Word: sasc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
However, a crucial difference between elections and the divestment movement is that members of SASC and other activists are asking for a fairly severe departure from the status quo by a private institution. Unlike the practice of electing public officials, the action of divestment would be unprecedented and unique. Given this, pluralities are not enough; a truly credible demand that the University divest needs a real student majority, which hasn't been forthcoming...
...GROWING FRUSTRATION with the University's lack of response is one of SASC's stated reasons for building the shantytown. But a deeper reason, it seems to me, is frustration over the continued absence of peer support. There has been no student groundswell, even after a year of increasing violence in South Africa, and visits to Harvard by Jesse Jackson and Bishop Desmond W. Tutu. After years of "consciousness raising" without divestment, no one seriously expects the Corporation to change its collective mind. Now the activist tactic is not to raise consciousness but to raise the ante--that...
...does the earnest petitioner in my dining hall fit into this? It appears that SASC's frustration has caused the organization to see student apathy and/or opposition as fertile ground for more direct methods, such as person-to-person pollings in dining halls and Harkness Common. This tactic has already yielded a 90 percent positive response at the Law School from a sampling of about 30 percent...
...right not to attend class at the shantytown, as some section leaders have urged, or not to be accosted by petitioners. Like the shantytown, which violates the free use of a public place, aggressive polling is undertaken in the name of a "higher good." Both tactics are used by SASC activists to legitimate assertions of growing student support, of "overwhelming majorities" in favor of their cause...
Whether or not students agree with what the conservatives, or SASC for that matter, express on their shanties, the University, unfortunate as it may be, recognizes the shanties and the signs aorund them as a "legitimate form of expression." To prevent damage to the shanties, Harvard police keep a 24-hour watch at great expense to the University (do you wonder anymore why your tuition is so high?). As a result of this policy, the shanties and the signs of the prodivestment students have not been touched or damaged by malicious hands. Therefore, the University has effectively protected SASC...