Sounding on the University, 1/18/2010

• The good folks over at OccupyCA (the student occupation movement at UC schools) have written compellingly about why they “reject the plan to fix the schools by cutting prison funding.” That made me happy. The first paragraph sets the tone:

What does it mean to pit students against prisoners? Obviously at the first level it’s a maneuver of public relations. The government is taking the words of the student movement into its mouth, but without proposing any real solution for the crisis of schools or prisons: only a desperate attempt to maneuver itself around the political crises on its horizon.

• University Diaries has a good post on the University of Hawai’i: “Where’d the money go?” Margaret Soltan, who writes the blog, includes several stories which ought to be more closely connected in the press. Thank goodness she’s doing it.  Note especially the differing rates of athelete-student academic success among black and white studies at U Hawai’i, and the 6.7% faculty pay cut that was instituted as of December.
• University Diaries also covers the phenomenon of University Suicides. Since I’m teaching a seminar course on the L’Année Sociologique this semester, I’ll be assigning this brief post to my students before we read excerpts from Durkheim’s Suicide.