Is This What Gets Students Protesting?

I was going to try and not write about Penn State, but I cannot help myself. Without getting into depth about the case, because I am sure there are several others who have followed the case more carefully, I am in awe that students have taken to the streets in protest against the firing of Paterno. Of all the things that could get students fired up, students are protesting the firing of a man who failed to report sexual abuse on children? As many have stated, Joe Paterno is lucky if all he loses is his job. He should, and probably will, face criminal or civil charges for neglecting to report sexual abuse to the police.

On Wednesday night, after announcing the firing of Joe Paterno, about 2,000 students turned out to protest. While there was some peaceful protesting, there were a small group of protestors who created quite a bit of damage. Below are some of the images from the protest:

A media van was overturned by angry protestors:

Crowds gathering Wednesday night:

Some anti-Paterno demonstrators:

For me, the firing of Mr. Paterno was a “no-brainer.” Students attending Penn State, I would assume, are compassionate, and educated enough to know that what he did was wrong. So, how did they get to this point? Per the provost, the students had undergone a lot during the week leading up to the protests. In less than a week, the campus went from being completely normal, to chaotic. Starting the Friday before Paterno’s firing, Jerry Sandusky was arrested (he was the one charged with sexual assaulting up to 8 young boys), Tim Curly and Gary Schulz were fired Monday (for not reporting the abuse), Paterno announced his retirement at the end of the semester on Wednesday morning, and then on Wednesday night Paterno was fired. Students began to feel that everything was falling apart right before their eyes. On top of that, the media was hovering and the students started acting out and getting attention.

So, what professionals are better suited to look into how students are feeling than student affairs? That is exactly what the article in Inside Higher Education addressed. Student affairs will be there to help students process and create a bridge between students and administrators. NASPA and other leaders in Student Affairs are encouraging Penn State to use this as a teachable moment.

Did these students react to Mr. Paterno’s arrest because he was the head coach who had brought many wins to the college? Would they have reacted this way to any other person being fired for the same thing? Perhaps, this is a moment to look at ways in which institutions allow coaches at big athletic colleges to become such an monumental figure at an institution. Their salaries are just one demonstration of the elevated position coaches are put in. I did not hear of students protesting the firing of the Penn State president.

Overall, this is a teachable moment for both students and colleges. At my institution, we have already received an email reminder that employees are obligated to report any inappropriate behavior and to use Penn State as an example of what we should not allow to happen. Students should learn from Mr. Paterno’s mistake and know when it is appropriate to report something to a supervisor and when it is appropriate to go straight to the authorities. This should also be a learning lesson for college and university staff. I still do not understand why students felt the need to protest the firing of a man who covered up sexual assault of young boys. Perhaps the students were just facing the perfect storm of media chaos, several changes in a short period, and a feeling of loss within a strong community.

Occupy at Texas State University San Marcos

Occupy protest students at Texas State University at San Marcos, set out to disprove critics that they are lazy, unfocused and un-American. Movement attendees plan to attend city council meetings and lobby for bills in Legislature. In addition, they want to work with local businesses to create more scholarships for students and plan to register more students to vote. So that “the People” have more of a say in where their tax paying money goes.  Contrary to protests in other parts of the country, Texas State students are attracting support from the local community. Their main goal is to raise awareness of rising tuition and criticize the government for shrinking the amount of state grants meant for low-income students. They claim the system is to blame because it’s broken. As they marched from the Texas State campus to the courthouse rally, they were heckled by onlookers and yelled at with obscenities. One heckler stopped to discuss with the marchers what the whole “occupy” is about. Once the person was enlightened of the movement, they picked up a sign and actually joined the movement.

The Texas State occupy movement is unique compared to other movements because it is organized and they have a plan. In addition to a list of demands such as extending the six-month grace period during which students begin paying back their loans; reducing costs on textbooks; filling jobs with students rather than using marketing firms; provide scholarships to students active in civic life; and getting more students registered to vote they want to be part of creating solutions. They want to first express their anger, get the attention of the media and community, and contribute to achieve solutions. 

Not only are the protestors lobbying for more grants and scholarships from local businesses and state government, the protesters want to make and sell their own clothing; the profits will go into a fund for local kids to attend college. Protestors complain that growing up having been told anything was possible – and working hard to make sure it was – they now face nothing but obstacles.

“You have an economy with no job market, you have a six-month grace period to pay back loans, you have to somehow find a job in six months after you graduate that pays you enough interest to not only take care of yourself and your basic needs, but to start paying back your loans plus interest,” says Joshua Christopher Harvey, a Texas State junior majoring in international studies, who served in the Air Force as a Russian linguist, “We just want a movement for change.” Educate the community and the people are what the protestors want to achieve; to turn a moment into a movement for change.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/14/occupy-texas-state#ixzz1dMWnfhUt

Inside Higher Ed dJPksRFg

There can be only 1 (vote that counts)

If you were Mayor of one of the largest, most diverse and publically ridiculed yet emulated cities in the world and you were still in the process of cutting the budget while handling an Occupy situation, would you take on the responsibility of also deciding where to build a new Engineering school?

New York City’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg is doing exactly this and although this story has no specific conflict mentioned in it, I suggest there may be protesting in the near future.

As the story in the New York Times states, even though the advisory panel of business people and scientists, the Economic Development Corporation and the City Council will all review the seven submitted proposals, the major has the final choice.

Controversial in that this decision will decide the fate of $100 million, city owned property and the future at least one institution of higher education. 

Thankfully, the president of the Economic Development Corporation, Seth Pinsky, created a scoring system to help the major make the final decision without too much contention, as several NYC schools believe the Mayor has ignored their potential in order to bring in other institutions.

Possibly Bloomberg is using the potential for furthering educational financial revenue as a boost to his popularity. He’s been petitioning and campaigning for this build for quite a while. Most say, though, that Bloomberg’s plan is to out-science Silicon Valley and MIT.

However, in light of all the other contenious events happening in NYC as well as the data-falsifying  and other scandals coming to light in higher education, perhaps Mayor Bloomberg should maintain a distance from the possibly controversial decision. 

SIUC and Facebook (should be a comment to exisitng post but too many words)

Without delving into the now settled labor dispute Jill references in her post regarding SIUC and its Facebook page, let me offer my thoughts on the issue.  Once the final round of negotiations between the Faculty Association and the Administration broke down (it truly is an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ situation), someone within SIUC’s administration made the decision to delete comments supportive of the faculty from the official SIUC Facebook page.  At first it seemed that someone was taking the time to read the comments before deciding to erase them: pro administration statements were not deleted.  However, over the course of a few hours someone at SIU started to quickly delete comments that referenced the faculty or strike in any way. Comments like, “I came here to learn from my professors,” were taken down. Then people started getting blocked from posting at all on the SIUC Facebook page. Finally, the decision was made to shut down the comment section of the page.

Many SIU students and faculty, and some administrators and community members were rather upset by these decisions and created the Facebook page “SIUC fan page. Stop Censoring”. [http://www.facebook.com/pages/SIUC-fan-page-Stop-Censoring/196307620443592]. Reading through the screen shots of comments taken before they were deleted makes it apparent to me that people were generally posting in a respectful manner.

In response, a few days later SIUC issued the following statement:

Dear SIU Fans:

As you may have noticed, a few days ago, we temporarily disabled the comments feature. For this, we owe you an apology and explanation. A few evenings ago we began receiving a large number of posts related to a recent labor dispute involving one of our four unions on campus. Our faculty, students, alumni, and supporters are spirited and passionately committed to the success of our students and university, and we know that this sentiment is at the core of all of these posts. However, a number of posts contained content that we deemed inappropriate because they contained crude language or attacks of a personal nature. Due to the high volume of posts and that the posts were coming in the early morning hours, it became impossible for our moderator to monitor comments that we deemed inappropriate or disrespectful.

The nature of the Facebook community is that its members must show respect for others, and we embrace this philosophy. Please understand that our intention was never to censor or otherwise prevent healthy dialogue surrounding this or any other important issue facing our community -- as an institution of higher education, our goal has been and will continue to be to encourage and facilitate insightful exchanges on important topics.

We have now restored the comments feature and we encourage all of our Fans to post liberally about their University experiences. We also ask that our members show the respect your peers and fellow Fans deserve when making comments. In the event that this respect is not shown, we will judiciously remove comments that are not consistent with the expected level of respect and decorum of this community. Feel free to refer to our policy on this matter in the "info" section if you question whether your contribution is appropriate.

I think there are several issues here.  The first is legal in nature: what was the intent behind developing the SIUC Facebook page, and what has its purpose become?  If it is developed as a low-cost marketing device to simply push information out to Facebook users, the SIUC Board of Trustees and Administration can choose what information may and may not be posted.  However, if SIUC created the page to serve as a forum for students, parents, alumni, faculty, and administrators to discuss matters involving SIUC, that is very different. If SUC created (either intentionally or unintentionally) a public forum for ideas, as a branch of the government (a public institution) it loses much of its right to censor based on content (big 1^st amendment issue).  One way to determine if SIUC’s Facebook page was intended to provide, or has evolved into, a public forum is to exam how they have addressed past comments. To my knowledge no one has done this yet.  The other is to examine the post it added to its own Facebook site when it again permitted commenting.

The second issue has to do with the mission of universities and their serving as centers for the exchange of ideas. If SIUC administrators believe that their institution embraces democratic ideals and permits those associated with it to question authority, raise controversial issues, and publically state their opinions, it probably should not be in the business of trying to determine what voices should be heard while silencing those that it (the administrators) disagree with. 

Arab Spring and unintended consequences

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15149351

This article is dated 04OCT2011.

Saudi Arabia is the 7th leading country to send students to the US. The growth in Saudi international students is part of the King Abdullah's two fold push to bring Saudi Arabia into the 21st century. By sending people abroad to be educated King Abdullah is minimizing the educational influence Salafist and Wahhabis’ radicals (concepts of extreme Islam worldwide) while, hopefully, bringing new industry to Saudi Arabia in order to diversify an oil production dependent economy. Granted, it can be argued this an over simplification of a very complex cultural/progressive/economic issue however for the purpose of this blog it is sufficient.

When the "Arab Spring' emerged in Tunisia many here in America and abroad heralded this as a movement to remove a totalitarian regime. To date revolutions have occurred not only in Tunisia but also in Egypt and a civil war in Libya, resulting in the fall of its regime. There have been civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen; major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman; and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Western Sahara with clashes at the borders of Israel. Unfortunately, in the typical American short sighted manner, we have encouraged or supported the removal of these regimes without considering the unintended consequences of our actions. While Tunisia and Egypt were undoubtedly repressive regimes they were able to assist in maintaining stability in the region.

The Islamic Brotherhood has been seen as background organizers in many of these revolutions and civic movements. The Muslim Brotherhood no longer openly conducts terrorist operations; it is primarily a political organization that supports terrorism and terrorist causes. Many of its members, however, have engaged in terrorist activities and the group has spawned numerous terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad (aka al-Queda in Iraq or AQI). Furthermore, many of its members are Salafists and Wahhabis’; the same faction who the Saudi’s are trying to undermine. To complicate the issue the Iranians are taking a hand in many of these countries. Iran see’s the intervention as a means to undermine the legitimacy of the Saudi government and thereby moving Iranian influence in the region forward.

Through US support and Iranian intervention in the Arab Spring the Saudi government has been losing legitimacy at home and abroad. To assuage its population Saudi Arabia has been giving money to households to increase their popularity. Internationally they have threatened the United States with oil sanctions and promoted Palestinian sovereignty when before they may have not taken such a course of action. Other options are on the table for Saudi Arabia such as sending their international students to Europe rather than to the United States as European countries have been opening English speaking schools to attract their own international students. The Saudi government is well aware of how much they contribute to the American economy by sending their students to study in the United States.

Higher education is the 5^th largest industry in the United States and while Saudi Arabia pulling their students from the United States will be mostly a symbolic gesture given the size of the US economy those institutions who were catering to the Saudi student population will feel an increased fiscal pinch.

In the increasing global aspect of Higher Education countries, such as Saudi Arabia, may express their displeasure or apply political/economic pressure through approving or disapproving to which institutions it’s students go to in order to study abroad.