Students Stand Up for PSU’s Future
Students gathered in PSU’s Urban Plaza Tuesday Feb 25 to protest the Board of Trustees
A new student-led group is pressuring the BoT to change course through activism and community organizing
In the months since President Ann Cudd announced plans to slash the university’s budget, groups representing all corners of the PSU community have expressed their disapproval. In addition to faculty unions like PSUFA, students have been some of the loudest voices to speak out against proposed cuts to faculty, programs, and student services. Now, a group of students calling themselves CLASS are organizing to fight for a better PSU. Their demands: quality education, student resources, qualified professors, and student unity.
PSUFA recently spoke with several members of CLASS to learn more about their perspectives and how they plan to take action. (We are not naming the student organizers out of an abundance of caution with regards to their privacy.)
In social media posts, CLASS states “We are fighting for a better university for everyone.” They highlight spending on new construction and individual BoT members’ connections to real estate interests as particular points of concern. One student explained their dismay at “billionaires using our school to rename buildings and programs in their name. Jordan Schnitzer pays $10 million, which he can write off, and then we (PSU) have to pay $80 million (to complete the project). We continue to build more, while also being in a ‘budget crisis’.”
Influence over the board from wealthy donors and suspicions of potential conflicts of interest contribute to one of the group’s objectives, which is to require greater transparency from the University Foundation. (For more information on this issue, read about the proposed Public University Foundation Sunshine Act, which goes up for a vote in the Oregon legislature this week–you can add your own testimony in support of this bill here!)
CLASS, which previously called itself the PSU Stop the Cuts Coalition, has allied with other student groups including MECHA and Kaibigan, as well as campus labor unions. (In case you’re wondering, CLASS is not an acronym for anything. The group simply felt it was an evocative name for their cause, and catchier than the one they started with.)
Speakers from student groups including Kaibigan, YDSA, and Mecha at Tuesday’s rally
“We've been working with YDSA recently as well, which means our meetings these days can run anywhere from 6 people to the mid teens. Just depends on who can make it on a particular week” one of the student organizers told us. This coalition of student organizers recently came together to host a rally at PSU’s Urban Plaza on Tuesday, February 25, where speakers led a crowd in chants of “chop from the top,” and described what they viewed as greed and self-interest on the part of the Board of Trustees. “They say let knowledge serve the city but all I can see is students' money lining their pockets,” said one, while another encouraged attendees to “stand up for yourselves, stand up for your education!”
The students we spoke with emphasized the importance of solidarity and community, and talked about their outreach strategy. “We are trying to get a sense of what's important to the general student body, since we're hoping to activate more people into the fight. As an activist org, we definitely represent a specific subsection of the student body which is politically minded and wants to make positive change.”
“It seems like the biggest complaint is simply a fear of a loss of quality in the institution. We're all pretty worried about the way PSU is being run like a corporation, and teachers we love are being treated unfairly and laid off. For us it's an issue of solidarity and class struggle.”
“Our goals are for the layoffs to be reversed, (to secure an) increased amount of funding from the state, and (to gain more) student/teacher control of the budget,” in the hope of improving PSU’s prospects for the future.
“Our fears for PSU's future is that it will turn into a cheap facsimile of what it once was. A hollowed out husk that has been drained of all its resources by the rich real estate barons who are currently calling the shots… And eventually it will close.”
Want to support CLASS? For their next action, they are asking for adjuncts and other PSU community members to join a rally from Millar Library through downtown, focusing on real estate properties they say are connected to BoT members. You can find out more on their Instagram, @class.pdx and join the rally on Monday, March 3 at 12:00pm in front of PSU’s Millar Library.