Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses

[alp227]

Goodbye city park, hello college green.

As city officials around the country move to disband Occupy Wall Street encampments amid growing concerns over health and public safety, protesters have begun to erect more tents on college campuses.

“We are trying to get mass numbers of students out,” said Natalia Abrams, 31, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and an organizer with Occupy Colleges, a national group coordinating college-based protesters.

Though only a handful of colleges have encampments at the moment, tents went up last week at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and here at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, protesters in California have vowed to occupy dozens of campuses in the coming days.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/occupy-wall-street-protests-shifting-to-college-campuses.html?pagewanted=all

[Vincardog]

1. The rub is the Campus cops can deny everyone who's not a registered student or employee admittance

While it would keep the homeless, the drug addicted and those who used to be hospitalized out; it cuts into the 99%

[Imajika]

2. That would be a shame...

If the occupy movement is forced to protest on college campuses they will lose almost all visibility.

Really, the public isn't even going to pay attention or care about university protests.

[gateley]

6. Agree. nt

[MADem]

7. After awhile, even an encampment looks live a favela.

You don't even notice it anymore.

A new direction is warranted. I don't know if "college camping" is any better than "city park camping," frankly.

Why not picket the offices of legislators? Or lobbyists? After all, they make the rules, and it's not like those offices aren't centrally located in densely populated business districts.

[sabrina 1]

9. I think the OP is misleading on this. They are NOT moving from

the cities to college campuses, they have EXPANDED the movement to Colleges. They are also in some cases, planning to move into homes about to be foreclosed on to protect them, but NOT to replace their other occupations.

Several of the city occupations have managed to win the right to stay where they are in court, or through negotiations with their City Councils. So I don't think they are planning on leaving the ground they have fought for anytime soon.

[SpiralHawk]

3. When Spring is sprung, and the rose has riz...

this gonna be something...

[MedleyMisty]

4. From my observations

The regular occupy camps aren't moving to college campuses.

College students are occupying their own campus and fighting against the privatization of education and for economic justice in terms of education. People who aren't college students appear to be continuing to occupy their currently held spaces.

In other words - it's just that colleges are beginning to get involved in Occupy.

[MADem]

5. Hmmm. Maybe they'll motivate all those Republican kids on these 21st Century campuses. nt

[bengalherder]

8. It will be interesting to see if it spreads to the campus

near me.

There hasn't been a huge turnout for OWS that I can see at the campus. However, many of the students I have met and worked with are going for degrees in econ, business, and various pre-government programs so it doesn't surprise me much that they do not seem involved. The only conversation I've had about it was early on with an art major saying she would never cut classes to protest because she was paying so much for the education that she felt she literally couldn't afford to miss any of it.

Many of the students are foreign, so I wonder if that also is a factor in the relatively apolitical atmosphere I'm observing.

Of course, all of this is still young and things could change.

[femrap]

10. About time....nt