Not at all, but I don't think our students have ever protested **anything** in my 20 yrs here. Plus, we're halfway through finals and this place is deserted.
CC in TN. My students are too broke and/or busy to protest anything, no matter how valid the cause. It’s hard to think about protesting for the greater good when a significant minority of our students are in poverty, we have a food bank on every campus, and one student emailed me saying they couldn’t afford to buy a #2 pencil for the Scantron on the final exam.
The food bank at my previous cc would email staff to come get veggies when we hadn't had enough students taking them. Appalling how many staff looked forward to the giveaways to take some pressure off their food budgets. Our college assistants in particular are super underpaid but we keep them captive with health insurance on part time hours so they stay way past the time they should be looking to move on from the low pay.
I stopped by where our food bank people were tabling and they were telling me about their services for students… I took some free food and did not say I’m not a student lol
My job doesn’t give me health insurance
Tennessee is far too conservative for students to protest. The only campuses with any protests at all are Vanderbilt (with a large out-of-state population), UT-Knoxville, and the University of Memphis.
I just saw photos from the one last night in front of the law building. Cops came and it seemed to be peacefully dispersed without violence or arrests.
Our encampment started last night, thoughtfully waiting until exams ended.
Campus security is monitoring the situation and it's made the local news, otherwise there's nothing to report.
Opposite of my campuses protestors. They set up two weeks before finals but all left the moment the school year was over. The protest for some was important enough to skip finals but not important enough to give up their summer vacation for.
Yeah we had about 10 students arrested, tear gas deployed to disperse protesters on campus after hours, and a fake bomb threat. I’m in the South at a state university.
Neither the CC I teach at, nor the R1 state school I'm studying at is having a ton of issues. The CC is obviously quiet because it's mostly commuters and other working class people, but the R1 has had a decent showing for the past couple of weeks - it's just that none of it has been overly disruptive.
Yes, brief encampment and an over the top crackdown by admin/police resulting in arrests and suspension of students and faculty. Pretty sure things are going to get uglier before they get better.
There’s an encampment, and our grad student Union is thinking of going on strike because of the bad faith bargaining of the university. They want to increase wages by less than 10% but increase insurance premiums by more than what the raise would cover. Essentially paying us less than now. And we are an R1 state school that is well known.
Also my department is pretty tense right now for lists of stuff, mainly stemming from poor communication and some overzealous fellow grad students who jump immediately to retaliation before trying to actually talk and solve the problems.
It’s a mess right now…
I teach at a polytech in a fairly isolated small city in northern Canada. I don't think students here have ever protested anything. Everything here is running as normal.
No and I have seen students on campus protest before - against housing conditions, on behalf of the university at the state legislature, for voting rights but this protest does not seem to be on the radar. The students are focused on commencement, finals, and summer jobs.
Yes, I’m at a school which has been heavily featured on national news. We have a large showing from one side as well as a consistent counter-protest happening for over a week.
None of what I have to say here is a reflection of the stances of protesters but rather a reflection of how the protests affect my job and my students.
I can say with complete confidence that the protests themselves have not been disruptive. (I was also here a few years ago when another highly publicized protest was happening which *was* disruptive to campus function, which is my basis for comparison.) The encampment was actively encouraging students to attend classes and exams. I have students who are participating but who have prioritized class work. Things unfortunately escalated earlier this week when police were brought in and the peaceful encampment was torn down. Notably, our local town’s police refused to participate in this and any action against protestors, so only police from the uni and nearby universities were involved. The continued escalation this has been disruptive. The physical disruption is limited to one small part of campus, but I know my students are distracted.
We aren't making news.... but the news came hoping we would. It has been very peaceful here, but I'm a little annoyed at admin messaging that sounds a little like "free speech is fine, but not this free speech."
At my urban CC, there's no organized protest. My city hosts three R1 institutions and they all have encampments, and the various SLACs and R2s have also joined in.
Yes, we have an encampment. Classes are continuing as usual, and the spokespeople from the encampment met with administrators today to talk about what can be done.
I am hoping my university administration sticks to its principles/mission and doesn't call in the cops.
I imagine that'll depend on the general atmosphere of the campus, the disposition of protestors and whether there is property damage, blockades, or harm to students.
State Uni here- Our students barely make it to class as they’re working too many jobs to afford college. Protesting is a privilege they will never know.
Same. I’ve had a few students over the years going to school and working full-time, sometimes taking care of a disabled parent or are dealing with housing issues and are living in their car. We have more students on that half of the spectrum.
Not much at all. There have been a couple of demonstrations but that’s about it. My Uni is surrounded by rural area and most students work full-time jobs, i.e. not much time for or interest in protesting.
There are a few “Free Palestine” signed taped to the walls but that’s about it. Urban CC, and I think the students realize that protesting at our relatively small school won’t accomplish anything.
Either that of the school doesn’t have a lot of investments. I think the main reasons students of the Ivy are protesting as they want their universities to divest. Granted, though, that’s not really an option for them, but I think that’s what the protesters at Columbia are hoping to accomplish: stop letting Columbia put their tuition money towards bolstering a genocide.
Can universities use tuition (student funds) for external investments? I thought it was considered a restricted fund for educational purposes only (academic programs, student services, facilities, and administrative costs and stuff like that).
I know endowments can be invested, for instance.
I’m not an expert in this, so take anything I say with a grain of salt, but money is fungible, and if a university is investing their endowment, it’s because they don’t have to use that endowment money elsewhere because of student tuition. I think that’s why you see these protests on the schools where they have money to invest more than you see them on other schools. there’s a real thing that students can affect change on when the school is putting money into corporations that are selling weapons to Israel, for example.
So I can see the logic in that, but from conversations I’ve had, it’s always sounded like endowment money doesn’t get spent. Like ever. If something’s made it into the endowment, 1) it came from somewhere that wasn’t earmarked for/required to be used on something else, and 2) it’s never going anywhere
But I could absolutely be wrong, or maybe this only applies to the small private school I knew the most about
I think it doesn’t get spent because they don’t have to. It gets invested and they can use the interest. But I suspect that if it was between closing the school or spending the endowment, they would spend the endowment. I know that’s an extreme example, but if it would suggest that there is a line somewhere that separates the spending endowment from the spending endowment.
Even if we separate the idea of “students money,“ which was questionable assertion on my part anyway, students don’t want their schools making money off of what they view as a genocide. So asking them to divest from Israeli companies and weapons manufactures makes sense.
Not anything disruptive yet. Campus shut down our biggest parking lot today for something protest-related, but since I worked from home today I’m not sure exactly what that was about.
On-campus protests -- both peaceful ones, disruptive ones, and ones that engage in illegal activities -- are primarily about consciousness raising and messaging. They are pretty good at that, as long as they are aware of the fact that the way they go about their protests can alienate the voting public if they are not careful. But they also have the weakness of choosing a target (their uni's administration) that doesn't really have the ability to change US policy vis a vis Israel/Palestine. It's understandable why they choose that target -- it's available and they rightly feel that they have some stake in the moral position of their uni. But real change comes through influencing elected officials, espeically members of Congress. Divesment from arms companies sounds good, but it would not do anything to effectuate a cease fire or more humanitarian aid the Gaza in the short or medium run.
This exact scenario happened during the Vietnam war. Campus protests set the stage for much more wide-ranging activism off campus that eventually led to the election of numerous anti-war members of Congress and changed the outlook of many other members of Congress who were not actively anti-war but whose positions softened.
I think it’s only the schools that are big enough and/or rich enough to have a critical mass of students who more or less follow the news, can take these risks, invest that time and money. They might bring others along but if you don’t have enough for that initiating core, nothing is going to happen.
While I am taking no position at all on the protests’ validity, I would say that being able to get this going requires a level of privilege most don’t have.
My students, for example, are just trying to pass finals.
Public uni here with large proportion of first gen students and students under the poverty level. We've been having regular protests since Oct 7th. If anything, our students connect more closely to the idea of being "oppressed".
Several of our students got arrested last night.
But—you’re large, right?
I’m not saying that less privileged kids don’t join protests. I’m saying you need a critical mass of kids who have enough time, security and capacity for risk to get these things started. Getting it started is harder than joining. And on AVERAGE the individuals who can get things started (and join) are going to be more privileged individuals. To protest, students have to spend less time at jobs or in family caregiving responsibilities. They have to accept the repeputational and financial risk of doing less well on exams, of drawing disciplinary actions or arrests.
More people on your campus makes it more likely you have enough individuals who fit the bill to start (harder) and join (easier but still not without sacrifice) a protest like these.
I think its not that its "only for privileged people" but rather that if you have the time and money to spare you are so much more likely to show up right
I think what the poster meant is that working-class people/students have jobs so they can pay rent so they can minimize the loans they have totake out. They don't have time to camp out on campus.
It’s a lot easier to take the risk of being suspended, trespassed, or expelled if mommy and daddy are wealthy and you know you will have a soft landing whatever you do.
> I would say that being able to get this going requires a level of privilege most don’t have.
Yes; it is a privilige to be in a position to protest injustices that are not directly occuring to oneself, but that only makes it more noble. Insofar as the lens of privilige is a useful one when considering student protests, people who have it putting it to work in order to protect people who do not seems like the most important possible thing to be in *favor* of.
Yes, significantly. Several of my students have been arrested, many more traumatized in one way or another. Classroom business as usual is impossible. I opted to cancel my finals, and I am very worried about commencement and how we as a campus community heal. I dare say the 2020 lockdown was less disruptive.
I have autonomy over what I assign and do not assign. My class also has enough forms of assessment that I felt I could easily remove the last one without harming the integrity of the course.
My building keeps getting hammered with graffiti which I mostly don’t care about. Other than that the protests have been largely a positive experience on my campus.
No, but the other, major university in my city is having disruptions, arrests, teargas, and state-ordered violence against students who are protesting.
My wife has various grad students on Instagram. One is our neighbor above us. She stomps, so we know when she is home.
She went to the protests two days ago. She was out of the house about 20-30 minutes, which is about the minimal time to get there and get back. Took pics, put them on Instagram.l, and said how she was fighting blah blah.
Yesterday, she posted more pics and complained that not enough students were joining them, and that together they could enact change. However, she posted while at home. She didn't leave or go to the protest.
This is my basic experience with the protests on our campus, in a nutshell. Most spend more time on the ground, but have the same general motivations.
I do give them credit, though. They stay on the grass and off walkways, allowing us to move about campus without being blocked. Love it. When Trump wad elected I was at a different university and they blocked all pathways of travel. That really annoys me.
I’m at a large university that has had a pretty large community of students who are protesting. They have been peaceful and respectful and I’ve watched hundreds of police march in daily and make things tense. We’ve had many arrests and a lot of student resentment. I see the increased police presence at every turn; my commute to campus feels worse than normal, seeing all of the marked and unmarked cop cars everywhere. The whole admin/police reaction feels like a very performative political move, as if to say, “look at us cracking down on those liberal kids!” It’s ridiculous and it really cranks my gears.
Mine is, yes. We had a single night of entirely peaceful protests in a public space and they called in state riot police and started arresting students and faculty immediately. I am livid and have permanently lost all faith in the judgement of campus administration. They can be sure they won't be getting any help from me on anything ever again.
Protests on the last day of class. his is at a well-known school where, in the last year or so, a student came in and shot someone dead. This is also a place where shooting victims are often women and children.
No protests about gun control, or the lack of resources for those who need support with their mental health.
Interesting.
We had students marching and chanting for a couple of hours, then they dispersed. Honestly I don't know what schools were thinking when they allowed tent encampments.
There's an encampment, which has been in the news. About a week ago, news looked pretty adorable - apparently police came to the encampment when they lit candles because it's a fire hazard with the tents and left when it was ok, asked them to not put stuff directly on trees. Things have been intensifying, however - apparently they built a barricade with tables they took from an event, and incredibly there are more "community members" that seem to be added. There are calls for "more bodies" on social media by protesting student groups, which I find concerning. The admin seems to be doing its best to avoid police action (and has till now, unlike several other universities in the area). I appreciate that and hope it stays that way. They have apparently started giving disciplinary notes etc to students there? They apparently had multiple meetings and offered various options/concessions (other locations to move, other ways to support Gaza, future meetings after encampment is moved for commencement to be set up...), but zero compromise or reasoning going on, and commencement is approaching. That's based on student and local reporting. From where I work, at the edge of the campus, you wouldn't know a thing though.
The protests appear to be limited to a few campuses that have a history of student activism. The majority of college campuses in the country are in sleepy suburbs where students commute in and out.
Haven't seen anything. The kids on my old / wife's current uni work a great deal in addition to going to school, and this is a very regional, almost provincial school. Our students are into their foundering, semi-ghetto city.
Yes, but don’t want to say too much to avoid doxing myself. Entirely peaceful. One of my schools went remote, which I think was an overreaction but oh well.
I attend a state university in the Midwest. Nobody is protesting. We are all trying to get through finals and graduate next week. I heard someone say that a lot of students who graduated during the pandemic did not get a ceremony and now those same student won’t have one due to the protests. Many students, including myself, are trying to pull ourselves out of poverty with the education we are receiving. I’ve used the food pantry on campus a few times per semester since I’ve been here.
I heard the president of northwestern on npr yesterday and I’m proud of how they have handled the protests there.
mine is, classes have been moved to remote, and we are in the process of potentially voting a vote of no confidence for our chancellor. I’m really emotionally distressed frankly. I teach at one of the universities that had a lot of violence on campus that the chancellor did nothing about, you can probably figure out where I work, I don’t care what the students were protesting we should stop people who are attacking our students.
I think most of these protests are not being instigated by college students at all. They are started by professional protestors that target most of the major colleges in the area. Some students that sympathize with the issue join in, but for the most part, the people you see in the media are not actually students.
1) It was a comment about an opinion. 2) It wasn't my comment or my opinion. 3) No one needs evidence "to be of an opinion".
Example: I think pancakes are better than biscuits.
Reddit: What's your evidence? What! No evidence. Gotcha!
**You seem to not understand the difference between an opinion and a claim.**
I'm in good company, then. By starting a post with "I think" it seems fairly evident the poster is not offering a known truth or fact. The post was from some random Internet professor **and his thoughts**.
At best, it's a mix of a thought and a claim...but neither is required by Reddit to have **accompanying evidence**, which was your opening salvo.
You have literally accomplished nothing positive. You could have offered a counterclaim. Then, instead of this weird exchange with me, after reading the earlier post, readers would have found a counterclaim.
Opinion: I think that global warming is a bad thing.
Claim: I think that global warming is at least in part causes by the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Do you see how these two things use the same syntax to begin ("I think that X") but aren't actually the same thing? The first is an opinion ("a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge"), the 2nd is a claim ("an assertion of the truth of something, typically one that is disputed or in doubt"). Despite both beginning with "I think," they don't perform the same type of work. The original commenter CLAIMED that these student protests are begun by professional protestors, but refuses to provide any support for that claim.
I think that, despite this just being a reddit thread, supporting our claims with evidence is actually important. I generally try to provide evidence for my claims on Reddit, because it's good practice, it makes my arguments stronger, and it shows to other redditors where I'm getting my information.
I don't have a counterclaim for the original person because I'm not interested in debating this with them, I'm interested in seeing *where they got the fucking information on which they're basing their claim*. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?
Goddamn when did asking for evidence for a claim become so controversial? We're supposed to be intellectuals here. We're supposed to understand that our views should be supported by evidence. I don't want to argue with the original commenter, I want to understand where their views are coming from. Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand? Are you purposely being an obtuse asshole? Does it bring you joy to cause other people frustration?
Per WSJ, seems to be bad actors like the PLFP [https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca#comments\_sector](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca#comments_sector)
Having paid to access that article, it doesn't support the assertion that these protests were started by outside agitators. The only direct connections it draws between the protests and anyone considered an "outside agent" are that A) many of the leaders of some of the Palestinian groups support these protests, B) a Hamas leader called for global protests in October, and C) a former PFLP official spoke at an event in Columbia.
This article is written very poorly. It makes the fundamental mistake of arguing that because Palestinian leaders support these students protests, the protests are led by these terror groups, without any supporting evidence. What evidence they *do* provide subtly and without declaration includes information about more widespread protests in the US, conflating those with these student-led protests.
So no, from that article, it doesn't seem like bad actors like the PFLP are leading these protests.
I agree, the article doesn't show that bad actors are leading these protests. It does argue, convincingly imo, that bad actors and the protestors have common cause. ETA gift link: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca?st=wazhydg0cdbeyn6&reflink=desktopwebshare\_permalink](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca?st=wazhydg0cdbeyn6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)
I mean sure? But common causes aren't really the thing in question here. I've been asking for evidence that these protests are led by professional protestors, but nobody's been able to provide any.
I have wondered about this myself. I find it difficult to imagine that students are more passionate about Gaza than about gun control, abortion, student loans, etc. On the other hand, never underestimate the power of social contagion.
People (wrongly) speculated the same thing about campus protests in the 60s--that college students were being led by outside agitators, so I'm not going to leap to that conclusion myself.
Are these really students who care so much about the Palestinian-Israeli war?
I have been reading about companies who provide actors for demonstrations and pay up to $500/day for people to demonstrate. One article talked about how all the tents that popped up were identical, as if someone had bought a bunch of the same model specifically for everyone to use for the demonstration. Where is the money coming from?
I'm having a very hard time believing that college students who had to work so hard just to get admitted to places like UCLA and Columbia are willing to jeopardize their education and degrees over a conflict on the other side of the planet that they have never even been to. People are just too apathetic. People don't even have the conviction to go to the polls in adequate numbers, but they will skip classes and jobs for days on end, to risk arrest and being denied their degrees?
Reporters are being banned from interviewing the protesters. Are the protesters even all students? Why not let reporters freely interview the protesters?
Something smells really fishy to me....none of this adds up. I wonder if a lot of these protests are funded publicity stunts.
Not at all, but I don't think our students have ever protested **anything** in my 20 yrs here. Plus, we're halfway through finals and this place is deserted.
Yeah, my students are antitest, not protest.
Nice one.
I'm definitely stealing this one!
CC in TN. My students are too broke and/or busy to protest anything, no matter how valid the cause. It’s hard to think about protesting for the greater good when a significant minority of our students are in poverty, we have a food bank on every campus, and one student emailed me saying they couldn’t afford to buy a #2 pencil for the Scantron on the final exam.
I’m in poverty and could use a food bank, and I work here
The food bank at my previous cc would email staff to come get veggies when we hadn't had enough students taking them. Appalling how many staff looked forward to the giveaways to take some pressure off their food budgets. Our college assistants in particular are super underpaid but we keep them captive with health insurance on part time hours so they stay way past the time they should be looking to move on from the low pay.
I stopped by where our food bank people were tabling and they were telling me about their services for students… I took some free food and did not say I’m not a student lol My job doesn’t give me health insurance
Tennessee is far too conservative for students to protest. The only campuses with any protests at all are Vanderbilt (with a large out-of-state population), UT-Knoxville, and the University of Memphis.
Really? There were protests at UT-Knoxville?
Some small things, buts its been pretty mild.
I just saw photos from the one last night in front of the law building. Cops came and it seemed to be peacefully dispersed without violence or arrests.
Our encampment started last night, thoughtfully waiting until exams ended. Campus security is monitoring the situation and it's made the local news, otherwise there's nothing to report.
Opposite of my campuses protestors. They set up two weeks before finals but all left the moment the school year was over. The protest for some was important enough to skip finals but not important enough to give up their summer vacation for.
Turns out they're not protesting Israel, they just need a place to stay before the lease on their apartment starts for the summer.
That's more spot on than you know, in this location.
Yeah we had about 10 students arrested, tear gas deployed to disperse protesters on campus after hours, and a fake bomb threat. I’m in the South at a state university.
Neither the CC I teach at, nor the R1 state school I'm studying at is having a ton of issues. The CC is obviously quiet because it's mostly commuters and other working class people, but the R1 has had a decent showing for the past couple of weeks - it's just that none of it has been overly disruptive.
Decent showing?
Nope, although there's some hand-wringing about what they'll do if anyone gets the idea to turn graduation into a protest.
Yes, brief encampment and an over the top crackdown by admin/police resulting in arrests and suspension of students and faculty. Pretty sure things are going to get uglier before they get better.
There’s an encampment, and our grad student Union is thinking of going on strike because of the bad faith bargaining of the university. They want to increase wages by less than 10% but increase insurance premiums by more than what the raise would cover. Essentially paying us less than now. And we are an R1 state school that is well known. Also my department is pretty tense right now for lists of stuff, mainly stemming from poor communication and some overzealous fellow grad students who jump immediately to retaliation before trying to actually talk and solve the problems. It’s a mess right now…
exactly the same as my school
I teach at a polytech in a fairly isolated small city in northern Canada. I don't think students here have ever protested anything. Everything here is running as normal.
Mine are having wifi protests. Thats about it
Renaming hotspot networks? Or how does that work?
😂
No and I have seen students on campus protest before - against housing conditions, on behalf of the university at the state legislature, for voting rights but this protest does not seem to be on the radar. The students are focused on commencement, finals, and summer jobs.
Yes, I’m at a school which has been heavily featured on national news. We have a large showing from one side as well as a consistent counter-protest happening for over a week. None of what I have to say here is a reflection of the stances of protesters but rather a reflection of how the protests affect my job and my students. I can say with complete confidence that the protests themselves have not been disruptive. (I was also here a few years ago when another highly publicized protest was happening which *was* disruptive to campus function, which is my basis for comparison.) The encampment was actively encouraging students to attend classes and exams. I have students who are participating but who have prioritized class work. Things unfortunately escalated earlier this week when police were brought in and the peaceful encampment was torn down. Notably, our local town’s police refused to participate in this and any action against protestors, so only police from the uni and nearby universities were involved. The continued escalation this has been disruptive. The physical disruption is limited to one small part of campus, but I know my students are distracted.
We aren't making news.... but the news came hoping we would. It has been very peaceful here, but I'm a little annoyed at admin messaging that sounds a little like "free speech is fine, but not this free speech."
A small protest here and there. R2, Midwest outside a major metro area. Half of student body is 1st gen.
At my urban CC, there's no organized protest. My city hosts three R1 institutions and they all have encampments, and the various SLACs and R2s have also joined in.
Big R1 here. I happened to talk to our Provost today. They are very worried.
Yes, we have an encampment. Classes are continuing as usual, and the spokespeople from the encampment met with administrators today to talk about what can be done. I am hoping my university administration sticks to its principles/mission and doesn't call in the cops.
I imagine that'll depend on the general atmosphere of the campus, the disposition of protestors and whether there is property damage, blockades, or harm to students.
State Uni here- Our students barely make it to class as they’re working too many jobs to afford college. Protesting is a privilege they will never know.
Same. I’ve had a few students over the years going to school and working full-time, sometimes taking care of a disabled parent or are dealing with housing issues and are living in their car. We have more students on that half of the spectrum.
No. My city has protests though but they're not really on campus.
Yes. Cops storming the quad just ruins school.
Yup. Chemical sprays, arrests, the whole 9 yards…
Not much at all. There have been a couple of demonstrations but that’s about it. My Uni is surrounded by rural area and most students work full-time jobs, i.e. not much time for or interest in protesting.
There are a few “Free Palestine” signed taped to the walls but that’s about it. Urban CC, and I think the students realize that protesting at our relatively small school won’t accomplish anything.
Either that of the school doesn’t have a lot of investments. I think the main reasons students of the Ivy are protesting as they want their universities to divest. Granted, though, that’s not really an option for them, but I think that’s what the protesters at Columbia are hoping to accomplish: stop letting Columbia put their tuition money towards bolstering a genocide.
Can universities use tuition (student funds) for external investments? I thought it was considered a restricted fund for educational purposes only (academic programs, student services, facilities, and administrative costs and stuff like that). I know endowments can be invested, for instance.
I’m not an expert in this, so take anything I say with a grain of salt, but money is fungible, and if a university is investing their endowment, it’s because they don’t have to use that endowment money elsewhere because of student tuition. I think that’s why you see these protests on the schools where they have money to invest more than you see them on other schools. there’s a real thing that students can affect change on when the school is putting money into corporations that are selling weapons to Israel, for example.
So I can see the logic in that, but from conversations I’ve had, it’s always sounded like endowment money doesn’t get spent. Like ever. If something’s made it into the endowment, 1) it came from somewhere that wasn’t earmarked for/required to be used on something else, and 2) it’s never going anywhere But I could absolutely be wrong, or maybe this only applies to the small private school I knew the most about
I think it doesn’t get spent because they don’t have to. It gets invested and they can use the interest. But I suspect that if it was between closing the school or spending the endowment, they would spend the endowment. I know that’s an extreme example, but if it would suggest that there is a line somewhere that separates the spending endowment from the spending endowment. Even if we separate the idea of “students money,“ which was questionable assertion on my part anyway, students don’t want their schools making money off of what they view as a genocide. So asking them to divest from Israeli companies and weapons manufactures makes sense.
That's a good point.
Not anything disruptive yet. Campus shut down our biggest parking lot today for something protest-related, but since I worked from home today I’m not sure exactly what that was about.
Protests are peaceful here at my hyper-liberal SLAC.
On-campus protests -- both peaceful ones, disruptive ones, and ones that engage in illegal activities -- are primarily about consciousness raising and messaging. They are pretty good at that, as long as they are aware of the fact that the way they go about their protests can alienate the voting public if they are not careful. But they also have the weakness of choosing a target (their uni's administration) that doesn't really have the ability to change US policy vis a vis Israel/Palestine. It's understandable why they choose that target -- it's available and they rightly feel that they have some stake in the moral position of their uni. But real change comes through influencing elected officials, espeically members of Congress. Divesment from arms companies sounds good, but it would not do anything to effectuate a cease fire or more humanitarian aid the Gaza in the short or medium run. This exact scenario happened during the Vietnam war. Campus protests set the stage for much more wide-ranging activism off campus that eventually led to the election of numerous anti-war members of Congress and changed the outlook of many other members of Congress who were not actively anti-war but whose positions softened.
Real change comes from influencing ordinary people.
I think it’s only the schools that are big enough and/or rich enough to have a critical mass of students who more or less follow the news, can take these risks, invest that time and money. They might bring others along but if you don’t have enough for that initiating core, nothing is going to happen. While I am taking no position at all on the protests’ validity, I would say that being able to get this going requires a level of privilege most don’t have. My students, for example, are just trying to pass finals.
Public uni here with large proportion of first gen students and students under the poverty level. We've been having regular protests since Oct 7th. If anything, our students connect more closely to the idea of being "oppressed". Several of our students got arrested last night.
But—you’re large, right? I’m not saying that less privileged kids don’t join protests. I’m saying you need a critical mass of kids who have enough time, security and capacity for risk to get these things started. Getting it started is harder than joining. And on AVERAGE the individuals who can get things started (and join) are going to be more privileged individuals. To protest, students have to spend less time at jobs or in family caregiving responsibilities. They have to accept the repeputational and financial risk of doing less well on exams, of drawing disciplinary actions or arrests. More people on your campus makes it more likely you have enough individuals who fit the bill to start (harder) and join (easier but still not without sacrifice) a protest like these.
The people with jobs or caregiving responsibilities have a higher opportunity cost of their time and would less likely to join any protest
Exactly.
I don’t really see how protesting is only for privileged people
I think its not that its "only for privileged people" but rather that if you have the time and money to spare you are so much more likely to show up right
I think what the poster meant is that working-class people/students have jobs so they can pay rent so they can minimize the loans they have totake out. They don't have time to camp out on campus.
It’s a lot easier to take the risk of being suspended, trespassed, or expelled if mommy and daddy are wealthy and you know you will have a soft landing whatever you do.
> I would say that being able to get this going requires a level of privilege most don’t have. Yes; it is a privilige to be in a position to protest injustices that are not directly occuring to oneself, but that only makes it more noble. Insofar as the lens of privilige is a useful one when considering student protests, people who have it putting it to work in order to protect people who do not seems like the most important possible thing to be in *favor* of.
Nope
Yes, significantly. Several of my students have been arrested, many more traumatized in one way or another. Classroom business as usual is impossible. I opted to cancel my finals, and I am very worried about commencement and how we as a campus community heal. I dare say the 2020 lockdown was less disruptive.
How are you allowed to just cancel finals? Wouldn't you move them online at least
I have autonomy over what I assign and do not assign. My class also has enough forms of assessment that I felt I could easily remove the last one without harming the integrity of the course.
My building keeps getting hammered with graffiti which I mostly don’t care about. Other than that the protests have been largely a positive experience on my campus.
Mine was but they all packed up and left the moment the semester ended. Can't let protesting get in the way of your summer vacation.
We had literal state police snipers on campus last week…
We have had a few demonstrations, but no ongoing encampment.
I'm at a UC, and the bullshit at UCLA yesterday means that we're now seeing an escalation on our campus.
In NYC, about 600 students live on campus and 10,000 commute to campus. I saw a student wearing a keffiyeh yesterday, but that’s it.
No, but the other, major university in my city is having disruptions, arrests, teargas, and state-ordered violence against students who are protesting.
My wife has various grad students on Instagram. One is our neighbor above us. She stomps, so we know when she is home. She went to the protests two days ago. She was out of the house about 20-30 minutes, which is about the minimal time to get there and get back. Took pics, put them on Instagram.l, and said how she was fighting blah blah. Yesterday, she posted more pics and complained that not enough students were joining them, and that together they could enact change. However, she posted while at home. She didn't leave or go to the protest. This is my basic experience with the protests on our campus, in a nutshell. Most spend more time on the ground, but have the same general motivations. I do give them credit, though. They stay on the grass and off walkways, allowing us to move about campus without being blocked. Love it. When Trump wad elected I was at a different university and they blocked all pathways of travel. That really annoys me.
where I work, no. in my city, yes. it's been calm so far.
Protests and encampments on my R1 campus, turns out out only 4 of those arrested out of the nearly 20 were actual students.
I’m at a large university that has had a pretty large community of students who are protesting. They have been peaceful and respectful and I’ve watched hundreds of police march in daily and make things tense. We’ve had many arrests and a lot of student resentment. I see the increased police presence at every turn; my commute to campus feels worse than normal, seeing all of the marked and unmarked cop cars everywhere. The whole admin/police reaction feels like a very performative political move, as if to say, “look at us cracking down on those liberal kids!” It’s ridiculous and it really cranks my gears.
Mine is, yes. We had a single night of entirely peaceful protests in a public space and they called in state riot police and started arresting students and faculty immediately. I am livid and have permanently lost all faith in the judgement of campus administration. They can be sure they won't be getting any help from me on anything ever again.
Protests on the last day of class. his is at a well-known school where, in the last year or so, a student came in and shot someone dead. This is also a place where shooting victims are often women and children. No protests about gun control, or the lack of resources for those who need support with their mental health. Interesting.
We had students marching and chanting for a couple of hours, then they dispersed. Honestly I don't know what schools were thinking when they allowed tent encampments.
There's an encampment, which has been in the news. About a week ago, news looked pretty adorable - apparently police came to the encampment when they lit candles because it's a fire hazard with the tents and left when it was ok, asked them to not put stuff directly on trees. Things have been intensifying, however - apparently they built a barricade with tables they took from an event, and incredibly there are more "community members" that seem to be added. There are calls for "more bodies" on social media by protesting student groups, which I find concerning. The admin seems to be doing its best to avoid police action (and has till now, unlike several other universities in the area). I appreciate that and hope it stays that way. They have apparently started giving disciplinary notes etc to students there? They apparently had multiple meetings and offered various options/concessions (other locations to move, other ways to support Gaza, future meetings after encampment is moved for commencement to be set up...), but zero compromise or reasoning going on, and commencement is approaching. That's based on student and local reporting. From where I work, at the edge of the campus, you wouldn't know a thing though.
The protests appear to be limited to a few campuses that have a history of student activism. The majority of college campuses in the country are in sleepy suburbs where students commute in and out.
Haven't seen anything. The kids on my old / wife's current uni work a great deal in addition to going to school, and this is a very regional, almost provincial school. Our students are into their foundering, semi-ghetto city.
Not at all. I read one story in the local paper that there was some small thing, but I haven't seen anything.
Not in the least.
The protest was fine. The campus was closed even though it didn't need to be. So yeah, impacted by the reaction to the protest, not the protest.
Yes, but don’t want to say too much to avoid doxing myself. Entirely peaceful. One of my schools went remote, which I think was an overreaction but oh well.
No affect
I attend a state university in the Midwest. Nobody is protesting. We are all trying to get through finals and graduate next week. I heard someone say that a lot of students who graduated during the pandemic did not get a ceremony and now those same student won’t have one due to the protests. Many students, including myself, are trying to pull ourselves out of poverty with the education we are receiving. I’ve used the food pantry on campus a few times per semester since I’ve been here. I heard the president of northwestern on npr yesterday and I’m proud of how they have handled the protests there.
mine is, classes have been moved to remote, and we are in the process of potentially voting a vote of no confidence for our chancellor. I’m really emotionally distressed frankly. I teach at one of the universities that had a lot of violence on campus that the chancellor did nothing about, you can probably figure out where I work, I don’t care what the students were protesting we should stop people who are attacking our students.
Thankfully no. I am in the midwest
I think most of these protests are not being instigated by college students at all. They are started by professional protestors that target most of the major colleges in the area. Some students that sympathize with the issue join in, but for the most part, the people you see in the media are not actually students.
*citations needed*
We, as educators and as members of this educational community, are supposed to base our theories on evidence. Do you have any?
This isn't a research article though. It's a Reddit comment. It literally started with "*I think*".
So no, you don't have any evidence. Gotcha.
1) It was a comment about an opinion. 2) It wasn't my comment or my opinion. 3) No one needs evidence "to be of an opinion". Example: I think pancakes are better than biscuits. Reddit: What's your evidence? What! No evidence. Gotcha!
You seem to not understand the difference between an opinion and a claim.
**You seem to not understand the difference between an opinion and a claim.** I'm in good company, then. By starting a post with "I think" it seems fairly evident the poster is not offering a known truth or fact. The post was from some random Internet professor **and his thoughts**. At best, it's a mix of a thought and a claim...but neither is required by Reddit to have **accompanying evidence**, which was your opening salvo. You have literally accomplished nothing positive. You could have offered a counterclaim. Then, instead of this weird exchange with me, after reading the earlier post, readers would have found a counterclaim.
Opinion: I think that global warming is a bad thing. Claim: I think that global warming is at least in part causes by the emissions of greenhouse gases. Do you see how these two things use the same syntax to begin ("I think that X") but aren't actually the same thing? The first is an opinion ("a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge"), the 2nd is a claim ("an assertion of the truth of something, typically one that is disputed or in doubt"). Despite both beginning with "I think," they don't perform the same type of work. The original commenter CLAIMED that these student protests are begun by professional protestors, but refuses to provide any support for that claim. I think that, despite this just being a reddit thread, supporting our claims with evidence is actually important. I generally try to provide evidence for my claims on Reddit, because it's good practice, it makes my arguments stronger, and it shows to other redditors where I'm getting my information. I don't have a counterclaim for the original person because I'm not interested in debating this with them, I'm interested in seeing *where they got the fucking information on which they're basing their claim*. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?
**I don't have a counterclaim for the original person because I'm not interested in debating this with them** LOL.
Goddamn when did asking for evidence for a claim become so controversial? We're supposed to be intellectuals here. We're supposed to understand that our views should be supported by evidence. I don't want to argue with the original commenter, I want to understand where their views are coming from. Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand? Are you purposely being an obtuse asshole? Does it bring you joy to cause other people frustration?
Per WSJ, seems to be bad actors like the PLFP [https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca#comments\_sector](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca#comments_sector)
Having paid to access that article, it doesn't support the assertion that these protests were started by outside agitators. The only direct connections it draws between the protests and anyone considered an "outside agent" are that A) many of the leaders of some of the Palestinian groups support these protests, B) a Hamas leader called for global protests in October, and C) a former PFLP official spoke at an event in Columbia. This article is written very poorly. It makes the fundamental mistake of arguing that because Palestinian leaders support these students protests, the protests are led by these terror groups, without any supporting evidence. What evidence they *do* provide subtly and without declaration includes information about more widespread protests in the US, conflating those with these student-led protests. So no, from that article, it doesn't seem like bad actors like the PFLP are leading these protests.
I agree, the article doesn't show that bad actors are leading these protests. It does argue, convincingly imo, that bad actors and the protestors have common cause. ETA gift link: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca?st=wazhydg0cdbeyn6&reflink=desktopwebshare\_permalink](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca?st=wazhydg0cdbeyn6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)
I mean sure? But common causes aren't really the thing in question here. I've been asking for evidence that these protests are led by professional protestors, but nobody's been able to provide any.
I have wondered about this myself. I find it difficult to imagine that students are more passionate about Gaza than about gun control, abortion, student loans, etc. On the other hand, never underestimate the power of social contagion. People (wrongly) speculated the same thing about campus protests in the 60s--that college students were being led by outside agitators, so I'm not going to leap to that conclusion myself.
Are these really students who care so much about the Palestinian-Israeli war? I have been reading about companies who provide actors for demonstrations and pay up to $500/day for people to demonstrate. One article talked about how all the tents that popped up were identical, as if someone had bought a bunch of the same model specifically for everyone to use for the demonstration. Where is the money coming from? I'm having a very hard time believing that college students who had to work so hard just to get admitted to places like UCLA and Columbia are willing to jeopardize their education and degrees over a conflict on the other side of the planet that they have never even been to. People are just too apathetic. People don't even have the conviction to go to the polls in adequate numbers, but they will skip classes and jobs for days on end, to risk arrest and being denied their degrees? Reporters are being banned from interviewing the protesters. Are the protesters even all students? Why not let reporters freely interview the protesters? Something smells really fishy to me....none of this adds up. I wonder if a lot of these protests are funded publicity stunts.