Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/05/07/campus_crazies_across_the_country.php
Monday, May 7, 2001
Dartmouth College is a unique place in many ways. But the College is not alone when it comes to occasional bursts of activist enthusiasm and disorganized protest.
Harvard University
In what the Harvard Crimson called an escalation in the Progressive Student Labor Movement's (PSLM) two-year campaign for a $10.25 hourly living wage for all Harvard employees, forty-six students staged a sit-in at Massachussetts Hall on April 17 that went on for two weeks. Marches and demonstrations continue although the protest has surprisingly proven reasonably successful. University president Neil L. Rudenstine announced on April 27 his intention to form a new committee to reexamine the living wage issue. When the protest began ten days earlier, administrators called the issue 'closed.'
Only 400 of Harvard's over 13,000 employees are paid les than $10.25 an hour according to an April 18 press release from the Harvard News. Last spring, a committee of faculty and administrators released a 100-page report recommending increased worker benefits, including health insurance and access to campus facilities, in lieu of a smaller increases.
On April 21, Harvard's Undergraduate Council voted 14-9 to condemn the PSLM's sit-in. Two students attempted to leave the meeting room to eliminate the necessary quorum. The Council's bill calls the PSLM's actions 'extreme' and cited them as continuing disruptions to students who live and study in Massachussetts Hall and nearby buildings.
A poll by the Crimson published on April 30 showed 53% of students support the cause (down 16% from last year), 50% support the occupation of Massachusetts Hall, and 23% of students and 44% of those in favor of a living wage would support the wage if their tuition subsequently rose.
Wesleyan University
Seven students went on a week-long hunger strike in support of Howard Bernstein, a visiting education professor. After they ended their fast on April 26 and were joined by other students calling themselves 'Friends of Howard,' the protestors seized the university president's office for twelve hours.
Senior members of the College of Letters (COL), the administration, and an advisory committee decided to terminate Bernstein's contract in the spring of 1998. They agreed to offer Bernstein a three-year, non-renewable appointment as Visiting Professor of Letters and, according to a letter signed by the university president, a former provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, and the COL Chair and senior members, to not 'propose any special multi-year faculty position tailored for Professor Bernstein beyond the one [detailed in this letter].'
The university had employed Bernstein for twenty years, but he was never on a tenured track. Director of University Communications Justin Harmon explained that the University reviewed guidelines put out by the American Association of University Professors that 'say it's not appropriate to use short-term contracts by people who are given the responsibility of a full-time position.' Assistant Provost Paula Lawson explained, 'You can't move from non-tenured [positions] to tenure. It's not a promotion, they're parallel entities,' with the differentiating standard being research and scholarship. Harmon says the university was particularly generous in providing time to find another position in Bernstein's case since, 'He was essentially given a pink-slip with three years to clean out his desk, which is virtually unheard of in the regular work world.'
An editorial in the Wesleyan Argus condemned protestors for their 'decision to capitulate to the threats of the Administration' which 'undermined the considerable efforts of those who fasted for a full week and all their supporters.' 'By backing down,' says the editorial, 'the Bernstein protestors missed an opportunity to sacrifice their liberty for a cause to which several have already sacrificed their body fat.' Another editorial chastised Bernstein for keeping quiet about 'his plans, his emotions, or even what he thinks could be the reasons for the termination of his contract.'
Indiana University-Bloomington
An April 27 article in Indiana University's Daily Student credits thirty people, students and nonstudents, with a display of activism for smoking marijuana in Dunn Meadow. It was supposedly a marijuana legalization protest; Cogi Haggerty, a participant but not a university student, admitted the protest was not planned very far in advance and people just gradually joined. He commented, 'It's a beautiful day. Ten people got together and just decided to go smoke in a park.'
University of California-Berkeley
In what UC police Captain Bill Cooper calls the university's biggest protest in three years, thirty-two protesters were arrested on April 24 for locking and blocking the entrances to a campus building for six hours in a demonstration for a Palestinian state and against the California university system's investments in Israeli businesses. In an interview with the Daily Californian, student participant Snehi Shingavi said the students were using 'critical thinking tools' to pressure the UC Board of Regents to divest the university system from Nokia, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, and other companies. Most of the protesters were members of the Students for Justice in Palestine organization.
The demonstration began at noon. Students marched from Sather Gate to Wheeler Hall, a large teaching facility. Students chained nine doors shut and locked arms to block the building's other three. Some rallied on the front steps of the building to speak. There were police present from the start and a counter-protest was organized by members of the Israeli Action Committee, who objected to the Palestinian student group's equation of zionism with racism.
Police removed the chains, a fire hazard and code violation, from the doors and began making arrests at 4:30. Protestors were cited and released at a booking station established in the Wheeler Hall lobby. At 6:00, the police ended the demonstration as a team of thirty officers physically removed student and community protestors from the doorways.
Some students pushed their way through demonstrators at the doorway or climbed through first-story windows throughout the afternoon to get to class. One student was told by protestors that classes were cancelled. When he entered the building and found his class in progress, he was moved to write a letter to the Daily Cal, in which he asked, 'If a group of protesters will lie to me about a logistical situation, less than 100 feet away, how on Earth am I supposed to trust their assertions about a political abstraction, thousands of miles away?'
Another letter to the Daily Cal blamed the UC Regents for increasing his chances of developing skin cancer after he got a sunburn while protesting.