Townson U, AAUP, March 4

Sorry to be so slow off the mark ~ and then this post left in drafts instead of posted ~ when there is so much going on. Inconvenient time for what ran me down and laid me low

These turned up on my feed reader: 1 academic, 1 Baltimore local, 1 national (WaPo), two Black press bloggers ~ waiting to see if Black Commentator will run something. Also what the lifespan will be.

TOWSON U ~ adjunct fired for racial slur

• http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/03/towson_adjunct_fired_for_racia.html
• http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2010/03/towson_case_highlights_struggl.html
• http://chronicle.com/article/Towson-U-Adjunct-Fired-After/64446/
• http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com/2010/03/allen-zaruba-towson-university.html
• http://ebonymompolitics.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/should-towson-university-teacher-have-been-fired-for-using-the-n-word/

Thanks for the AAUP information, including a March 4 endorsement. The newsletter does not have an rss feed. I created one to let me know when the archive updates. I subscribed to several AAUP feeds but they are not very active. Good material on their main page too, well worth spreading the word, reblogging in a post of its own. 

March 4 ~ so much in feed reader, bookmarks & mbx, I'm drowning in it. Tomorrow, I'll try to sort out a list of top 10 or so sources for you. I doubt many, if any, will be main stream media (with the possible exception of SFGate).

Go to http://ucregentlive.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/march-4-day-of-action-map-march-3-edition/ to view a map of EVERY action taking place NATIONWIDE! Credit: @studentactivism (great website too)


Next up: a few good sources on March 4 actions ~ and I don't necessarily mean mainstream. In case you haven't noticed, they were the last ones to jump on the band wagon.

March4 with Bob Samuels and Twitter

UCLA Fights Back!: Demands for #March4 (Bob Samuels in HuffPo)

"A UCLA coalition of students, faculty, community members, and unions has worked together to come up with a set of demands to present to the administration and the media for March 4th."

The first set of issues deals with fighting the privatization of the university. Another group addresses budget transparency, shared governance, and democratic participation. Samuels explains,

"It is important to stress that when students and workers say they are fighting the privatization of the university, they are resisting six inter-related trends:

1) the shifting of costs from the public to the individual; thus while the state reduces funding, the individual students are being asked to make up for the differences through higher fees;

2) the university is being run more like a private profit-centered business than a not-for-profit public institution; in this structure, costs are socialized, while profits are privatized through the rise of an administrative class;

3) the move from a peer review system for public workers to a private model of free agent contract negotiations;

4) The move to individualized, online learning;

5) The student focus on earning individual grades over social learning and collaboration; and

6) the move to have private donors and private corporations fund the research mission."

March 4th sources are picking up. In addition to blogs, mainstream media and several March 4 groups with Facebook presences supplementing their blogs and Ning platforms, Twitter searches may be be the best and most efficient way to search fast breaking updates. Just search the hashtag #march4. Nor is all the action in California.