Rallying cries for a tuition freeze and for student bargaining rights filled AU’s campus on Friday afternoon as members of the Coalition of American University Students (CAUS) led a march that culminated in a rally outside of Butler Pavilion in an attempt to directly voice their concerns to Gail Hanson, the university’s vice president for campus life.
The students said they decided to hold the rally after university administration failed to respond to a list of demands and to a petition signed by over 25 percent of the student body.
“I think with these sexual assault education programs, what we can prevent is a scared girl lying under someone and trying to convince him what he’s doing is illegal.”
These words echoed through the megaphone and onto the American University quad as Nicole Wisler relived her experience as that scared girl.
The main takeaway from the School of Public Affairs’ Political Theory Institute’s “Whither American Education?” inaugural conference: there’s plenty to be done in the field of education.
The conference focused on the goals, means and outcomes of education today, and explicitly noted different ways that this was possible.
More than 600 colleges in the United States ban smokers from lighting up on university grounds — and some administrators and members of the student body think AU should become a smoke-free campus as well.
The thorny issue of students smoking on campus is not unfamiliar territory for the administration. The school banned lighting up in the Tavern way back in 1998 (wait, you mean people used to smoke inside?) and stomped out smoking in and around residence halls back in 2003. The prospect of a campus sans cigarettes has faded in and out of debate since 2007.
AU came close to a smoking ban in 2008, when a bill to enact new guidelines on limiting smoking on campus made its way before Student Government; the bill passed the senate despite a veto from SG President Joe Vidulich. At the same time as the kerfuffle over smoking shuffled through SG, the University President’s council began investigating the feasibility of a campus smoking ban.
Instead of supporting an unsustainable system in which the average meal travels over 1,500 miles from farm to factory to plate, students can elect to back a regionally minded system of producer-consumer interaction.
Whether it’s composting with worms or taking care of AU’s beehive (yes, we have bees!), International Development Professor Eve Bratman is always looking for ways to live more sustainability.
Accommodating an octopus in a standard 12 by 15 foot dorm room, while also living with a roommate and maintaining a social life, might seem farfetched, if not impossible.
