Kim.
LONGTERM ITINERARY
Student Co-ops
Student Boycott as a Political tool
Let's get fucking messy.
Refusal to pay/go to classes
Decision to remove formalities (American… very Bennington)
Get drunk and break shit - anarchy?
Food Riots
Who has a say in University Living Conditions?
Military Industrial Complex in funding disparity
drafted proposal - magna carta
Removing corporate interest
Where do our products come from
Tuition cost/effectiveness
Where do the missing DHall swipes go
Spaces to work - drums, loud instruments, 24/hr study space
Spaces to collect without corporate interest
No exploitation of Student Work
Removal of propaganda
Accuracy of materials sent to prospective students
Review hiring/firing process
Removal of bureaucratic favoritism
Representation
Academic propositions
Lab fees for visual arts
Opportunities for engagement and active participation
Acknowledgement of our privilege as students at…
Accountability and Available college budget/money distribution HANDOUTS
Interdepartmental Coordination
TRANSPARENCY
Student ELECTED house representation
Student autonomy in living space - squatting/collective living/punk houses
Locavore
Refusal of favoritism by department or living quarters
"Student Life" vs. Student living
Food Consciousness
Student investment committee
External Relations - helping people
Student Unions to cut things out of the administrations hands
how do we doing this without fucking up faculty's business
GOLDEN RULE
Refusal for division based on treating people like shit
TREAT PEOPLE HOW YOU WANT TO BE TREATED - safe space
democratic process
Practice what you preach
1968 France student/worker, Columbia takeover,
Hornsey College of Art
over the degree classism
full takeover of college, dismissal of the administration
[ The Hornsey Affair, penguin press]
Template for Bennington Survey
Complaints Choir
APATHY Issues
Policy Demands
eg:
Stop Tuition hikes, recycle,
Structural Demands
eg:
Fix your shit and/or get the fuck out!
DEMANDS || FACILITATION –––––––
Students Against Sweatshop Labor
Campus Progress
SDS
New School and NYU Occupations/Sit-Ins
Occupy UC
RAISE THE SOCIAL COST (of noncompliance)
Who is our [Target]
How do we make their lives miserable
Freeze your Target
Find out who the Target is (get to the bottom of the bullshit)
Select a weak person
[Dean of Students - Eva]
Fear of Bad Social Media
Find out the phone numbers of the board members and the highest donors and alumni mailing list AND PERSPECTIVE STUDENT MAILING LIST
Rebellion in the University - Lipset
Old info/notes:
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We are seeking to create a body called the "Student Union."
The Student Union's goals are….
student representation on the board of trustees
accountability from the administration/board
creating open channels of information
distributing information
facilitating discourse with the student body at large
fielding student issues
It seeks to examine larger issues on school policy, such as:
quality of life for students (ex:)
housing
population
maintenance concerns
worship space
longterm academic concerns (ex:)
CAPA vs. VAPA and the marketing of the college
facilities for students ie: practice rooms, art studios
college "master plan" issues (ex:)
enrollment
new buildings
construction
Ultimately, to serve as a channel to the board of trustees, and facilitate conversation amongst the students about campus-wide issues.
The Student Union seeks to find TRANSPARENCY through civil discourse.
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Student Union: Organization Architecture
Five appointed leaders, who are acting secretaries to the organization. They organize all the large meetings.
Sub committees on:
StudLife issues
Academic issues
"Master Plan" issues
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Occupation vs. Sit-In
Occupation is a longterm sit-in that allows coming and going
trajectory: Petition, Letters to the Editor, theatrical protest actions, protest, sit-in, Occupation
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Reverend Billy (OWS NY)
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UNIFICATION OF ISSUE - simple issues
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Charles' how to destroy the board list (ca. 2010):
Hit them where it hurts – money!
Anonymous mailing packet:
SEPC Letters
Board Response
BFP Articles
Liz_rolls_deep_69 - dissenting mass emails
Chris Miller interview - possibly a statement
for students - real rooming situations, photos of the shittiest rooms
Top 20 donators
Alumni circular mailing list
New students, admissions mailing list - last resort
Petitions
Students working in communications, alumni relations, admissions
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Liz_rolls_deep_69 email:
TO: Bennington College Students, Faculty, and Staff
FROM: Bennington College Senior Staff & Board of Trustees
DATE: October 19, 2009
RE: Campus Contest
The New Liberal Arts is an unparalleled beacon to guide Academia, the United States, and the World. The Association of American Colleges & Universities, a network of 1,200 institutions, organizes the "Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility" reform initiative. The network seeks to promote "promising practices that develop students’ civic engagement and social responsibility in both a local and global context." We grudgingly admit this mission is harmonious with our goals. We choose not to participate, though we grow increasingly penitent about this somewhat self-centered decision, particularly as more community members grow privy to our inadvertent isolationism.
Our first attempt to hot-wire the College in 1993 resulted in a sustained period of abysmal attendance and discouraging press. It is not without irony we have entitled the CAPA council room "The Symposium." It is our belief, however, that Bennington College owes something of its continued existence to the admittedly messy reform so instigated. For a moment, let us rejoice in the refinement of strategy, and the great improvement over the ham-fisted, awkward bluntness of our first redaction. Now, the celebrated intimate class sizes, the influential presence of the arts, even the well-established status as a profoundly unique institution for uncommon students- these impediments are but butter beneath the heated blade of our ideal rhetoric.
Not fleeting were our feelings of disappointment at the failure of the Democracy Project to proselytize, or the offended sense of moral imperative we experienced thereby. The Democracy Project and its canny offspring The New Initiative are fundamentally important to the intelligence and very civility of young adults. Any study beyond The New Liberal Arts framework proves to be inherently meaningless. Despite the nation-saving nature of our nearing changes, the community has been critical. From students we hear only emotional patter, and from faculty only the grumbling stiffness of myopic specialists. We do hope others come to be as uplifted as we are.
Our small community is a difficult place in which to sustain sufficient bureaucratic remove. Without this distance, we are met by great challenge when it comes time to renovate the roster of campus personnel. Other important campus improvements are made possible as well: We safely limited capital requests in order to renovate offices with unsatisfactory cabinetry, and squeezed union health benefits in order to lay hundreds of feet of pathway between buildings at every possible angle of incidence. Truly not enough can be done to minimize the potential increase of our insurance premiums at the hands of a treacherous Vermont mud season.
To celebrate the nearing completion of our long-sought design, the successful annexation of Bennington College, we cede the coup de grace to you, our most respected community. To effectively dispose of the despairing, indifferent body of the school as it was, we will be renaming the college. We hereby open a campus-wide contest in search of the best new nomenclature. Entries may be submitted by email, phone, letter, or otherwise, and we propose no limit to the number of entries you may submit. In addition to our most valuable praise, the winner of the contest will be awarded an inscripted brick to be positioned beneath the oculus.
It is a moment of heroic change at the college, and its future is to be marked by you.
