Our next meeting will be in the Underground Cafe, the basement of 600 S. Michigan, Chicago, IL at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, 3/18. Please join us to plan for a Week of Rage to coincide with RECLAIM EDUCATION – A Global Week of Action called for by the International Student Movement during May 1-8.
Featuring Ben Schacht (CACHE/Northwestern) on global economics and its relation to higher education, Ashley Bohrer (CACHE/DePaul) on academic repression and the need for marketable research, Bret Hamilton (Columbia College Chicago) on direct action, and Creston C. Davis (Global Center for Advanced Studies) on building alternatives.
Hosted locally at Columbia College Chicago and online as a Google Hangout or a livestream via YouTube. Twitterchat with #CACHE227. Be there or be squarely in the red.
Friday August 24th, 10:45am
Columbia College: 8th floor of 600 S. Michigan
Come out to show Diana, President of the Part-time Faculty Association at Columbia College, that we support her work on behalf of all working people and all students. Come to 600 South Michigan Ave., Room 811A. Please arrive before 11:00 a.m. on Friday August 24th. We want to show the administration of Columbia College that if they continue to harass Diana, we are going to defend her. Stop the intimidation, negotiate in good faith! Sign the petition to support Diana Vallera
CACHE will join the Chicago Teacher’s Union tomorrow for a rally simultaneous with their membership meeting.
Sunday May 20th, we will gather at Lasalle and Jackson at 11:00am and march past Chase Tower to join the CANG8 rally at Daley Plaza.
TUESDAY, MAY 1 | 11 AM | UNION PARK (SW CORNER), 1501 W. RANDOLPH ST.
As of April 15, 2012 aggregate student debt has reached the astronomical sum of one trillion dollars. Student default rates have more than doubled as college administrators continue to charge still more for tuition, callously disregarding stagnant family incomes and disappearing post-collegiate job opportunities. Moreover, by turning students into a source of revenue, college administrators have transformed education into a form of labor. We too generate surplus value over which we have no control; we too have been systematically excluded from meaningful participation in the electoral process; and therefore we too must turn to one another in fighting back against the forces that threaten our families, friends, and futures.
The Coalition Against Corporate Higher Education therefore declares hereby its solidarity with all labor, organized and unorganized. We call on all students to join our allies, comrades, and friends in the Chicago labor movement that will take to the streets this May 1st. Come rally with us at the southwest corner of Union Park at 11am, where representatives from Graduate Students United, Occupy Columbia, the Coalition of Responsible Education, the Northwestern Living Wage Campaign, Occupy DePaul, the Justice for Loretta Capeheart Campaign, the DePaul Anti-Capitalist Coalition, and CACHE speak out about the struggles we have set in motion this past winter.
Come join us students in front of the statue of Fr. Egan in order to protest the proposed tuition hikes that will be voted on the NEXT DAY by the Board of Trustees.
On Thursday night, we met with Fr. Holtschneider in order to make our four demands. These are:
1. IMMEDIATE tuition freeze for all current and incoming students.
2. That Fr. Holtschneider retract his approval of the proposed 2012-2013 budget and tuition increase.
3. That we are granted a meeting with the Board of Trustees, and the SRAC BEFORE the vote on the proposed budget.
4. That the vote this Saturday be post-poned until this meeting is held.
None of these demands were met, and so we, Depaul Students, must unite to show the administration that we will NOT cease until our demands are met!
Here’s some news coverage from Thursday night’s action:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=8565731
And here’s a link to the online Petition Against the Proposed 2012-2013 Tuition Increase:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-administration-of-de-paul-university-freeze-de-paul-universitys-tuition?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=share_with_facebook_friends
CALL CAMPAIGN:
DEMAND TUITION FREEZE!!
-Main University number at 312-362-8000
– President Fr. Holtschneider at 312-362-8890
-the Vice President of Student Affairs at 312-362-8854
-the Administrative Chancellor at 312/362-8711
-the Provost at 312-362-7560 and the Vice President at 312-362-6695.
Coalition Against Corporate Higher Education (CACHE) Organizes Rally, March, and Speak-out against Crushing Student Debt on National Student Day of Action at Chase Bank on March 1st
Chicago, Illinois — Chicago university students will stand in solidarity with students across the nation and the world when we walk out of our classrooms and down to Chase Tower on Thursday, March 1st, 2012. This walk-out and subsequent demonstration are the next step in our continued escalation of students’ struggle for control of their own futures. For too long, the 1%–or to be precise, .00064%–has brought the fight to us through FAFSA forms and credit card swindles. This time, we bring the fight to them. On March 1st, students across Chicago will make it clear to J.P. Morgan Chase that students will no longer permit the consequences of its loan profiteering pass by the public unnoticed. We will rally and march on Chase Tower, where we will conduct actions in protest of Chase’s increasing control over our future. And this will not be our last act of resistance. The recent creation of the Coalition Against Corporate Higher Education (CACHE) gives voice to a new spirit of unrest and anger among students in Chicago and across the country. We are devoted to the education and empowerment of students world-wide in an age when the ruthless captains of the free market have transformed higher ed into yet another site of profit accumulation.
There is a myth in this country that “everyone goes to college.” While the ideal of a university education and the promise of upward mobility it brings has long functioned as an ideology for a society riven by profound inequality, in the current economic climate that myth is becoming ever more threadbare, as fewer and fewer students can afford a college degree. Working multiple part-time jobs, taking on outrageously inflated student loans, amassing credit card debt — such is the life of a ‘student’ today. Were it not for the even more dismal prospect of a life without the increasingly meaningless credentials our remorselessly impersonal society demands, a life without higher education would seem the more attractive alternative. As for finding a job upon graduating, much less one that pays a living wage, has decent benefits, and (how dare we!) reflects one’s talents and passions — well, good luck!
The traditional promise of higher education– that it provides opportunities for a better life — has been foreclosed along with the homes of many Americans. Once the cornerstone of American social mobility, colleges and universities have been transformed into revolving doors for students who enter with high hopes only to exit with massive debt, few job prospects, and little of substance in exchange for all their troubles, enriching student lenders and a ballooning administrator class along the way.
Many economists worry that the student debt bubble may soon burst, landing the US economy in a triple-dip recession. Furthermore, the average student debt of $25,250 — a number that is not only growing steadily with each new semester, but is already significantly higher for minority students — renders students unable to take lower paying, fulfilling positions such as public service employment or elementary school teaching. Higher education’s former mission of developing balanced, enlightened individuals who can serve their communities reveals itself as no more than a lie.
The corporatization of higher education has produced a climate of vicious competition and insecurity on and between campuses. Meanwhile, the burden on families grows with each new term, while the wages of most American families remain stagnant. Administrations have proved increasingly willing to dispense with the more traditional elements of higher education in favor of extravagant construction projects designed for the purpose not of servicing the community but of drawing families (i.e. ‘revenue generators’) to the institution with the most lavish facilities.
While universities relentlessly slash programs that inculcate critical reflection in search of ever more “revenue” (that is, profits), university officials wonder at the loss of critical thinking skills among university students. If our universities, which are resembling more and more exclusive resorts for the progeny of the well-off, are not to become relics of the past, and if this country is not to fall even deeper into recession, the crisis in education must be addressed. When higher education becomes the preserve of the privileged, it becomes a mockery of what it claims to deliver. Over the last few decades, the minority in power has waged a war on higher education, realizing that by restricting access to higher education, the general public will be stripped of the tools and the opportunities to criticize and resist the destructive policies forged by the privileged. Their attack on higher education has not only worked to disable dissent, but has disproportionately disadvantaged (socioeconomic, racial, and queer) minority students.
This is the situation in which CACHE intervenes. We have decided to throw a few wrenches into a machine that demolishes places of learning only to replace them with corporate-friendly resorts. Given that Chase Bank is one of the most vital levers of that machine, especially with respect to their role in student lending; and given that their commercial headquarters is located here in Chicago, CACHE has decided to strike at Chase.
Chase Bank’s infiltration of universities and colleges earns them profits at the expense of students and their families, who must bear the increasing cost of higher education. If you have ever wondered why bank logos and ATMs are plastered all over your campus, consider that banks pay colleges and universities when students obtain and use their credit cards. It should come as no surprise that Chase Bank is the largest provider of Visa cards.
Let us have no illusions: student debt is destroying the ideal of higher education as a place of enlightened debate and diversity of encounters. The university is no longer a place to collectively reflect on our history, or our present. That is why we must act now. Chicago students’ strike on Chase begins on March 1st with actions on individual Chicago university campuses, including a city-wide walk-out, and students from all schools will convene at Grant Park (Michigan and Congress) at 1:00pm for a rally before marching to Chase Headquarters.
For more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Ashley Bohrer at (818) 923 – 8348 or Ben Schacht at 585-748-088. You can also send an email to cache.chicago@gmail.com.
CACHE stands in solidarity with the parents and students currently occupying the Brian Piccolo Specialty School at 1040 North Keeler Avenue in Chicago, IL. CACHE recognizes that free, publicly financed education provides the foundation for a democratic society. Education is a right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.
CACHE endorses Piccolo parents and students’ reasonable demands for a meeting with Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, a meeting with at least 5 members of the Chicago School Board present, and the removal of Piccolo and Cassals schools from the turnaround list. Furthermore, CACHE opposes all school turnarounds and closures in the city of Chicago.
Education is a right!
CACHE 