<p>percussiondad, you are in a tough situation.</p>
<p>I can’t comment on student strikes/boycotts.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Newsflash to the young 'uns: nearly EVERY student government is ineffective (almost by definition). ASUC has been particularly so since the 60’s. (And, btw, it has had numerous “forms” over the last 40+ years.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure, that’ll work. Start the mass transfers out. (Hint: there are literally thousands of students ready, willing, and able to take your places.)</p>
<p>We will also consider immediate strategies and actions to stem the barrage of cuts and longer-term strategies to restore funding for education Where is the funding they want to tap into? Since Prop 13, (essentially, property taxes- and with some caveat that makes it tough to override or re-write,) funding for education and all sorts of public services has dwindled. The revenue isn’t there. In local k-12 schools, instead of community funding, many districts are forced to rely on the state- and the state can’t manage.</p>
<p>37 million residents, about 800 miles from nose to toe, over 600,000 kids in the Cal States and UCs, multiple priorities, owing to a very diverse population, in all respects; multiple “points of failure.” </p>
<p>How does NY do it? They have 450k+ in the SUNY system- are they magically better managing all the state needs against U needs? Does the much smaller size of the state and total population (half of CA) make some difference? Managing less geography? Or are those kids equally disgruntled?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably less than 5 percent are “disgruntled.” The rest are just trying to get through their classes and go to a low-paying job or arrange an internship. But that small percent is pretty adamant that they can “lead” the others in fighting their “oppressors.”</p>
<p>As for the issue of replacement students: how deep into a semester can a school admit transfer applicants and waitlisted ones?</p>
<p>If a school cannot ensure such students attend immediately, then a strike could work while a boycott would perhaps be more feasible in UCSC than in UCB. Even if it could, it would create an administrative nightmare both for the school and for the thousands of replacement students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Since the big Uni is chock-full of large lecture halls, do you even think the faculty will notice if a few thousand students don’t show up for class. Heck, that probably occurs each and every day (skipping class).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What nightmare? The students have already paid their tuition and room and board fees for the term. The only issue would be if they fail to register/pay for the next term. But then such students would not be on ‘strike’, they would be withdrawing (and have to reapply).</p>
<p>btw: 25-35% of all undergrads are in extremely competitive, pre-professional majors. There is absolutely no way that they would skip class to risk their gpa for your cause.</p>
<p>Union officers will tell you that a strike is a serious doomsday option; it’s an action of last resort when the alternative is really, really unacceptable. Because once you strike, you either win, or your union is broken.</p>
<p>Let’s face it, student strikes are playacting. They lack the one thing that makes workers’ strikes deadly serious: a sense that their entire life future rides on the outcome of the dispute. There is no solidarity among college students. They are all there for their own reasons, and they are counting on getting out someday. They are not going to be students forever, and they won’t sacrifice their future for nothing.</p>
<p>Even so, SDU knows that strikes are voted, and declared, only as a last resort option and an university-wide strike isn’t their be-all, end-all. </p>
<p>A student strike isn’t a mass withdrawal either. If it forced a department to delay a semester (never did a department cancel a semester outright because of a student strike since canceling a semester would create a logjam at the following semester, worse still than the re-scheduling made necessary with the strike) then an administrative nightmare occurs as for the completion of strike-affected classes once it ends.</p>
<p>Plus, what forms did ASUC take? I always imagined that ASUC forms would resemble each other quite a bit with only minor differences from a form to another.</p>
<p>Catria - why are you so keen on promoting student unions and student strikes? The whole notion of a union implies that the college and its students are adversaries. I’m pretty sure most students don’t see it that way. I think a large majority of students actually want to be there and want to be learning stuff, which puts them on the same side as the university. In fact the students are paying lots of money for the privilege of being there. </p>
<p>Seeking to threaten the school or winning some sort of control struggle with the school s not normally a part of why someone goes to college. Why pick a fight where one doesn’t exist?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>IMO, you are probably not providing much of a service there, however. As an international attending college in Canada, not sure how much experience you really have with US admissions practices…</p>
<p>Most student unions (wherever the students are unionized) don’t pick fights until issues show up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I also evoked the $10,000 undergraduate degree, commuter reality at one point. It turns out that the $10,000 undergraduate degree only really costs $10,000 for a 3-year degree paying the in-province tuition, and commuting to boot. So I’m not an international student. But am I really worse as a chancer than a high schooler being asked to chance back another high schooler?</p>
<p>^ Imo, the issue boils down to: how much experience and knowledge does any poster have about the situations they either advise on or advocate. Do you, as a current student in Canada, really have a sense of the complexity of what’s going on in Cali? Or, the competitiveness and criteria to chance such a broad swath of US colleges? For the number of schools you chanced and your certainty, I think it’s not possible. I’ll stop there, in case you wish to discuss. Or not.</p>
<p>No, hs kids can’t chance each other. Kids who never hit the submit button on ther own apps. But, with exceptions, most US college kids also don’t know how admissions works. Heck, even many parents don’t, except for what they directly learned or have slowly acquired thru, eg, CC.</p>