CHICAGO, November 23 — The Occupy Wall Street movement came to Chicago State University (CSU) today as the Independent Student Union (ISU) led 75 students and faculty to occupy the president’s office for two hours.
An ISU leader listed local campus issues and explained that Illinois owes CSU $15 million, including $3 million in state grants. During the following speak-out, many students, tired of being disrespected and given the run-around, detailed the university’s failure to facilitate registration; to properly process withdrawals from a class (leading to Fs on the transcript); to repair crumbling infrastructure; to treat students with respect; to raise funds; and to improve communications with students.
A married couple, both CSU students, brought their children, showing them by their example that we need to unite and fight back. The father told President Watson that his administration was damaging CSU’s reputation by not providing a student-friendly environment. A student brought her mother, a CSU alumnus, who remembered that students had the same complaints when she was attending.
Support from Purdue
A transfer student, about to graduate, was incensed over the lack of recognition for maintaining a 4.0 average. Students who came from Purdue U. Calumet to support the occupation described their campaign against a racist professor on their campus.
In reply, a dean scolded students for blocking the doorways, thus displaying the patronizing, racist attitude about which students were complaining. When Watson was asked who was recording the meeting, he looked around in vain for his staff to step forward. At other times administrators were visibly agitated and aggressive, furious that black students would have the nerve to challenge their authority. The black administrators were failing at their main job — enforcing racism and keeping black students “in line.”
Watson, who is black, serves the CSU trustees, who serve the capitalist class. Their system is in crisis. The bosses’ profits are in danger. Tax revenues are falling because workers can’t get jobs. Meanwhile, Gov. Quinn, supported by Democrats and Republicans, plans to give a $250 million tax break to Sears, the Board of Trade and The Mercantile Exchange while keeping $15 million slated for CSU.
This is a racist attack on black and Latino students (the vast majority at CSU). In capitalist society bosses only fund education when it is profitable. In a communist society, workers and students will work together to educate all of us so that we can better serve the working class.
‘Don’t Follow the Rules’
When administrators tried to take over the occupation and make excuses, faculty members and students insisted the administrators step back and listen, just as the faculty was doing. Later a student representative to the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the dean of student affairs attacked ISU for failing to work through “proper channels.” A communist teacher replied that the best thing about the occupation was that it did not follow the channels that keep students under the thumb of the administration. He said that the occupation and the students’ anger about being disrespected was an assertion of power and of self-respect, the essence of working-class democracy.
We in PLP congratulate CSU students for breaking the rules. We encourage students to resist any efforts of the racist black administrators to use nationalism to try to win students’ support — “don’t mess up our black thing.” We urge ISU to continue to break rules and empower other students and to adopt a broader social justice perspective, progressing from airing grievances to striking at racism and other injustices at the core of capitalism