So what is happening in Indiana?

I read about this last night after a kid I went to undergrad posted a link to it on Facebook. I respect this kid’s opinion, more so now that he has undergone a radical ideological shift. He also hails from Indiana, which means this is probably a big deal.

The Nation had a piece from a few days ago by James Cersonsky and Student Nation on the Indiana University strike. They note that as March Madness ended, most of those in Hoosier country are not happy about the restructuring and gutting that has taken place. Thursday and Friday (yesterday and today), the university has been the site of a statewide strike. The Board of Trustees is holding its annual meeting, and students and staff walked out of class and off the job. Photos of the strike can be found here.

One poster reads:

“The goal is to contest the administration’s efforts to make IU a more exclusive, costly institution, at the expense of students and staff. We have already forced the administration to acknowledge these issues, but through collective action, we want to push further so that we can imagine together a different future for IU.

In addition to a 45 percent increase in tuition and fees over the past six years, the strikers cite issues of diversity and racism:

Recent cuts at IU have disproportionately targeted international students and students of color, college education has been eliminated from Indiana prisons, and immigration laws have been implemented that make an IU education cost-prohibitive for undocumented Indiana students.

Rather than organizing solely around affordability, students list a slate of demands:

1. Immediately reduce tuition and eliminate fees.
2. Stop privatization and outsourcing at IU.
3. End the wage freeze [for faculty and staff].
4. The university must honor its promise to double the enrollment of African-American students to 8%.
5. Support the abolition of both HB1402 [which prevents undocumented students from receiving in-state tuition] and SB590 [an immigration law enforcement bill styled after Arizona’s SB1070].”

They continue:

“These demands are obviously not exhaustive—there’s no way to concisely communicate all the things that need to change at IU. These demands are a starting point, a spark to foster discussion and encourage action. These demands are made not just of the Board of Trustees, but of the entire state bureaucracy that the Board is part of.”

IU campus activists have spent the last six months organizing the strike. On Monday, strikers called for the university not to retaliate against non-student strikers. More than 100 faculty have signed a petition in solidarity with striking students and calling for the university not to punish them for walking out. This is all accompanied by other actions and “Free University Days” organized by grad students and instructors. Some things to note:

• Public service workers in Indiana aren’t legally allowed to strike.
• Faculty are prohibited from using “faculty LISTSERVs and emails to promote organization around the proposed student strike.”
• As of yet we don’t know how much of this is student driven.