Student Power: Organizing and Envisioning Democracy in Higher Ed

For far too long contemporary student activism has been splintered along issue-based lines and caught up in small, isolated battles on each campus, fighting (however valiantly and often successfully) for relatively minor concessions from those who run their universities.

Organizing and campaigning for student power on campus not only crosses issue, race, party, and ideological lines, but it also lays the groundwork for future victories. Student power is a perfect example of prefigurative politics: If we want to create more democratic and liberated people, we need to make our institutions more democratic and liberatory.

We'll be exploring the history and tactics of student power campaigns, models such as radical student unionism, as well as engaging in a group imagining of what a more democratic and liberating university might look like.

This will be a very participatory workshop - nobody has all the answers, especially for a topic this complex and dynamic! Come prepared to share and discuss!