BUILDING THE STUDENT UNION WE NEED:

An Anthology of Student Writing on Student Unions

Envisioning Student Unionism in NYC
Oct. 27th, 2012
Saturday, 2:00 5:00pm

Ya-Ya Network
224 W. 29th St,
New York, New York 10001


#HereUsNow
#1World1Struggle
#FreeU
#AllintheRed
#FreeCUNY
From "a beautiful, noble, nave movement to
a beautiful, noble, effective movement.
From the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico City to the anti-austerity movement in
Chile to the unlimited student strike in Quebec, student uprisings have been ubiquitous in
2012. Now eyes are on the United States as the missing piece of the student movement in
the Americas. While we may be far from the kind of mass mobilizations of our neighbors,
young people across the country are experimenting with different kinds of organizational
structures and tactical approaches to achieve structural change, not just single issue
organizing campaigns.
As Noam Titelman, the President of Confederation of Students of Chile (CONFECH)
stated at the Student Uprisings panel at the CUNY Graduate Center on October 15th, "
think there are things that unite all, but think it's important to recognize the differences in
these realities.There are different realities that may have some common grounds. Our
history defines the moment we are living right now. Our continuous fights against cuts to
higher education, police profiling of communities of color and LGBTQ people, and the
deportation of undocumented Americans are inextricably linked but too often we do not
work together. Looking to the future, the New York City student movement need echo
Titelman's call for a movement that acknowledges all of these struggles as a part of a
structural problem in order to transform our "beautiful, noble, nave movement to a
beautiful, noble, effective movement. -Excerpt from Global Student Leaders Join Forces in
New York by sabelle Nastasia (published in The Nation)
"f we are to address our common crisis as students, as
current and future workers, as people living on this planet,
we need to focus on building our power. Students are
fighting amazing campaigns, but if we want to hold onto
these changes, we have to organize beyond individual
policy changes at our respective schools. We must
organize for institutional power over our universities and
create a way of holding onto that power. Excerpt from
Towards a New Student Unionism pamphlet by Jasper
Connor
On learning from student movements
abroad:
"There are aspects of the Maple Spring we must refuse to replicate. For
instance, the Quebec strike has not yet adopted anti-racist analysis
regarding what true access to higher education might look like. Many of
the students of color we spoke with offered mixed reviews of the student
associations and the representation of racialized people in the movement.
Sound familiar? Excerpt from Towards a More Perfect Student Unionism
by sabelle Nastasia and Biola Jeje (published on Alternet.org)
"American students can't just mail-order unions from Quebec. No manual can explain the student union culture
that's necessary to make them effective. However, a case study of an Anglophone university in Montreal might
help.
"We always say French schools, they are so mobilized. We always look up to them, said Rushdia Mehreen, a
master's student in Geography Planning and Environment at the primarily English-speaking Concordia
University in Montreal.
Francophone schools have a tradition of activism in Quebec, Mehreen explained, but at Anglophone
universities like Concordia, the customs are far less understood and practiced.
Although English activists like Mehreen have been vocal since tuition hikes were announced in April 2010,
their schools remained largely quiet. n the winter of 2011, Concordia began taking steps to join its French
counterparts.
Mehreen, along with other activists from Free Education Montreal and Concordia Mob Squad, initiated an
information campaign, which included the seminal " 23 Answers for Students , addressing the history,
justifications, and concerns about an unlimited general strike in a step-by-step manner. "We had to cater.to
people not coming from Quebec, Mehreen admitted.
They also engaged students through dialogue, hosting town hall meetings for "everyone to argue their point of
view, and holding debates to discuss common ideological barriers like, "if you want your education to be of
high quality, then you have to pay for it.
The campaign culminated in a massive November 10 march, with two hundred thousand Montreal students
striking (including Concordia's graduate and Arts & Sciences students) and thirty thousand stomping in the
streets. This served as an ultimatum before an unlimited general strike.
n preparation for a possible strike, Concordia stepped up its cultural makeover through an intensive
immersion experience. Francophone and Anglophone universities formally linked up, which was
transformative for many English organizers. "They were ten times ahead of us, Mehreen said.
Over the winter holidays, Mehreen co-organized a two-day training camp (a Francophone activist tradition)
with this inter-cultural group. Her review: t provided the Anglophone activists in the "A to Z of what we needed
to know as mobilizers.
The relationship led to joint actions, including a bilingual demo called "Don't Fuck with Notre [Our] ducation.
Mehreen felt that "these encounters helped us immerse more in the movement because before that it was like
Anglophone students were not really taking part in it.
Come springtime at Concordia, "The atmosphere.was totally changed, said Mehreen. The organizing core
grew, and many students were asking how to hold General Assemblies in their own departments. "t was
contagious, basically...
**************************************************
American students need to create their own organizing
culture, perhaps incorporating Quebecois syndicalism but
without ignoring the principles of radical horizontalism
employed by Occupy to address the uniquely American
inequalities engraved into our identities or else suffer
terminal fractures like movements past. Excerpt from
Why Don't American Students Strike? by Zachary Bell
(published in The Nation)
***************************************
What could student unionism look like in the
United States?
On Building Student Power from
the Ground Up:
"Returning to our campuses in NYC, CUNY undergraduate and graduate students are striving to act more
effectively in tandem across such coalitions such as Occupy CUNY and Students United for a Free CUNY,
while keeping these historically rendered strengths and weaknesses in mind. Even though resources of our
highly stratified university system are concentrated at the Graduate Center, graduate students are
predominantly adjunct lecturersmany of us womenwho are unfunded and forced to take out loans, while
being exploited and under-resourced on the job. At the same time, graduate student adjuncts and
undergraduates are strategically positioned to interact with each other every day, and can be regarded as
mutual, integral allies in the CUNY struggle. These partnerships can end past cycles of hostility and
misunderstandings between undergraduates and graduate students, and encourage deeper collaboration
across university system tiers in general.
n the spring, CUNY students discussed with Quebecois students how to approach building autonomous
student movement infrastructures in the United States. Brooklyn College student organizers are starting the
process of unionizing with the undergraduate student body, initially devoting our full attention to establishing
assemblies in such departments as Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Africana Studies and
Anthropology that can act as a framework to unionize the remaining departments. As we see it, the student
leadership built in these initial departments can be used to leverage the university administration around
increasing funding in basic student services such as printing, library hours, and subsidized textbooks. We aim
to eventually run a "student power slate for student government and take over the "company union.
Meanwhile, on the graduate student level, members of the CUNY Graduate Center General Assembly (GC
GA) have begun a similar campaign to revitalize program student associations to become more directly
democratic, while retaining our general assembly space for broad discussion and creative action. An array of
GC GA members have been elected to the Doctoral Students Council, and are beginning to establish an
escalation strategy for highlighting issues of inequity in admissions, funding, and student/faculty/staff control of
the building's affairs. We're strengthening political ties, while widening the scope of possibility for transforming
graduate higher education so that it becomes accessible for CUNY's entire population.
We're also renewing a rank-and-file focus on the staid contract campaign between the PSC union and CUNY
management, with plans to host mobile teach-ins outside the closed-door negotiations. Although a small
minority of active grad-juncts can't sway an entire union's trajectory, we estimate that mounting grievances
shared between students and educators can galvanize union power in both of these sectors of the CUNY
system to the inspiring levels seen with the Chicago Teachers Union's strike that began on September 10.
While taking on these ambitious projects in the city, CUNY students and educators have also begun a national
conversation about building statewide student associations comparable in strength and reach to CLASS in
Quebec and ConFECH in Chile. When it comes to statewide student associations, some states are further
along than others. New York Students Rising (NYSR) and the Ohio State Student Association (OSSA) are
preliminary models of statewide student coalitions, but still don't widely represent student majorities. By
comparison, when Quebec's more radical left student union, ASS, wanted to call for a strike in opposition to
the proposed hikes, they formed a broad-based coalition that spoke to all students in the province: CLASS. n
the U.S., we can use both of these organizations as potential models. So to speak, in states where we already
have CLASSs, we need to build ASSs, and in states where there is no statewide association at all, we
need to begin by building CLASSs. These organizational models have syndicalist roots that stretch much
further than our generation's historical memory. Excerpt from Radical Education Nation by Conor Tomas
Reed and sabelle Nastasia (published in Tidal-Occupy Theory)
Strategies for Building Our Power Through
Student Unionism:
"Student Unions could replace out-of-touch Student
Governments, give the boot to overpaid Administrators,
and actually run the university in cooperation with other
organized groups on campus (Connor 4; 2010)
previous excerpts from Connor 22-25; 2010
Contact List for (some) NYC Student Organizations
The New SchooI Disorientation Team, Contact: newschool.disorientation@gmail.com
The New School Disorientation Team is a radical student group seeking to find ways in
which the student body can have an active role in the decision making processes at The
New School and in the education system at large.
NYU Students for Economic Justice, Contact: marcaimac@gmail.com
CUNY Grad Center GeneraI AssembIy, Contact: alysonspurgas@gmail.com
AII in the Red, Contact: allinthered@gmail.com
All in the Red is an activist collective focused on the education crisis in the United States.
Through creative forms of protest, we strive to expose the commodification of knowledge
and challenge the status quo. We believe that the attack on the fundamental human right
to education requires that students and educators, as well as those denied the possibility
of obtaining quality education, organize together and sow the seeds of a better, more
sustainable future.
Adjunct Project, Contact: conortomasreed@gmail.com
Free University, Contact: maydayfreeu@gmail.com
New York Students Rising/Students United for a Free CUNY Chapters:
Students United for a Free CUNY (SUFC) is a city-wide student alliance dedicated to
building collective power on and off campus. SUFC is completely student-led and
student-organized with a particular focus towards students of color and the ways in which
the privatization of education most affects immigrants and communities of color.
BrookIyn CoIIege Student Union, Contact: Bcstudentunion.outreach@gmail.com
The BC Student Union is an inclusive organization that unites students to defend their
common interests in a democratic university. The Union exists to represent, empower and
give a voice to the entire student body of Brooklyn College by engaging in sustainable and
grassroots movements and ideas, which directly affect their education and campus life.
Hunter CoIIege Student United, Contact: alexi.shalom@gmail.com
Hunter Students United is a student group organizing for student democracy, free,
accessible education, and the expansion of student services at Hunter College. We seek
to defend the public nature of our education, despite actions by the administration to
privatize and commoditize it.
Medgar Evers CoIIege SG, Contact: evangelinebyars@gmail.com
Students for EducationaI Rights at City CoIIege, Contact: alyssiaosorio@gmail.com
John Jay Rising, Contact: kennethcruzchan@gmail.com
Bottom Up Baruch (CoIIege), Contact: dj45.dm@gmail.com
City Tech, Contact: rsidberry@gmail.com
BMCC Students United, Contact: d.estevez88@gmail.com
Fordham University, Contact: elpardilla@gmail.com
CoIIege of Staten IsIand, Contact: j_franklin89@yahoo.com