Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Two UC Divestment Votes Coming Tonight � Student Activism

Two UC Divestment Votes Coming Tonight � Student Activism

Two UC Divestment Votes Coming Tonight

The saga of the UC Berkeley student government’s Israel divestment resolution continues this evening, in the final student senate meeting of the academic year.
Meanwhile, students at the University of California San Diego, inspired by the Berkeley example, will be bringing a vote on a similar resolution to their own student government for the first time tonight.
Neither of the two resolutions call for divestment from Israeli businesses. Instead, each urges divestment from

135 Berkeley Faculty Call for Suspension of Disciplinary Action Against Student Protesters

Saying that “current disciplinary procedures are so badly flawed that they should be abandoned at this time,” more than a hundred Berkeley professors have signed a petition asking administrators to suspend disciplinary proceedings against students who participated in campus protests on November 20 and December 11, 2009.
Citing specific inadequacies in the campus code of conduct and “flagrant instances of bad judgment on the part of those conducting the inquiries,” the petitioners argue that “no just outcome can emerge from these procedures in their current form.” In closing, they ask the university to re-affirm its commitment
to rights of free speech, which include rights to peaceful protest. If these rights are arbitrarily suspended or

New Jersey High Schoolers Stage Huge Walkout

Tens of thousands of New Jersey high school students walked out of classes yesterday in what the New York Times called “one of the largest grass-roots demonstrations to hit New Jersey in years.” The protests were a response to school funding cuts by New Jersey’s new governor, and to the rejection of school funding measures in ballot initiatives across the state last week.
The walkouts were the result of a Facebook call-to-arms posted weeks ago by Michelle Ryan Lauto, an 18-year-old college first-year and 2009 graduate of Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan.
Governor Christopher Christie belittled the protests in a statement, expressing the “firm hope that the students