The Activist Agenda is a statement of the Young Democratic Socialists' national priorities for the year.  This year we decided to focus on one campaign,  Free Higher Education and Repeal Senate Bill 5.  The Activist Agenda was adopted at our annual summer conference on August 5th, 2011.  
 

 

Campaign for Accessible and Affordable Higher Education

Introduction

YDS’s Campaign for Accessible and Affordable Higher Education campaign will focus on a range of short, medium, and long-term objectives to stem the rising tide of austerity in higher education. The immediate objective of the campaign will be to fight against increases in tuition and cuts to essential student services and academic programs in state-level budget fights this coming spring.  In the medium-term, a fundamental reassessment of budget priorities is necessary that will institute progressive taxation and slash wasteful military spending to pay for tuition decreases, increased financial aid to needy students and funding for under-served academic departments and student services.  Finally, in the long-term, tuition must be reduced to zero, and all odious student debts must be forgiven to ensure that the basic human right of free higher education for all becomes a reality.

As democratic socialists, we believe that education is a human right, and that all citizens are entitled to free public higher education from preschool through graduate study.  This right has already been recognized in many societies – especially in Western Europe - but in the United States we have instead witnessed exorbitant tuition hikes, and increasingly burdensome debt loads for students. 

 

Problem

As the Debt Hits Hard project notes, the cost of higher education in the United States is staggering:

·         Over six in ten college graduates are burdened with educational debt. Of those, four in ten, and more than half of African-American and Hispanic borrowers, are burdened with an unmanageable level of debt. (Financial experts define unmanageable debt as the salary-to-debt threshold at which an individual is only able to repay his/her loans with significant economic hardship.)

·         Student debt in the United States is more than $550 billion – and that’s not including private loans.

·         Between 2001 and 2010, 2 million academically qualified students will not go to college because they can't afford it.

·         The average student today graduates with debt twice that of graduates a decade ago -- and enters a job market where the average job pays them less than it would have in 2000.

·         The general cost of living is increasing at a rapid pace. College textbooks, for instance, have tripled in price since 1986 and are becoming ever-larger culprits of student debt.6

·         The average college senior now graduates with $3,207 in credit card debt and $18,900 in student loans.

·         Graduates of public colleges and universities accumulate almost as much debt as their peers at private institutions, even though public schools are intended to increase access for low-income students.

·         Student debt hits LGBT students particularly hard, since they often experience much less parental assistance and have to pay their own way through university, subsequently saddled with handling the debt alone.

·         Student debt is also particularly devastating for students of color. As programs such as the Educational Opportunity Fund are de-funded or cut all together, the opportunity for students of color to access education takes a hard hit.  The rise of debt and tuition means that people of color are even less capable of breaking the barriers that they were born into.

These costs exercise an overwhelmingly negative influence on the economic opportunities and social lives of many students:

·         Student debt is outpacing the starting salaries of jobs in teaching and social work, making it virtually impossible for many debt-laden graduates to pursue careers in fields where they are desperately needed. Nearly one quarter of all graduates from public universities and almost 4 in 10 graduates from private universities have levels of student debt that would become unmanageable at the salaries of starting teachers.

·         More and more students are delaying major life decisions as a result of increased student debt. Thirty-eight percent of college graduates delay buying their first house because of debt, 14% delay marriage, 21% delay having kids. From 1991 to 2002, those figures rose by margins of 52%, 100% and 75%, respectively.”

·         Due to the atrocious job market, college graduates are increasingly stuck at part-time service jobs at abysmal wages and are forced to make a choice between living comfortably or making student loan payments.  43% of college graduates from 2008-2010 are now employed in jobs that do not require a college education, and a third have moved back in with their parents. 

As the social critic Jeffrey A. Williams has argued, the student debt system undermines democracy and social solidarity in crucial ways. Debt teaches us that education is a consumer service, restricts many from entering lower-paying career fields oriented toward public service and education, and further inculcates in students a market-oriented and individualistic worldview. The contemporary student debt system must be abolished, and the best way to do that is to organize for immediate relief from rising tuition, increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations and redirecting part of the military budget to fund higher education, and ultimately, for free, publicly funded higher education for all.

 

Solutions

Short Term Goals

·         State legislatures enact tuition cap.

·         Moratorium on cuts to essential student services and academic programs.

Medium Term Goals

·         State legislatures enact more progressive taxation and earmark money for higher education.

·         Governors and state legislators pressure the federal government for additional funding.

·         Decreased tuition

·         Increased funding for under-served student services and academic programs.

Long Term Goals

·         Free higher education for all matriculated students.[1]

o   No age limit, full-coverage for full and part-time students.

o   Universities and colleges retain control over admissions standards.

o   Universal Coverage: everyone who gains admission to a public institution of higher learning, regardless of income, is covered.

o   Public institutions enroll over 80 percent of all students in higher education. Cost of enrollment in private institutions not covered.

 

The ultimate aims of this campaign will obviously not be won right away.  This is a proposal for a long-term organizing project that YDS can use to build a broad-based coalition in support of free public education from preschool through graduate study for all, and, in turn, to convince more people that Democratic Socialism is the only humane and sustainable means of resolving the most critical social and economic problems facing our society. 

The campaign combines organizing for a reform that can improve millions of lives in the here and now with a critique of corporate capitalism and a vision of a truly democratic society in which all citizens have free and equal access to basic social goods. It will show people that our politics are not only relevant to practical, everyday concerns but are also visionary. In a time of crisis and rising economic uncertainty for millions of Americans, the time is right to demand free public higher education for all.

 

Action Timeline

Immediately after the summer YDS convention:

·         The national office will work with the Coordinating Committee to reach out to national coalition partners.

·         The national office and national leadership will create a YDS toolkit for education and action on campuses, which includes researching how access to higher education is impacted by patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and citizenship and incorporating that into the call to campaign.

o   NJ YDS will create material telling the story of their successful statewide campaign to prevent out of control tuition hikes in spring 2011.

·         Chapters will schedule tabling, door knocking in dorms and other outreach to collect surveys and recruit volunteers, as well as a kickoff educational/visibility event within two weeks of school starting.  Chapters will submit survey results to their regional organizer weekly. 

·         Chapters will also build campus-based coalitions and research state-level targets and budgets. 

October:

·         Through mid-October, chapters will continue to collect surveys and do educational work. 

·         The national leadership will continue to develop the national coalition, with a goal of a public announcement/media event in late October. 

·         YDS chapters will do events on campus to announce the national coalition and campus survey results.

·         Chapters will begin building state-wide coalitions.

November:

·         YDS chapters will send delegations to the DSA national convention where there will be campaign specific workshops and trainings.  A strong YDS presence at the convention will inspire DSA locals to support state-level organizing. 

·         Chapters will continue educational work and action and develop state level targets.

Late November:

·         The national office will provide flyers and other publicity tools for YDS chapters to build towards the February or March student debt conference. 

·         Chapters will notify local/state coalition partners and invite them to attend. 

·         Chapters will develop state-level materials which reflect state targets and budget specifics.

January and February:

·         Chapters will continue to do educational work and activism.

·         Chapters will build towards the conference, planning to recruit students from other campuses to the conference and of course, bringing large delegations from each YDS chapter.

February/March outreach conference will bring together coalition partners and YDSers for trainings and speakers designed to maximize state-level protest participation.

March

·         The national coordinated day of action, date to be determined by the national coalition, will be in late March.  The goal will be protests at statehouses or in some cases walk-outs in major cities.

 

Action Ideas

Themes for Educational Events and Action

·         How specific school administrations choose to deal with budget cuts (for example, are they cutting popular programs rather than cutting salaries from administrators).

·         How access to higher education is complicated by race, gender, sexual orientation and citizenship status.  Discuss solutions like the Dream Act, which would allow undocumented students who get into college to pay in-state tuition and get on the path to citizenship.

·         The private loan industry has pushed through federal regulations which make it easier for them to profit off of students in debt, and how this is the inevitable result of putting higher education at the whims of the market.

·         Student debt is an even bigger problem now because of recession level joblessness.  Until the structural problem, five people applying for every one available job, is resolved, college graduates will face a grim future because when full time employment is delayed significantly, lifetime earnings are dramatically lower (not to mention the impact of snowballing student debt for graduates who need to defer).

·         The larger neoliberal project involves defunding public higher education whereas socialist believe higher education should be free as a social good available to anyone who wants to learn.  We can easily pay for free higher education or more accessible higher education by diverting some of our massive military budget or repealing the Bush and Reagan tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations.

Types of Actions

·         Speak out on campus where students tell their story about their debt

·         Show the film Default and have a speaker and/or discussion afterwards to draw out main themes.

·         Organize to have your student government and faculty and staff union locals pass resolutions supporting the demand for free higher education.

·         Lobby state- and federal-level elected officials on this issue pressure them to provide more funding for higher education and/or introduce free public higher education legislation.

 

Incorporate the demand for free public higher education in any ongoing student debt campaigns your chapter may be involved in.

As democratic socialists, we believe that education is a human right, and that all citizens should be entitled to free public higher education from preschool through graduate study. This right has been recognized in many societies throughout the world, including in many Western European nations, but in the United States, higher education is becoming increasingly costly, pushing many students into debt before they even begin their adult lives.

To that end, Young Democratic Socialists should adopt and further a modified version of the Free Higher Ed! campaign initiated by the Labor Party (see http://www.freehighered.org).

 

Repeal Senate Bill 5
 

The US Labor movement has been under attack since its inception. At the moment conservatives are doing their best to destroy the movement through a thousand tiny cuts. The recent actions in Ohio and Wisconsin though are more like gashes. In these states they passed laws that would drastically reduce public employees’ rights. In some ways SB 5 is an even more restrictive law than the one passed in Wisconsin.

 

Here is how SB 5 affects public workers:

1.      It bans collective bargaining on benefits and eliminates binding arbitration as a possible way to reach an agreement

2.      Public workers could be fired for striking

3.      It would eliminate unions for faculty of state colleges

 

As socialists we see the labor movement as a first step in creating a democratic workplace and we must work to protect union rights, especially in a time of such low union density. Working on this bill will allow us to do good work, create connections in the Ohio labor movement, and bring in new members who are interested in this topic.

 

Therefore YDS should participate in the repeal of the law. While this issue is geographically limited we can create work for people outside of the sate as well as inside the state. Here is what the YDS anti-SB5 campaign should contain:

 

1.      Students in Ohio connect with labor and Democratic coalitions to register youth and then get them out to the polls.

2.      Students not in Ohio but close by should come down to help out the efforts on a few dates that will be determined.

3.      Create a weekend training meeting for all radicals Ohio students that want to get involved in the campaign

4.      Students outside of Ohio can help by donating time by phone-banking students to get them to the polls on Tuesday.

 

This Item would not span the full year and only last until election day. 

Access to Affordable Higher Education Item