Graduate students begin week of sit-ins to protest fees
October 21, 2019
Graduate students Janet Ruppert and Lucy van Kleunen participate in the sit-in in the Regent Administrative Center to protest fees they pay. Oct. 21, 2019 (Kevin Wu / CU Independent)
Graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder kicked-off a week of protest against mandatory fees that they say are taking advantage of their right to work. Led by the Committee on Rights and Compensation (CRC), students held a sit-in Monday in the Regent Administrative Center which are set to continue from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. throughout the week, culminating in a walk-out Friday at noon on Farrand Field.
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Harvard’s Counter Teach-In, 50 Years Later
How a student disruption prefigured the extremism of today’s college campuses
Fifty years ago, some friends and I had the audacity to sponsor what we called the “Counter Teach-In: An Alternative View.” It took place at Harvard University on March 26, 1971, and argued in favor of American involvement in the Vietnam War a position roughly as outrageous then on campus as arguing in universities now that Israel should defeat the Palestinians.
Opponents of the war disrupted the event. In doing so, they took the first step toward the cancel culture that has overtaken campus life, with faculty and students alike now being investigated by star chambers before being fired or expelled for the sin of holding the wrong views. Similarly, the strong words and weak actions of Harvard’s leadership foreshadowed cowardly conduct of university administrators who speak bravely but act with pusillanimity.
Graduate students demand an end to mandatory fees
January 14, 2021
Students gather around the buffalo statue in the Regent Administrative Center in protest of graduate student fees. Oct. 21, 2019 (Kevin Wu / CU Independent)
Dean of the Graduate School E. Scott Adler responded on Tuesday to demands from graduate workers to eliminate student fees. Graduate students feel that Adler failed to address their concerns in his response.
United Campus Workers Colorado (UCWC), launched a letter-writing campaign on Dec. 22, 2020, encouraging activists to email Dean Adler with the subject line, “Would you pay CU $17,380 every year just to work?”
UCWC found that, on average, graduate students return 7.9% of their salaries to the university through student fees. Using 2020 salary data, the group displays how much money administrators would contribute if they paid the same percentage of their income. Based on these calculations, President Mark Kennedy would have to pay $67,150, Chancellor