In Defense of Student Government «

In Defense of Student Government «:

In Defense of Student Government

by Angus Johnston

Last month I wrote up some of my thoughts on one of the classic essays in American student activist history — Ray Glass’s “Are Student Governments Obsolete.” In that post I argued that there was a strange paradox lurking in Glass’s repudiation of the student government in favor of a voluntary student union organizing model, since Glass himself had helped to found one of the most important and effective statewide student associations the nation has ever seen — an organization that had student governments as its membership base, and was funded through mandatory dues.
In the course of exploring this apparent contradiction I took issue with some of Glass’s criticisms of mandatory dues structures in the labor movement, quoting labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein’s suggestion that if “the price of civilization is taxes, the price of unionism is solidarity. And, yes, that does involve coercing people to contribute to the union.”
Patrick St. John at For Student Power has written a really worthwhile response to that, in which he pushes back — quite effectively — against my assessment of the importance mandatory dues in the labor context. “When an