S28 National Student Strike for IMF-WB

NATIONWIDE STUDENT STRIKE
12 NOON FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 2001

In Solidarity With 5,000 Locked Out George Washington
University Students and IMF / World Bank Protests in
DC

PARTICIPATING UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

George Washington University * Washington DC

University of Pennsylvania * Philadelphia, PA

Temple University * Philadelphia, PA

LaSalle University * Philadelphia, PA

University of Nevada * Las Vegas, NV

The Evergreen State College * Olympia, WA

Statement of the Locked Out George Washington
University Students

“In response to George Washington University's
decision to shut down the Foggy Bottom Campus, the
pre-emptive discipline concerning students' hosting of
guests, the denial of student and faculty access to
all campus services, including the expensive education
and dormitory facilities, tudents in the United States
are called upon to stand together in solidarity
opposing the values of the educational establishment:
the stifling of free will and expression in the
classroom, the omission of 'controversial' subjects
from the curriculum, and the adherence to a
comfortable status quo of teacher guidebooks, popular
textbooks, and recycled assignments. Further, we must
let it be known that we will not stand by as our
education is sold to the business world. Even the
American university has sold itself to corporations,
whether it be sponsorship of team apparel, ownership
of university bookstores, ownership of athletic
facilities, or even departmental research sponsored by
private corporations and conducted by students and
professors. We must not sit in our seats as educations
becomes marketable. We must take our education back,
away from an educational-industrial complex in which
efficiency and output numbers determine the relative
value of students and teachers. We don't need all-star
professors who lock their office doors; we don't need
test-prep corporations, we don't want blue-booklet
final exams, boring teachers, and passive students.


We need a genuine education, and on Friday, September
28, 2001, students from across the United States will
be called upon to vent their frustration about this
mundane educational assembly line that we call higher
learning. During this strike, students and teachers
from high schools and universities should remember
that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank,
meeting in
Washington DC from September 29-30, serve to
undermine education on a global scale by implementing
structural adjustment programs that privatize public
services in exchange for loans to chip away at
insurmountable debt. The IMF/World Bank symbolize and
encompass values that undermine democracy in our world
today. Without democracy, there is no real education.
Not only
should American students and teachers stand in
solidarity with each other against the increasingly
blurred lines between business and education, but
American students and teachers should stand in
solidarity with victimized students throughout the
world, whose educations suffer, or are outright
denied, because of an imposed obligation to 'catch up'
in the game of global
capitalism.“

(Circulate widely: post on bulletin boards, staple to
telephone polls, wheatpaste lampposts, etc. E-mail to
students, faculty, alternative student newspapers.)