The editors of When Campus resists, some of them members of Canada's New Socialist Group, have assembled documents and analyses of those struggles in Canada's most populous province, as well as providing a "how-to" guide for those planning occupations elsewhere in North America. It opens discussion on a broader assessment of this wave of student mobilisation and student activist politics.
The University of Guelph administration responded to these measures by bringing charges against 37 individuals. This is an outrageous attack on students' right to protest on campus. The Guelph administration is trying to set a precedent in stifling dissent, as Ontario University administrations have not generally tried to punish protesters since the early 1970s.
When Campus Resists is also a focus for the defence campaign for the students charged, raising money and awareness. It is important both as an analysis of struggles and a tool in an ongoing campaign. This book gives the real flavour of an ocupation, from great images of the University President yelling through his office door to reflections on stir-craziness.
It is a central claim of this book that the occupations of February-March 1997 marked a step beyond the protests of 1995 and 1996. "This move towards ocupations, a political response to the perceived ineffectiveness of previous protests, thus marks an increase in the intensity of student resistance..."(p.8). Occupations are cast as a more "radical" alternative, taking it to the administration and disrupting their rule (pp.7-9,93-94).
There is, however, another reading of the ocupation wave. In February-March 1997 the gap between the more militant student activists, and many others on campus who hated tuition hikes and cuts was much wider than in January 1995 or February 1996. The more isolated activists were actually more radical than the previous year, while others were more conservative in that they did not feel it was possible to fight and win. The occupations were mounted by the radicals who had no confidence that it was possible to mobilise greater numbers of students.
Neither tactic is inherently more radical than the other. An occupation can be a useful tool to draw more students into activism if it becomes the hub of a range of protests. But, university administrations can work around occupations (or bust them up by using cops) just as they can
The goal of campus activism must be to mobilise the greatest number of students and other members of the campus community into effective actions that challenge university administrations and the provincial government. Numbers matter because people change through protest and begin to see their own activism as important. In protests at the University of Windsor, Ontario, in January and February 1996, for example, students invented chants and made up signs about issues ranging from a future of shitty employment in Macjobs to under-funding for the fine arts departments. They thought about the world and their own activity in new ways. And then, sadly, it ended.
We need to figure out why these protests ended so suddenly with such a limited residue of radicalisation. Students are really pissed off at tuition hikes, overcrowding, debt, and poverty. They know that the job market upon graduation sucks. This can lead to radicalisation, but it can also lead to narrow horizons and a competitive atitude ( 1m going to be the one who gets the job'). Also, in a time where protest seems to be going so much against the tide, it is easy for people to get resigned and think that cutbacks, tuition hikes, and the corporate agenda are
This book also suggests that the central dynamic in student protest should be to expose and challenge the power relations in education (see pp.10, 185-87). The goal, then, is student power and a system of education for freedom.
The problem is that the power relations in education are not simply produced on campus. The major goal of the capitalist education system is training for relations in the workplace and society. Potential workers are trained in habits acceptance of authority. Women and men learn gender roles, while people from various backgrounds are assimilated as "Canadians" or marginalised.
We are currently seeing a real shift in capitalist education priorities, rightly associated in this book with the neo-liberal corporate agenda. Quite simply, employers believe that the schools, colleges, and universities are pumping out too many graduates with high expectations who don't take well to the low-wage, part-time, or temporary jobs that are out there for
From the bosses' perspective, there is an oversupply of
Therefore, they want a more streamed education system that directs more people bluntly towards dead-end jobs with bad pay and little or no security, a system of user pay so that education becomes a commodity on the market available only to those who can afford it, and they want a "back to basics" curriculum that puts discipline more frankly at the centre
At some level, students know this. Their concerns are often about the relations between university and the rest of their lives (jobs, debt, etc.). The challenge for the student movement is to transform this knowledge into an activist movement that builds solidarity with workers and others fighting the corporate agenda. The aim should be a studentworker alliance rather than simply student
The student-worker alliance can start on campus. University workers are facing speed- ups, layoffs, and contracting out as part of the neo-liberal management agenda for the "lean" university in the age of lean production. In 1997, we have seen strikes by York University faculty, and CUPE 1001 (groundskeepers, cafeteria workers, and housekeepers) at the University of Windsor. It was a real challenge to build solidarity in these strikes, especially when some students were actively hostile, but real student power depends on this.
The current struggles in education, mounted by students, teachers, and education workers are crucial in contesting the neo-liberal agenda. We need to learn from our activism as we engage. This book is an important contribution to that learning. [UK/NS] * Contact: Box 167, 253 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 1R5, Canada. E-mail: <newsoc@web.apc.org> Subscriptions for one year (6 issues) are $Cdn 15 in the Canadian state and SCdn 25 elsewhere. To order the books and magazines mentioned in International Viewpoint, try your nearest progressive bookstore, or write to La Brèche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France O (+33 1) 43676357 fax 43792961 (English, French and Spanish spoken). Where no price is given, we suggest you enclose US$ 10 in any convertible currency to cover the postage costs of the publisher. To announce your publication in this free listing, send a sample copy to "Book reviews" c/o International Viewpoint, PECI, BP 85, 75522 Paris cedex 11, France.
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UN BUD STAY and in one respect it went well beyond those events: the collective, plural and essentially social appeal which called this meeting was deeper.
The tone of this meeting was a tone of intransigence in the face of the bosses, both national and international, the proposal for confronting the international bodies (see point 4 of the Appeal), and the decision not to give in to the "logic of no alternatives" imposed by the neo-liberals. The meeting demonstrated a healthy diversity of views, as well as many of the organisational and political weaknesses which are only to be expected in events of this sort, but which nonetheless showed the potential of a proposal like this which tries to respond to "globalisation" in a global way through the intransigent struggles of one and all.