BOSTON — Chants rang out across the Roxbury Community College (RCC) campus “Hands off RCC, this is our community,” and “No more top down management, no more lies, we want a college where students thrive.”
It was the day after faculty and staff voted “no confidence” in the new administration, and 25 faculty, staff, and students rallied in front of the administration building.
The strong statement was the latest step in the battle by students and teachers to keep alive an idea that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement, specifically the struggle to win higher education for Black students who had been excluded by inferior schools and poverty. Now the rulers’ agenda for community colleges is to “vocationalize” them to serve area businesses’ need for workers. Just like K–12 education reform, this bosses’ reform is a response to an intensifying capitalist crisis.
RCC President Valerie Roberson’s job is to carry out this agenda. In 16 months, the administration has forced out 55 workers, increased class size, forced teachers to teach classes outside their field, and cut back on support services. The teaching of critical reading, writing, and thinking is being sacrificed and policy changes are allowing fewer students into four-year colleges.
Although RCC was plagued for decades by dysfunctional administration and underfunding, it became known as a socially conscious community that empowered students to achieve their aspirations. Now, as U.S. capitalism declines, the rulers need the public schools and colleges to help them improve our competitiveness with rival capitalists. This development is part of growing fascism when the bosses must rule with an iron fist, clamping down on workers as they militarize society and prepare for world war.
Although we may not be able to stop this development, by fighting back we can slow it down, building unity and a spirit of resistance for the bigger struggles to come. This requires a long-term outlook, which faculty, staff, and students need to develop. Their fear was offset by the unity we built between the two unions and students as well as their anger at how they are being treated. The biggest weakness was our failure to mobilize students. As of today, the vast majority of RCC students remain in the dark about why they need to fight back. Their passivity is a weakness in our class, created by decades of ruling-class strategy to depoliticize youth and win them to individualism and patriotism.
Worried that activism and dissent will deepen at RCC and spread beyond it, the Department of Higher Education has stepped in to negotiate with the unions. For us, these on-going meetings are an opportunity to maintain momentum and win some gains — but the real gain is the growth of the revolutionary communist movement. PLP has played a crucial role sharpening up the class struggle, but we need to do more. More young people reading CHALLENGE, more meeting with us, and more workers and youth understanding our struggle—those are the steps we need to build a communist revolution.