VIDEO: Student Occupations at Five Campuses
Students at Emory University were arrested after sitting in to demand termination of the school’s contract with food service giant Sodexo, exposed for human rights abuses globally.
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