Occupy Movement Organizes On Texas College Campuses, Prepares For Future Action

by Teddy Wilson of the American Independent

Occupy Texas State rallies in the Quad at Texas State University - San Marcos. Photo by Caitlin Ortiz.

In the months since the Occupy Movement has begun, a significant segment of the protest has been focused on issues relevant to college students. The rising cost of higher education and the heavy burden of student loan debt have spurred students to get involved in the movement.
On college campuses around the country the occupy movement has been engaged, and the reaction to the protests by some administrators has spurred controversy. Democracy Now! reported that at the University of California at Berkeley police forcibly removed students and arrested 39 people, and at University of California, Davis, campus police pepper-sprayed student protesters as they sat together to protest the dismantling of the “Occupy UC Davis” encampment.

In Texas the occupy movement has been embraced on some college campuses, but there has not been the same types of confrontations with campus police that have been seen elsewhere. The students have often chosen to work with local occupy movement organizers than to focus solely on campus actions. However, as the movement has grown that appears to be changing.

According to the student newspaper the Daily Texan, a student walkout began the occupy movement at the University of Texas at Austin on October 5 as students joined with Occupy Austin. The event took place nationwide as Occupy Colleges called for students and faculty at college campus across the country to solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

According to the Occupy UT Austin Facebook page, the group stands in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. “The community is comprised of students, staff, faculty, and anyone affiliated with (or standing in support of) occupying university members.” A semester long event is being planned for January 16 until May 4 to occupy the University of Texas Tower. The Facebook event page says “that beginning on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Occupy Wall Street movement will come to the University of Texas.” According to the group’s web site, a planning meeting is scheduled for December 13.

The Occupy Movement has also come to Texas A&M University. In November students organized with professors and community members in Occupy Bryan-College Station protests. The Texas A&M student newspaper the Battalion reported that a protest in November organized on campus, and an estimated 40 occupiers marched to the local branch of Bank of America.

However, students at Texas A&M have not “occupied” areas on campus, and their activities have been limited to protests and days of action. Junior mechanical engineering major Justin Montgomery told the Battalion that it wouldn’t be effective to set up occupied encampments. “We’re doing this to show our support for what’s going on elsewhere, and also for all these people to have an outlet to voice their opinions,” said Montgomery.

Joshua Christopher Harvey, one of the organizers of Occupy Texas State, told the Texas Independent that he became involved in the occupy movement because “over the years it had become apparent to me that our government has grown less accountable to the people.” Harvey went on to say that the “encroachment of corporate personhood in our society and its impact on our political system was also of great concern.”

“Here in Texas,” said Harvey, “grants and funding for higher education were and are being cut. These cuts have led my university to increase the student population in an attempt to balance the $10 million budget cut by the state. This puts a great burden on our teaching staff. Due to further cuts next year, our tuition will rise. The Occupy Colleges Movement, which started in California allowed me and others an outlet to be a participant in the greater movement at a local level and to seek solutions to counteract the negative effects of corporate personhood and a failed economy on education in our state.”

Like Occupy UT Austin, Occupy Texas State is also planning future events, including the possibility of acts of peaceful and minor civil disobedience. These events could be “sit-ins or erecting a tent on the Quad and occupying it for a number of hours or possibly days to challenge university policies that we feel limit free speech and expression,” said Harvey. In addition Occupy Texas State is planning on working with the Texas State Employees Union, CWA-TSEU, in the coming weeks to “address cuts and freezes to faculty and staff pay at our university.”

Moving forward, Harvey says that the Occupy Movement on the Texas State campus is going to continue its efforts to further the message of the movement and engage students in action. “We will hold more Days of Action rallies, shows of solidarity to the greater Occupy Movement and seek to work with our local and state governments. We feel it is time to move from demonstrating to action and we are planning a host of activities for the Spring semester including a voting drive to register the incoming students in time for the 2012 elections,” said Harvey.

Education Is A Necessity Not A Privilege

by Joshua Christopher Harvey

On June 9, 1963 then Vice President of the United States (and our universities greatest alumnus) Lyndon Baines Johnson, stated that we had “entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others” but rather  “a necessity without which a person is defenseless”  in a complex and industrialized society. Indeed, our university was established to strengthen the foundation of education in our state and, since 1899, it has risen to be among Texas’s leaders in the number of new educators for the state. But ours is a state in which, despite the job growth and economic clout touted by Governor Perry, has cut and continues to cut education funding.

According to a survey of school districts representing 39 percent of the state by the school finance consultant Moak, Casey & Associates, more than 60 percent of Texas school districts can expect further staffing reductions next year as they grapple with state budget reductions. These reduction come after those districts reported a loss of 9,586 school district jobs — one-third of which were classroom teachers despite those same districts serving 17,593 more students than in the 2010‐11 academic year. Applying these figures across the state would mean there are roughly 32,000 fewer school employees in Texas, including 12,000 fewer teachers.

During its 82nd session the Texas Legislature eliminated a host of grant programs  and slashed grants for higher education. These cuts totaled $5.4 billion. Schools through out the state were underfunded a further  $4 billion in basic aid and cut $1.3 billion from grant programs that paid for full-day prekindergarten and assisted students struggling to pass state standardized tests. These cuts would have been more drastic for the 2010-2011 academic year had Texas not received a one‐time grant of $820 million in federal education jobs funds to mitigate the impact of the state cuts. But the one-time grant was a double edged knife for the state – more jobs are expected to be lost during the 2012-2013 academic year because schools are relying on the one-time federal money to prop up their budgets this year and some districts will lose additional state aid next year.

Cuts to grants and funding mean increased tuition rates for us as students. Due to cuts by the 82nd legislative session, funding to Texas State University was reduced $10 million. This led to a decision by our nine-member Texas State University System Board of Regents to approve a tuition raise to be implemented  in January 2012.  We will now spend and additional $16 per credit hour for a total of $167. This tuition hike will only generate about $6.7 million for the university in general revenue which is the main source of state funding for the university. Overall, our university has lost about 3.6 percent of the 28 percent in state funds of the total university budget in the educational and general portion.

Bill Nance, vice president for Finance and Support Services said these cuts have led to the record enrollment that has led to the housing strain on the campus this year. “Given the progress we’re trying to make at the university, we just didn’t feel like we could go in and start cutting things like degree programs,” Nance said. “When you increase enrollment it puts stress on the workload of our existing faculty and staff. We don’t like having to do that, but it’s what we had to do to survive the cuts.”  Our enrollment increased 4.7 percent from 32,572 in fall 2010 to 34,113 for fall 2011.

In 2008 the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing” reported that in the ten years prior the public college costs have risen at an average rate of 6.9 percent per year and four-year private college costs have risen at an average rate of 5.8 percent per year. As we grapple with high student loan payments for the first few decades of our adult lives, we will have less money to spend and invest in our nation and her industries where it would have been spent in future years. Unlike our parents, we might not be able to spend and invest enough to allow great economic growth to occur. It is vital to our survival as an economically competitive nation to hold education as a necessity and a fundamental cornerstone to our democracy.

Public education and higher education is for the whole of society and to fund both it to invest in our future. Without adequate funding many of the gains our schools and universities have worked so hard to realize will fall short in the growing face of international education and business competition. Even our own corporations see this as they continue to divest in our nation, ship jobs overseas and charge us more back home to cover their costs. The argument that education is a privilege not a right advocates a selfish society in which the American dream can never flourish. It is an argument that justifies a class system and allows for greater disparity in opportunity. For us to rise on the wings of a stable economy, attract back jobs and foreign companies and elevate our society we must not cut funding to education.

The structure and bureaucracy that exists within the educational superstructure itself hinders our progress and must also be addressed and combated. But first and foremost, if Texas is to succeed economically and, to quote President Eisenhower from a 1958 speech – “if the United States is to maintain its position of leadership and if we are to further enhance the quality of our society, we must see to it that today’s people are prepared to contribute the maximum to our future progress and strength” and the only way to do that is if  “we achieve the highest possible excellence in our education.”

Save our teachers, save our schools, save our grants and our future will prosper.

Candlelight Vigil for Veteran Scott Olsen

There will be a peaceful vigil held tonight, November 1st, for Scott Olsen, Marine veteran with two tours in Iraq and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Scott was critically injured by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland on October 25. We will assemble at the Stallions in the Quad with candles and hold a silent march to the court house where we will hold a moment of silence. The march back to the quad will allow for chanting.  Please bring plain white taper candles. We will have a few extra to provide. To show you will attend please follow this link here.  A map of the location of the rally point is linked here.

Donations for Scott’s medical costs & his family’s travel expenses can be made at IVAW.org with ‘Scott Olsen’ under Special Projects linked here.

Scott Olsen being carried to the hospital after being knocked unconscious by both a tear gas canister and flashbang grenade.

Texas State University Students Unite In Action

Video by Matt Barnes.

Occupy Texas State Movement Growing

Occupy Texas State Movement Growing

by Kolten Parker of The University Star

Following the “Occupy” protest trend in San Marcos and Austin, Texas State students are in the works of getting an organization on campus.

The Occupy Texas State group has doubled in size since its inception and is on the heels of sponsorship as a student organization.

The Occupy Texas State movement has nearly doubled in size since its formation and is on the verge of becoming a recognized student organization. The group held its second general assembly Oct. 13, attracting approximately 50 students.

Josh Harvey, organizer of Occupy Texas State, said the group is in the process of gaining university sponsorship with the only step left to pick a faculty adviser.

“I want to turn it [the protests] from a moment to a movement,” Harvey said.

Occupy Texas State held their second general assembly Sept. 13. Approximately 50 students gathered on campus in solidarity with the Occupy College movement taking place at more than 90 universities across the nation, according to their website.

Occupy College, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street effort, is taking issue with inflating costs of student loans and tuition.

“Higher education has become a business in itself,” Harvey. “Over the last eight years, cost for students per semester has risen 63 percent in Texas.”

As for Texas State, tuition increased 98 percent since the state legislature deregulated tuition in 2003, according to a Sept. 15 University Star article.

Harvey said once the group is sponsored, their goals would be to work with City Council, the Associated Student Government and the Texas State Board of Regents to find ways to make higher education more affordable.

Harvey said one of the primary goals of the group would to be to establish a scholarship for students who are active in the community.

Wade Smith, elementary education junior, said he stopped to listen to the activists in between classes afternoon.

“I think a college campus is a perfect environment for this type of demonstration,” Smith said. “Based on what I’ve heard so far, they have done their research and are very passionate on the subject.”

ASG President AJ DeGarmo stopped by the rally and said he enjoys seeing students using their First Amendment rights. DeGarmo said it exemplifies Texas State’s Common Experience theme this year.

“It’s empowering to see students organize and take part in a national movement,” DeGarmo said.
However, not all students were in support of the protest.

Brent McArthur, marketing freshman, said the national movement “will destroy the country.”
“Their demands are illogical and unattainable,” McArthur said. “To fall to their demands would kill American banks and businesses. They want the minimum wage to be $20 and all the debt in the country to disappear.”

According to the Occupy Wall Street website, there is currently no official list of demands. However, Adbusters, the organization behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, released one specific goal Sept. 17, (the first day of protests): “President Obama to ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington.”

Other student critics of the protest like Eric Reaves, exploratory professional sophomore, said the protesters are wasting their time.

“Instead of holding a sign, they should get take off school for a semester, get a minimum wage job, save some money and go to a cheaper school where they won’t have to take out a student loan,” Reaves said.

Anne Halsy, wife of a faculty member, participated in the rally with her three children ages 6, 3 and 1.

“I brought my kids because it is important for them to learn that you have to stand up for what you believe in,” Halsy said. “If we don’t fight for a better education system, we deserve what we get.”

Occupy Texas State Profiled by Inside Higher Ed

Photo by Lori Alaniz

Occupy Texas State 

By Allie Grasgreen

The students at Texas State University at San Marcos who protested in Thursday’s second nationally coordinated campus event in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street dispute the oft-repeated charges that the movement’s participants are lazy, unfocused and un-American. And they have the ideas to prove it.

When the time comes to carry out their plans – which address such pervasive student issues as loan repayment and the poor job market – they plan to actually do most of the legwork themselves. They want to attend city council meetings and lobby for bills in the Legislature. They’re going to work with local businesses to establish more scholarships for students. And they plan to get more students registered to vote and active in local and state politics, so they can have a say in where the money goes.

That leaves them with one major obstacle to overcome in the meantime: getting everyone else to care. While protests in New York City and other major cities have attracted thousands, many of them students, the Texas State students are speaking out without a broad movement of local support.

Photo by Lori Alaniz

“In my mind at least, and I think in a lot of other people’s minds, at this point of the movement I think the main focus is raising awareness. We’re doing this and people are like, ‘Why are you protesting?’ And we explain it to them and half the people look at us like they don’t know what we’re talking about,” says Matt Barnes, a mass communications major who is documenting on video the activities of Occupy Texas State as well as Occupy San Marcos. Barnes will graduate from the university this year – $50,000 in debt. “The response that I hear is, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do’…. It’s apathy, but it’s apathy that has been created by a broken system.”

It’s a system, students say, that has resulted in rising tuition, the gutting of state grants meant for low-income students, and a general blocking out of young and disenfranchised voices.

They raised their voices with others across the country Thursday at 4:30 p.m. EDT, though not without resistance. The 40 or so protesters encountered a few hecklers – students and professors alike – during their march from the Texas State campus quad to the city courthouse rally. Many yelled at the protesters to “get a job” – though most of them already have one. Not all the encounters ended with the protesters getting the middle finger, though; one courthouse heckler with a sign calling the protesters communists and idiots, after an educational conversation, put down his sign and joined them.

Photo by Lori Alaniz

While word of other protests was harder to come across this week than last, students did assemble at a number of campuses that didn’t make the news last week, among them California State University at Bakersfield, Iowa State University at Campanile, New Mexico State and San Francisco State Universities, and others. And in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities, students are central to large, ongoing protests.

Last week’s nationwide walkouts on at least 75 campuses enjoyed varying levels of success but exploded on Facebook and Twitter (which is how most of them organized in just a few days) and in the news. While twice that many campuses told the national organizers they would participate on Thursday – meaning, at least one person submitted basic information online — it appears that last week’s occupation gave many of these students the jumping-off point they needed to get things going locally.

Joshua Christopher Harvey is a Texas State junior majoring in international studies, who served in the Air Force as a Russian linguist but was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the since-repealed federal policy banning openly gay people from serving in the military. Harvey organized the first Occupy Texas State event last week, which about 20 people attended after it was hastily planned in two days, and since then he and dozens of others have drafted a group declaration and begun forming a list of demands. The specificity of their plans makes them more organized than most small groups.

Texas State’s declaration is similar to that of Occupy Wall Street’s, with a few tweaks; it calls on students to peacefully assemble against, among other things, a 63-percent tuition increase over the past decade and a 40-percent decrease in state grants over the past year.

Photo by Lori Alaniz

The demands are not final, and their burden is shared between the university, the city and state, and the students themselves. At this point, the demands include extending the six-month grace period during which students must begin paying back their loans; reducing costs on textbooks sold through the university, as well as the “influence of marketing firms” on institutional operations like dining and other areas such as website design where students could be filling jobs; raising and creating new scholarships for Texas State students active in civic life; getting more students registered to vote; and student monitoring of the university’s budget, redirecting funds toward grants when possible.

“We just want to be able to create solutions and not just a list of demands,” says Harvey, who hopes to continue the work as part of a formal group with weekly meetings. “To express our anger through these protests and then, once we get the attention from the media and from the community, to say, ‘Here are our problems, we do have some solutions, and are you willing to work with us to achieve those solutions?’ ”

In addition to helping with that, Jamila Bell, a freshman studying psychology at Texas State, is trying to figure out how she’s going to pay back $3,000 in loans by November. Since the state cut her grant, it’s been an endless cycle of repayment after repayment, each time with a fleeting relief followed by another notification that more money is due – even when she thought it was already taken care of.

“One day I have a grant and the next it’s gone. Every time a paying period comes up something new happens – literally. Is it even worth it?” Bell says. She’s not sure yet, but if things don’t become more stable, she might have to transfer to a community college or a less expensive university, even though her father – who, while supporting Bell, is paying off his own loans for the master’s degree he’s pursuing – is a Texas State alumnus and they both wanted her to go there.

So for Bell, Occupy Texas State is really about showing other students that this all affects them, too; every dollar that goes to a bank instead of a grant is a dollar that one of them will have to pay back.

“Paying off loans – that’s going to be my future. It won’t be having a house or a nice car or anything. I’m going to be paying off loans for the rest of my life,” Bell says. “This movement can open up people’s eyes, and since we do have a voice we can try to help people get grants … and show them we’re all struggling, no matter what class, we’re all college students.”

Photo by Lori Alaniz

While also lobbying for more grants and scholarships from local businesses and state government, the protesters want to make and sell their own clothing, the profits from which will go into a fund for local kids to attend college. A common lament among the protesters is that despite growing up having been told anything was possible – and working hard to make sure it was – they now face nothing but barriers.

“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,” Harvey says. “We just want a movement for change.”

Nicholas Cubides, a Texas State senior who is also running for San Marcos City Council, has registered more than 2,000 students to vote – and if they all turn out and back him in the election, he’ll win hands-down. But whether they do remains to be seen; many have said that, even if they register, they won’t vote.

“It’s really sad. It’s really sad,” Cubides says. “It’s sad to see that this is my generation of people … and the people we need to create massive sweeping changes with the occupy movement, but they have zero interest in doing that.”

So all they can do is try to educate. As Harvey puts it, “My goal is to change this from a moment to a movement.”

Like the one happening in New York.

“I think everything we do, we act in solidarity with other Occupy movements. It’s all one national movement starting at Occupy Wall Street,” says Matthew Molnar, a Texas State freshman studying political science. “I think that the sheer humanity that I’ve witnessed through this movement has been really, I guess, touching. The way that complete strangers can come together and become family through these common grievances, take something negative and turn it into something positive, it’s really amazing; it’s inspiring. It gives me hope.”

Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/14/occupy-texas-

Huffington Post: Students United In Solidarity

Occupy Colleges: Student Supporters of Occupy  Wall Street Continue To Show Solidarity

by Amanda M. Fairbanks

NEW YORK — Thursday afternoon, in concert with the Occupy Wall Street movement, students from nearly 150 college campuses across the country will participate in their second protest in as many weeks.

As with the nationwide walkout held last Wednesday, the students will band together to make their voices heard — with many expressing frustration over increasing amounts of student loan debt and the rising cost of tuition, in addition to a paucity of jobs for recent graduates.

“We’re planning to do these walkouts and shows of solidarity every two weeks until these issues are resolved,” said Natalia Abrams, 31, who helps to organize Occupy Colleges, a student-led grassroots group based in Los Angeles that helped facilitate both nationwide protests. “If Occupy Wall Street is indefinite, we’re indefinite as well. We plan to keep the solidarity protest going for as long as it takes.”

In many ways, today’s protest marks a significant challenge for student backers of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only in terms of coordination and organization, but also with respect to maintaining momentum.

“Participating in something that’s clearly ascendant is always something of a rush,” said Doug McAdam, a professor of sociology at Stanford University. While McAdam said it was inherently difficult to build on the momentum of a movement that’s neither centralized nor coordinated, he cautioned against making too much of its diffuse nature.

“We like to talk about big, historic movements as if they were these spectacularly well-coordinated affairs. They almost never are,” said McAdam, who teaches a course on political movements. “Very broad, diverse efforts are generally more effective because you can speak to different constituencies. It becomes quite difficult to suppress a movement that doesn’t have one distinct leader or head.”

Occupy Colleges, which started as a Facebook page and Twitter handle less than two weeks ago, has quickly blossomed into a burgeoning movement bolstered by a groundswell of student-led support. As of Thursday morning, student organizers at 136 college campuses — from Sarah Lawrence College to Boise State University to San Diego City College — have pledged to participate in Thursday’s show of solidarity.

“Around the country, more and more high school students are foregoing a college education because their families can no longer afford it. So many more are graduating with inconceivable amounts of debt and stepping into the worse job market in decades,” reads a statement on Occupy Colleges’ website. “They take unpaid internships that go nowhere and soon can’t pay college loans. We represent students who share these fears and support Occupy Wall Street.”

Shay Berman, a 20-year-old junior at Michigan State University, is organizing his campus’s show of support later today. Based on rough Twitter estimates, Berman is hopeful that about 50 of his classmates will join him at the Rock, which is a common area on the East Lansing campus dedicated to free speech and protest.

“We’re worried about our future and that the middle class won’t exist once we get out of school. Also, the rising cost of tuition is a big concern,” said Berman, who said his participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests marked his first significant political involvement. “We’re just frustrated with America and the whole way our society is run. “

According to Gonzalo Vizcardo, 21, a senior economics major at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla., 45 students plan to attend a general assembly on campus later this afternoon. Meanwhile, about 40 students at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, are readying for a similar gathering.

Last night in San Marcos, a handful of students spent the evening making hand-painted signs in preparation. Later today, the same group plans to meet at the Stallion, a “free speech zone” at the center of campus. From there, the group will march to the nearby square in downtown San Marcos. Their aim: increased visibility and the dispelling of apathy.

Photo by Lori Alaniz

“Student debt is a huge issue, with some students starting to question the wisdom of even having a degree anymore,” said Joshua Christopher Harvey, a 24-year-old junior who previously served in the U.S. Air Force prior to being discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Harvey organized both last week’s walkout and today’s march. “The main thing that’s come up at our meetings is that there’s only a six-month grace period to start paying our loans back — and we’re worried there won’t even be jobs available once we get out.”

Brayden King, an assistant professor of management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, sees college students as a natural constituency in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“If, say, you’re a middle-aged investment banker, you might look around your social group and think the economy isn’t doing all that bad,” said King. “But if you’re a college student or a recent graduate, you’re thinking the exact opposite when all of your friends are either unemployed or working in jobs that are much lower paying than what they expected to be doing after they graduated.”

Michael T. Heaney, an assistant professor of organizational studies and political science at the University of Michigan, also sees the college protests as a natural part of the movement’s evolution.

“For young people in particular, it’s an opportunity for them to learn about activism and politics for the first time,” said Heaney. “While the 2000s were an intense period of protest, the current generation in college wasn’t really exposed to the earlier period of activism of the last decade. And for a lot of these students, this is their first movement.”

Heaney is currently studying how the first time an individual participates in an activist movement later reverberates throughout the course of their lives. “The point is that first experience with activism will have a long-lasting effect, affecting the way they think about activism, the tactics they think are important and even affecting their social networks,” said Heaney. “But it also has the opportunity to put them off.”

In terms of Occupy Wall Street’s ultimate impact, McAdam notes that while early participation in a movement can help shape young activists, equally important is the historical context of the movement itself.

McAdam studied participants in Freedom Summer — the 10 week-period in 1964 when civil rights activists, many of them college students, traveled to Mississippi to register black voters — who later became more politically engaged members of society as a result.

He found that it wasn’t simply their activism that mattered, but the fact that they participated in the movement during the beginning of sixties-era radicalism.

“In many ways, this particular moment looks a lot like a Freedom Summer moment,” said McAdam. “With our economic woes likely to continue, or perhaps even deepen, for some time and the election coming up next year, it is very likely that we are entering a period of escalating economic, political and social turmoil.

“For students, it won’t have a long-term impact simply because they went to an Occupy Wall Street demonstration a few times, but because it began a process that carried them in the way that Freedom Summer started a process for the Mississippi volunteers.”