Day of Student Action - Wednesday 14 September

Students from Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Auckland and Massey University Wellington are calling for a Nationwide Day of Student Action on Wednesday 14 September.

The government is trying to dictate how students organise on campus, with so-called 'Voluntary Student Membership' set to become law in the next month.

Universities are under attack from their own management, withlecturers being sacked and research shut down at Victoria University in Wellington, under the leadership of Vice Chancellor Pat Walsh. Students at Victoria University are calling for Pat to be sacked.

Auckland University management, under the leadership of Vice Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon, is attempting to remove key academic freedoms from lecturers, calling into question the whole idea of the university as a community of scholars. University management is already cutting papers that encourage students studying business to think critically, things will only get worse. Students at Auckland University are calling for Stuart to be sacked.

We are calling for high school students, university students, and everyone else (after all, we are al students really) to organise and prepare for a Nationwide Day of Student Action on Wednesday September 14!


For more information on what's going on at Victoria University go here: http://www.facebook.com/SackPatWalsh

For more information about what's going on at the University of Auckland go here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Casual-Uprising-of-Students-Against-the-Abolishment-of-MGMT-231/146445948777427
http://saveourconditions.org/

To help organise in Wellington go here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/264767836875624/

To help organise in Auckland go here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/240219706015827/

Call for VC's resignation
Victoria University students are calling for the resignation of vice-chancellor Pat Walsh following his proposals to change the international relations and political science courses.

A group of Victoria University students has organised a "Sack Pat Walsh" Facebook campaign.

The Facebook site has drawn about 50 "likes". Campaigners have used the site for other initiatives, such as the National Day of Action on September 14 and to co-ordinate a pamphlet drop during the Victoria University open day last Friday.

Chile's Commander Camila, the student who can shut down a city

Not since the days of Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos has Latin America been so charmed by a rebel leader. This time, there is no ski mask, no pipe and no gun, just a silver nose ring.

Meet Commander Camila, a student leader in Chile who has become the face of a populist uprising that some analysts are calling the Chilean winter. Her press conferences can lead to the sacking of a minister. The street marches she leads shut down sections of the Chilean capital. She has the government on the run, and now even has police protection after receiving death threats.

Alex Callinicos: UK Student demonstrators can't do it on their own

Abruptly and spectacularly, out of icy winter skies, the first real social movement Britain has seen since the early 1990s exploded in the dying weeks of 2010. It took the student protests – largely organised outside any official structures – to expose the deep fractures in a Conservative-Liberal coalition that had previously carried all before it.

What has given the student movement its power has been the coming together of university students, with long-standing traditions of protest and considerable organisational resources, with a much more elemental rebellion by school, sixth-form college and further education students. On 9 December, the class rage of working-class teenagers "from the London slums", as one of them told the BBC, exploded as they saw themselves shut out of any educational opportunity.