December 2019 ECSU Newsletter

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DECEMBER NEWSLETTER What Emerson doesn’t want you to know, in your inbox monthly

In this issue: The Quietly Disappointing Reality of Voice Your Choice The Student Activist Reading List: An incomplete list of resources for campus troublemakers ECSU introduces movie nights Emerson's staff union endorses ECSU Get a free T-pass from student access Four ways to get involved with ECSU

ECSU FEATURES • ECSU FEATURES • ECSU FEATURES

By William Ridge

THE QUIETLY DISAPPOINTING REALITY OF VOICE YOUR CHOICE Several weeks ago flyers appeared throughout the hallways, lobby tables, and bathroom walls of the Emerson campus advertising the Vote Your Choice event. It brightly announces that we students might contribute to the decisions made in our college, to really make a difference. It's an inviting flyer, imploring you to vote this December, and the concept it describes is similarly alluring to a student body paying four percent more tuition this year. But exactly how much power are we, the chief creditors of the college, being given?

The flyer itself lays it out quite simply, and it is here that the limitations and contradictions first appear. We have been allotted $100,000 of money out of the Emerson gift fund to vote on. To students with crushing debt and minimum wage

jobs, $100K might seem like a powerful sum. However, in the scope of college financials, it's small potatoes. For some perspective, $100,000 is: 1% of the $100 million in gift money received by the college in 2018 Less than 1/8th of President Lee Pelton's salary Less than half of the Class of 2023's estimated total cost of attendance Less than 0.02% of the FY '20 operating budget And while that's the total amount up for vote, that doesn't mean that each student gets to vote on an equal portion of that money. Seniors will vote over how half of that money is used. Juniors receive a quarter, Sophomores fifteen percent, and Freshman just ten percent. Immediately there is a contradiction as to how this is distributed.

Seniors are given by far the largest share to control, despite the fact that they stand to benefit the least (if at all) from the investments made with that share. This trend holds throughout the whole distribution - those with the least to gain are given the most say. If the aim of this initiative is to improve aspects of the college that the student body decides to be most important, then why are those most affected given the least power? The answer borders on parody - According to the Voice Your Choice page on emerson.edu, Spiderman's Uncle Ben is the economist most suited to distribute monetary power. "With great power comes great responsibility" is the only justification to this distribution. This is perhaps the most telling feature of the event overall, because distributing the money equally throughout the classes of 2020-23 might not be the best solution. It's a fact that 12% of incoming freshmen do not return for another year, so tailoring the distribution to address that is sensible. And yet there is no actual reason given for the current distribution, just a trite pop culture quote and unanswered questions.

The invocation of superhero wisdom may have been intended as an injection of playfulness, a way to show how in step Emerson is with the interests of students.

However, what it actually reveals is an incompetency when it comes to building student advocacy, or a sly effort to curtail it. Students are the lifeblood of the college, and deserve more than a pittance of a handout and a line ripped from comic books.

An incomplete list of resources for campus troublemakers by Sam Kiss

THE STUDENT ACTIVIST READING LIST:

When we were working on the Dis-Orientation Guide this summer, I read a lot of writing by student activists. I wanted to glean inspiration from their strategies, but more than that, seeing that campus dissent is so widespread gave me hope. Reading criticism about the college system by students from other colleges validated my anger and disappointment with Emer$on, as well as my hope that students could change things for the better. These are some of my favorite resources I found.

1. Student Power Now This 2002 essay-turned-zine by Aaron Kreider offers a short history of organizing on college campuses before diving into an outline of the power students truly hold and strategies for how to wield that power. The sentence “One primary source of our power is our people. Students outnumber administrators and this allows us to do successful grassroots organizing” always inspires me.

1. Any Dis-Orientation Guide Dis-Orientation guides offer an honest counter to a college’s ordinary orientation propaganda. They’re student-made and often call out racism, sexism, and classism at colleges. ECSU has saved a collection of them to our Issuu page. My favorite is Barnard/Columbia’s 2017 guide.

2. Campus Organizing Guide This guide gets into the practicals of building student activist groups, such as how to run meetings, how to research your college, and how to promote your work.

3. Agitation Education I love how this zine addresses the revolutionary power and necessity of student-faculty-worker solidarity. It’s spread on page 20, “The Art of War with Your Administration,” is an incredible resource, mapping the ways college administrations often try to shut down student dissent.

4. Towards a Student Unionism This zine by Jasper Conner couldn’t be more relevant to ECSU’s goals. The line “We must organize for institutional power over our universities and create a way of holding onto that power. Progressive policy changes are a great thing on our campuses, and they should be fought for, but they should be fought for in the context of building student power at our own school and across the country. Building student power means gaining more and more control over our colleges and the decisions that affect us as students. In the end, student power means a student-run educational system. It’s our education — we should control it” says it all.

ECSU ACTIVITY • ECSU ACTIVITY • ECSU ACTIVITY ECSU HOSTS MOVIE NIGHT. AND THERE’S MORE TO COME! On Saturday, November 23 we screened and discussed Sorry to Bother You and enjoyed some snacks and community time. We plan on making movie nights (which are open to the entire emerson community) a staple of ECSU. Are you a part of a student org and interested in hosting a screening together? Email us to schedule one!

We’re especially interested in screening films with a union/social justice slant.

ECSU MEETS WITH EMER$ON STAFF UNION Have you seen us on the SEIU bulletin board on 4th floor Walker? We've met with the Emer$on Staff Union and they've endorsed our union! The fight for Emer$on workers' rights and students' rights are part of the same struggle. We stand in solidarity with the staff union as they fight for campus power.

A representative from SEIU has also offered to lead activist trainings for Emer$on students, so stay tuned!

EMER$ON NEWS • EMER$ON NEWS • EMER$ON NEWS Can't cover the cost of a semester T-pass? Student Access can help.

ONLY 12 MORE DAYS TO GET A FREE T-PASS Spring semester T-passes are on sale for $320 until December 12. If you're struggling to cover the cost on your own, email Emer$on's Office of Student Success, or visit them in their office on the 2nd floor of P-Row. They can potentially cover the cost for you.

While you're there, why not ask about getting a free meal plan?

ACTION ITEMS • ACTION ITEMS • ACTION ITEMS

Share your ideas and concerns for the future of our meal swipes exchange group Submit your work to our January newsletter Follow us on Twitter to see union updates throughout the month Email us to ask about joining ECSU

The ECSU newsletter is open to submissions from all people affiliated with Emerson College. We publish thinkpieces, DIYs, comics, and more!

The only requirement is that the content relates to Emerson College and social justice. Work can be published anonymously or with your real or pen name.

Send your submissions here.

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