawsuit likely will follow.”

Oops.

It’s 10:30 am in California, and there’s already been a huge amount of activity surrounding the UC Regents’ UCLA meeting to approve huge increases in University of California fees.

Public comment on the fee proposal was the first item on the Regents’ agenda this morning, and UC Student Regent-designate Jesse Chang has been liveblogging events as they happened.

Originally scheduled for just twenty minutes, that time was doubled, and then extended again when the Regents moved to end it while four speakers were waiting for their turn at the microphone — students interrupted the meeting with chants until the chair agreed to allow the last four speakers to be heard.

When the chanting continued even after those speakers, the Regents moved to clear the room. According to Twitter reports, they recessed and left the hearing room while police dispersed the crowd. Eight attendees refused to leave and were arrested.

There’s lots more going on today — a mass rally against the fee hikes is scheduled for noon — and I’ll be updating with news as I get it.

10:40 am | The Mercury News is confirming reports of eight arrests at the meeting. The police say the eight were booked for unlawful assembly and will be released.

10:45 am | I’ve set up a Twitter list of people posting on the meeting and related protests. Please feel free to suggest feeds I should add.

10:55 am | The UCLA Daily Bruin has a live video feed of the meeting.

11:15 am | A group of students stood in the viewing section of the Regents’ meeting room a few minutes after eleven and began singing “We Shall Overcome” alternating with “We Are Not Afraid.” Meeting went into recess, and police arrested the singers. Many students in the viewing area raised fists in solidarity, breaking into cheers of support as the last of the group was arrested.

11:30 am | Number of new arrestees put at six by local media. Chair of Regents committee warned that if there was another disruption the room would be cleared completely. Two students now addressing the committee, opposing the increases.

12:05 pm | Public galleries just cleared after another blowup. Cops declared the gallery an unlawful assembly. Emotional conversation between student protesters and student regents right before the room was cleared.

1:05 pm | Student Regent Designate Jesse Cheng left the meeting room with the students who were expelled, while Student Regent Jesse Bernal stayed inside for the vote. He was the only regent to vote “no.” Cheng is now back inside, continuing to liveblog the meeting.

1:10 pm | Conflicting information circulating about police activity in connection with the protest outside the meeting. Several reports of taserings on Twitter, but the Daily Bruin says the administration officials deny that tasers have been used. Trying to get confirmation of other claims.

1:50 pm | A UCLA press release says that twelve of the fourteen people arrested inside the meeting today were students. The same press release estimates the size of the crowd outside at five hundred, and says that one protester was injured and taken to the hospital.

1:55 pm | The Daily Bruin is reporting on Twitter that protesters outside the Regents’ meeting are planning to block all exits to the building at three o’clock.

I’ll be flying to Croatia in a few days for a three-day symposium on contemporary student activism.

The meeting, “Student Protests of 2009: Methods, Context, and Implications,” (or, in the original Croatian, Studentski Prosvjedi 2009: Metode, Kontekst, I Implikacije) is being sponsored by the Sociology students’ organization at the University of Zagreb, which saw a series of student occupations last spring. The upcoming event grew out of that experience, and out of the broader wave of student activism that’s been sweeping Europe in recent months. (The call for papers can be found here.)

I’ll have more to say about the symposium before it happens, and I’ll be blogging and tweeting about it while it’s going on, but for now here’s the schedule:

Friday

Does the Actual European Bologna strategy Respond to the European Students’ Aspirations?, Guillaume Sylvestre, France

The Struggle to Free Higher Education, Luka Matic, Croatia

Bachelor of Ass, Marcel Mansouri, Germany

Opening Banquet

Saturday

Politics in Education, Adis Sadikovic and Gorica Stevanovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina

From Democracy to Social Issues? Student Protests in Serbia Since the Early 1990s, Dorde Tomic, Germany

American Student Organizing in an Age of Social Networks, Angus Johnston, United States

The Student Protests as a Test for Civic Society, Kristiyan Vladislavov Hristov and Diana Boykova Velcheva, Bulgaria

Transitional Education, Azra Hadzihajdic and Emin Eminagic, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sunday

Affective Politics, Zdravko Popovic, Croatia

Types of Protest Participants: An Empirical Analysis, panel presentation, Croatia

Croatian Student Protests and Video Cameras: The Importance of Filming as Much As Possible, Igor Bezinovic, Croatia

Short Film

Roundtable Discussion

For those of y’all that are not at the University of Maryland or follow student power news, there is some shit going down. Here’s my weekly Diamondback comic, soon to be a twice-weekly comic.

For some context, basically the University is claiming to be putting their all into this brand new Diversity Strategic Plan, which is largely bullshit, and behind the scenes they are pulling shit like firing the Associate Provost of Diversity and Equity, while continuing to slowly shave the funding off of programs in the humanities. Also they just paid $250,000 to “rebrand” the University with the new slogan “Unstoppable Starts Here,” which is universally regarded as the dumbest slogan ever.

College!

I should have a new comic soon…

Jenna B.

In the last two days German students have launched lecture hall occupations at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munster, and Potsdam in solidarity with the Austrian student protests that have been going on for the last two weeks.

The German student demonstrators’ website can be found here. (A Google translation can be found here.)

The site’s name, “unsereunis,” is taken from one of the slogans of the Austrian student movement, and translates as “our universities.” Alongwith #unibrennt, #unsereunis is one of the major Twitter hashtags for the movement.

More news as I get it.

In late September the Student Government Association of the University of North Texas, under heavy pressure from UNT parents and alumni, voted down a bylaw amendment that would have allowed same-sex couples to run for homecoming king and queen.

Now the SGA is letting UNT’s students decide the issue for themselves.

In a 22-1 vote on October 21, the UNT student senate voted to call a student referendum on the bylaw change. Balloting will be conducted online from November 16th through the 20th.

The vote reportedly followed a protest at the SGA one week earlier, at which more than fifty students descended on a meeting chanting pro-equality slogans.

The original proposal to allow same-sex couples in the homecoming court deeply divided the student senate, who rejected it by a vote of 10-5 with 8 abstentions.

Update | Students rejected the proposal to allow same-sex homecoming couples by a margin of 58% to 42%. Thirteen percent of UNT students took part in the referendum.

The student occupations in Austria are still going on. No major news stories have emerged over the weekend, but a bunch of blogs do have new coverage. Here are some relevant links:

• A good short overview of the situation.
• The protests’ Facebook fan page. (Nearly 25,000 fans, but mostly in German.)
• A discussion of the connections between Austria and the current wave of activism in California.
• An analysis of the domestic political context of the protests within Austria.

Ang JRU COMMUNE ay ang opisyal na online portal ng mga progresibo at radikal na estudyante ng Jose Rizal University. Itinatag ang online commune na to para i-maximize ang mga makabagong paraan ng pakikipag usap na hatid ng mga makabagong teknolohiya katulad ng mga social networking sites gaya ng Facebook , Friendster at Multiply at ng mga blogging sites tulad nitong WordPress bilang paraan para makapag mulat at makapag organisa sa malawak na hanay ng mga estudyante; hindi lang ng mga taga JRU; kungdi sa lahat ng kabataang maabot nito.

Binubuo ang kolektibo nito; pangunahin ng dalawang pang masang organisasyon na nagsusulong ng pagbabagong panlipunan at pambansang demokrasya – ang ANAKBAYAN at KARATULA.

Ang ANAKBAYAN ay ang pinaka komprehensibong pang masang organisasyon na nagbubuklod sa pinakamalawak na hany ng mga kabataan. Mula sa mga komunidad hanggang sa mga pamantasan at kolehiyo; mula sa mga kabataang manggagawa’t magsasaka hanggang sa mga kabataang Moro at iba pang pambansang minorya. Binuo ang ANAKBAYAN sa pagkilala ng makasaysayang papel ng kabataan bilang isang pwersang tumatangkilik at nagsusulong ng pagbabagong panlipunan laban sa luma at mapanupil na sistemang mala-kolonyal at mala-pyudal na pumipigil sa pag unlad.

Ang KARATULA naman o Kabataang Artista Para sa Tunay na Kalayaan ay binubuo ng mga progresibong manggagawang pang kultura, musicians, manunulat, graphic artist, dibuhista, manunula, artistang pang teatro atbp. Ginagamit nila ang kanilang talento bilang pangunahing porma ng pagmumulat sa malawak na masang kanilang pinagtatanghalan.

Ang dalawang organisasyong ito (Anakbayan at Karatula) ay nabuhay na sa loob ng komunidad ng JRU simula pa noong dekada70 at muling nagpalakas at mag organisa muli noong 2007. Sa mga panahong iyon ay nagawa na ng kolektibo ang ibat ibang kampanya na nagsusulong para sa karapatan ng mga estudyante. Pinakamatingkad siguro ay ang TOFI Fight(Tuition and Other Fee Increase) noong unang semestre ng 2008; kung saan nakapagsagawa ang mga estudyante ng dalawang major action : Ang RedShirt Day at ang makasaysayang Snake Rally para tuligsain ang pagtataas ng tuition ng Admin ng walang karampatang konsultasyon sa kanilang mga mag aaral.

Mula pa noong 2007 ay nakaranas na ng ibat ibang porma ng campus repression ang mga estudyanteng nangangahas na sumali sa mga progresibong organisasyon. Ang pinaka marahas na karanasan ng buong kolektibo ng JRU ay ang ginawa ng Admin na pagsususpindi sa JRU19. Kung saan labing syam na estudyante ay nasuspindi dahil lamang sa nagsagawa sila ng snake rally sa loob ng kanilang campus para himukin ang iba pa nilang kamag aral na sumama sa pagkilos laban sa sunod sunod na pagtaas ng presyo ng langis at pag abandona ng gobyerno sa ibat ibang sektor ng serbisyong panlipunan.

July 18 2008 nang magsagawa ng snake rally ang mga estudyante sa loob mismo ng JRU. Isang kilos protestang napapanahon naman dahil sa sunod sunod na krisis na kinakaharap ng buong bansa dahil sa pag abandona ng gobyerno sa kapakanan n kanyang mamamayan. Ngunit ito ay agad na sinupil ng Admin at dinala ang labing syam na estudyante sa loob ng Dean’s Office at doon ay opisyal na idineklara nila na suspindido na ang mga kabataang ang kasalanan lamang ay ang kanilang mahigpit na paghawak sa kanilang karapatang magsalita at ang kasalanang subukin himukin ang iba pa nilang kamag aral na makialam para sa pagbabagong panlipunan.

Hindi pa sila nakuntento sa pagssuspindi lamang. Ang sumunod na hakbang na kanilang ginawa ay ang tuluyang pagtanggal(forced transfer) sa apat na estudyante mula sa labing syam na kanilang sinuspindi. Sila Louie galang, Mike Dantes, Kester Santos at Danica Dimayacyac ang mga nakaranas ng pinaka mataas na porma ng pasismo mula sa isang pamantasan.

Ang ginawa ng JRU Admin ay isang manipestasyon lamang ng Pasistang oryentasyon nito kung saan para mapanatili nila ang isang Komersyalisado at Kolonyalisadong porma ng edukasyon; kinakasangkapan nila ang Pasismo para supilin ang sinumang maglalakas loob na kumalaban sa kasalukuyang mapanupil na sistema ng edukasyon at ng lipunan. Ngunit kahit gaano man ka represibo at pasista ng pamantasang ito; hindi nito nagawang supilin ang mga kabataang nagsusulong ng pagbabagong panlipunan. Bagkus ay mas lalo lang nilang binigyan ng dahilan ang mga kabataan para labanan ang Komersyalisado, Kolonyalisado, Pasista at Elitistang porma ng edukasyon at palitan ito ng isang Makabayan, Siyentipiko at Maka Masang oryentasyon ng edukasyon.

Kahit na ilang beses na kaming nakaranas ng pandarahas at panunupil mula sa Admin ng JRU ay hindi kami magsasawang magmulat, mag organisa at mag mobilisa ng mga estudyante para sa mga demokratikong interes ng mamamayan at pagbabagong panlipunan. Dahil naniniwala kami na hindi lang dapat natatali ang isang estudyante sa apat na sulok ng kanyang classrom kung saan natatali lang sya sa mga theoretical na pag aaral na hindi man lang nya naisasapraktika. Dahil sa labas nito ay isang lipunan na dapat nyang pag aralan at intindihin na magsisilbing gabay sa kanya para sa mas malawak pang porma ng paglaban.

Hindi lamang tayo nakatali sa pakikibaka para sa libre at de kalidad na edukasyon. Katuwang din tayo ng mga magsasaka sa laban para sa tunay na repormang agraryo; kasama din tayo ng mga manggagawa para sa disente at marangal na sahod. At higit sa lahat ay katuwang tayo ng buong sambayanan sa paglaban sa Imperyalismo, Burukrata Kapitalismo at Pyudalismo na tatlong pangunahing dahilan ng pagiging atrasado ng ating lipunan sa ngayon.

Kayat patuloy na magmulat, mag organisa at mag mobilisa sa pinaka malawak na hanay ng estudyante.

Ipagpatuloy ang militanteng tradisyon ng mga kabataang estudyante.

Mabuhay ang kabataang nagsusulong ng pagbabagong panlipunan!

Mabuhay ang kabataang nagsusulong ng pambansang demokrasya!

Ang JRU COMMUNE ay bukas sa lahat ng estudyante at kabataan na gustong sumali sa aming kampanya para sa pagbabagong panlipunan. Bukas ang pinto ng aming dalawang pang masang organisasyon-Ang ANAKBAYAN at KARATULA sa sinumang gustong maging miyembre nito. Kami ay nag ooffer ng mga study circles at educational discussion’s para maarmasan ang mga estudyante ng dunong at para rin pag aralan ang ating lipunan.

Kita kits nalang sa campus…

On Tuesday night someone left a comment on one of my posts on the Southwestern College faculty suspensions that that passed on the text of SWC Governing Board President Jean Roesch’s Monday statement on the incident. Here’s that statement, quoted in full:

To: College Community

Many of you have learned that four faculty members were placed on paid administrative leave on Thursday, October 22, 2009 and three faculty members remain on paid administrative leave at this time, pending the outcome of the investigation. Please understand that no formal charges or allegations have been made against any College faculty member or employee at this time.

The student rally held between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. on October 22, 2009, is not the focus of the investigation. The College is investigating safety and security issues that arose after the approved organized student rally. The College respects, values and is committed to lawful free expression and the student rally provided an opportunity for our students to voice their concerns and to underscore the challenges that all community college students, and community colleges, are experiencing.

The College is committed to maintaining a safe environment for our students and staff, which is the focus of the investigation.

I’m guessing, since the comment was placed in response to a blogpost critical of the SWC administration, and since the commenter adopted the moniker “SWC Professor,” that I and my readers are intended to take this statement as a rebuttal to our criticisms. If so, it’s a deeply disappointing one.

President Roesch seems to believe that if you give students and faculty authorization to hold a one-hour rally at a specific on-campus location, you’ve dispensed with your obligations to protect “lawful free expression” in the college community. But that’s not how the First Amendment works, and it’s not how a college should work.

The First Amendment doesn’t just protect free speech. It also explicitly protects the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. A public college administrator is in a very literal sense an agent of the government, and SWC is a public college.

Students and faculty at a public college have a moral right to hold a peaceful rally on campus. They have a moral right to peacefully march across campus to the president’s office. There should be no difference in the eyes of the law, and there should be no difference in the eyes of any campus administrator, between a “approved organized student rally” and a spontaneous, extemporaneous one.

The SWC administration has so far offered no evidence that any incident that took place on Thursday afternoon placed that day’s march outside the bounds of fundamental First Amendment protections.

A community college dean who blogs anonymously at Inside Higher Ed has weighed in on the faculty suspensions at California’s Southwestern College, and his piece is definitely required reading.

“Dean Dad,” as he styles himself, is not a fan of campus protesters. “People who don’t deal with budgets for a living often don’t understand the constraints within them,” he writes, and too frequently “leap to the moral high ground and start passing judgments, loudly and publicly, based on misinformation.”

That said, he notes that when you’re a college administrator, dealing with such criticism — fair or unfair — is part of your job. And there are a bunch of ways you can do it:

You can work together with your critics to lobby for more government aid. You can bring those critics to the table and ask them for concrete recommendations. You can divide them. You can co-opt them. You can ignore them. You can conduct a PR blitz. (He takes a couple of sentences to describe each of these options, and as I said above it’s all well worth reading.)

Finally, he says, you can adopt the strategy that SWC president Raj Chopra has apparently chosen. You can “do your best imitation of Dr. Evil, go out on limbs that will be sawed off quickly in court, and make yourself look like an idiot in public.”

Again, DD is no friend of Chopra’s critics. He’s writing from the premise that Chopra’s position on the budget is reasonable, and that his student and faculty antagonists are unreasonable and ill-informed. And he still thinks Chopra is acting like a grade-A clod.

The title of DD’s piece is “Power 101.” He’s not concerned with whether Chopra had a technical legal right to authorize the suspensions, or what specifically happened on campus last Thursday. He doesn’t care, because those questions aren’t questions Chopra should have been asking.

A college like Southwestern is an institution, embedded in a network of other institutions — state government, unions, student groups, advocacy groups, non-profits, businesses, media. If you’re looking to transform an institution like that, or you’re hoping to thwart someone else’s attempts to transform it, you need to understand power. You need to understand the response that your actions will provoke, and the effect of that response on your position.

A leader of the ANC in South Africa once chastised a reporter who was trying to understand the long-term strategy of the apartheid government with regard to Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment. “You’re thinking like a chess player,” he said. “They play checkers.”

Most college and university administrators in the 21st century are adept chess players.

Raj Chopra plays checkers.

The student government at Idaho’s Boise State University has passed a resolution asking BSU’s faculty senate to amend a proposal that would reportedly end student participation in the academic grievance process.

Under current procedure, if a student’s complaint about an academic issue cannot be resolved through discussions with his or her professor, the chair of department, or the relevant dean, the dispute is brought to an Academic Grievance Board composed of seven faculty members and seven students.

But under a proposal currently under consideration by the faculty senate, students would be removed from the grievance process entirely.

Under the new setup, the final decision on any academic grievance would be made by the provost’s office, with the provost empowered, “at his or her discretion,” to “convene a panel … of three deans or associate deans” to assist in making a judgment.

One BSU administrator called the existing process cumbersome and antiquated, with a vice president of the university’s faculty senate saying that it is often difficult to find seven student members to sit on the grievance board.

But student government leaders rejected the idea that students should be removed from the process entirely, proposing that a six-member panel, including three students selected by the BSU student government and three faculty members selected by the provost, be given ultimate responsibility for grievance appeals.

Hat tip to the National Student News Service for bringing our attention to this story.

Yesterday saw a statewide conference in Berkeley of California student activists working on the struggle to save public higher education in the state. More news as we get it.

Monday update | This morning’s Daily Californian reports that six hundred students attended Saturday’s conference, and that they voted to hold a statewide day of action on the budget crisis on March 4.

The Californian also put up a video report on the conference, featuring clips from the conference and a brief interview with UC student regent designate (and friend of StudentActivism.net) Jesse Cheng.

Linda Sue Warner, the president of Haskell Indian Nation University, isn’t having a good year.

Warner, who has served as president of HINU since 2007, took criticism in February for a bizarre episode in which she forced a student critic of her administration to graduate early. At the time, Warner was summoned to Washington DC for an emergency meeting with university trustees and government officials.

Warner kept her job after that incident, but it wasn’t long before she was in the spotlight again.

As part of a campaign to improve and expand the campus, Warner sought to raise tuition from $215 a semester to $1000. HINU is, however, the only four-year college for Native American students that is operated by the federal government, and it has a long tradition of free or nearly-free education. Warner’s plans to nearly quintuple fees sparked a huge campus backlash, and the university’s board of regents called for her to be fired.

That hasn’t happened … yet.

At the beginning of the fall semester, Warner was told by her bosses at the Bureau of Indian Education that she would not be returning to HINU this year. Instead, she would be sent to the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, a two-year college in New Mexico, to help them with their accreditation process. HINU would have an interim president while she was away.

According to news reports, Warner has been forbidden to talk to the press.

As of now, Warner is slated to return to HINU in January. We’ll keep an eye on the story and let you know whether that happens.

In the meantime, be sure to check out our coverage of that involuntary early graduation story from the spring. It’s a weird one.

Fears of  massive student protests coordinated with an upcoming general strike have led the University of Puerto Rico to shut all eleven of its campuses for an entire week.

The Puerto Rican government announced plans late last month to lay off sixteen thousand government workers in an attempt to close a $3 billion budget deficit. Since the announcement, students and labor have taken a number of protest actions, with student strikes shuttering several UPR campuses in recent weeks.

Fearing similar actions in the lead-up to an island-wide general strike slated for Thursday, and hoping to “calm things down and to allow the university community to think peacefully and constructively about the problems facing Puerto Rico,” the university’s president announced a weeklong system-wide “recess” beginning on Monday.

October 15 update, 11:15 am | A hundred thousand protesters are expected to participate in this morning’s largest rally in support of the Puerto Rican general strike.

11:25 am | Reports from Twitter, citing local news coverage, say that students from the University of Puerto Rico’s school of law have marched onto the Luis A. Ferré Expressway, a major highway into San Juan, shutting it down. Follow #ParoPR for Twitter coverage of the day’s events, most of it in Spanish.

October 16 update | Students occupied the Luis A. Ferré Expressway for eight hours yesterday, maintaining their position long after the primary protest march had ended. They were eventually convinced to disperse after a personal appeal from the elderly Puerto Rican nationalist Rafael Cancel Miranda. [Spanish language news report here, Google automatic translation here.]