The following report associated with the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action was sent to the global ISM mailing list.
Hi all!
Last week, the Deutsche Telekom (German ISP) did a marketing campaign at our university canteen. They sold special food to students, and the whole area was full of Telekom marketing stuff: stands, posters, annoying music, and leaflets and cardboard boxes on every table. Because we don’t want to feel like being in a Telekom store while we eat our lunch, we decided to throw out the boxes.
Afterwards we walked with a banner through the canteen to remind the students and Telekom henchfolk that we are students, and not customers. […]
This is our belated conribution to the international “We are students not customers” action week. […]
An alliance of students and faculty staff at the Philipps-University of Marburg organized an open forum with the theme “Wer ist die Uni?” (Who is the uni?). Various status groups at the university filled the programme with workshops, presentation, film screenings and exhibitions among others. Focal points of the forum were (the lack of) democratic structures at the university, selections processes in the access to education, as well as the issue of public underfunding and its consequences for the institution.
The administration of the university supported the initiative and called on lecturers to suspend lectures and seminars for the day – a so called ‘dies academicus’. The main lecture hall building was used to host the forum.
It was also linked to the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action and attended by around 400 people.
The report and pictures below were shared on the global ISM mailing list from North Carolina:
On behalf of the North Carolina State University Students for a Democratic Society (NCSU SDS)
Here in central North Carolina the ‘We Are Students, Not Customers’ week of activities ranged from a statewide assembly to blockading the 147 Freeway. (Photo’s included below)
The National Union of Students in Morocco (NUSM) filled three days with various activities as part of the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action.
Some students involved with the student organization Iskra organized a round of discussion with the focus on student movements around the world, in particular the International Student Movement (ISM) platform as well as the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action.
The session took place at the faculty of Philosophy of Ljubljana University (Slovenia) on November 20th.
We discovered the following report from the University of Southern Maine in Portland (USA).
On November 17, hundreds of students at the University of Southern Maine walked out of class and assembled on the quad to share stories about the adverse affects of ongoing budget cuts. We then marched to the UMaine System Board of Trustees meeting, where we disrupted the meeting with chants and took over the trustees’ seats—staging our own board meeting and calling for a different future for USM. The demonstration was the latest in a series of protests against the wholesale dismantling of USM by the board of trustees. Five programs have been eliminated since October, and twenty-five tenured faculty were “retrenched”—that is, fired—on October 28, with many more coerced into retirement. Students for #USMFuture has demanded reversal of the cuts, restoration of shared governance and renewed state investment in public higher education. Our actions were in conjunction with a week of action, coordinated by the International Student Movement, from Pittsburgh to Belgrade to Sierra Leone. We plan to continue to connect our movement to those of our allies in the struggle for the right to education.
The Movement Demanding Free Education (GMPP) together with Pemuda Sosialis (Socialist Youth, PSM) arranged a rally as part of the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action on November 21st. It took place within the Kuala Lumpur City Centre – an area full of shopping malls and high-end hotels. According to organizers the area was chosen because it symbolizes capitalism.
The Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition (PSSC) organized a rally as part of the WE ARE STUDENTS NOT CUSTOMERS – Global Week of Action on November 19th. The around 50 participants came from different universities in the second-largest city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and gathered at the University of Pittsburgh.
In Albania the student movement Për Universitetin expressed its support for the global week of action in this video! Various activities as described in the report below took place at the University of Tirana.
Students NOT Customers - Global Week of Action (Nov.17-22, 2014) 