UVM protests continue

University of Vermont student protests continued a 2nd day, this time with UVM workers unions supporting the students. Yesterday 31 students were arrested.

Although Thursday’s event was billed as a faculty rally and speak-out, only a few faculty and staff members attended, and fewer spoke. Most of those who addressed the rally were students.

“There is so much fear on this campus,” Katherine Nopper, a senior from Putney, told the crowd. “People are afraid if they speak out they will lose their jobs.”

Among the staff and faculty representatives who did speak were Carmyn Stanko, president of the union representing UVM maintenance and service workers, and David Shiman, president of the faculty union.

“We have known from the day that President Fogel was hired that his goal was to continue transforming UVM from a university to a business corporation,” Stanko said. “We will continue to fight for all workers who have been laid off, to return them to their rightful jobs.”

Shiman told the students his union was concerned about the impact of the cuts on the quality of education that UVM provides. He praised the students for using their constitutional rights to question the administration’s plans.

25 UVM protesters arrested

Burlington Free Press

University of Vermont students angry about budget cuts prepared to regroup today after 25 of them were cited for trespassing late Wednesday night.

They were part of a larger group that sat down about 3 p.m. outside the president’s wing of the Waterman administration building with a list of 13 demands.

Those demands included revoking recent reductions in faculty, capping tuition increases at the rate of inflation and recovering all the bonuses paid to administrators in 2008 and 2009.

President Dan Fogel met with seven of the students during the afternoon. He did not negotiate, a university spokesman said, but reiterated the school’s plan for reducing expenses.

Seven students were cited for trespassing in an inner hallway about 4:45 p.m., after Fogel departed.
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“They were given the opportunity to leave and refused, so they were forcibly removed,” university spokesman Enrique Corredera said. “We did not engage in negotiations over their demands; we just responded with what our position is on those issues.”

Many students remained in the building. Others joined them until police closed Waterman to incoming students about 9:30 p.m. with about 60 protesters inside. As evening fell, the students ate pizza, passed around water bottles, sang protest songs and chanted slogans: “They say cut back, we say fight back,” and “People united will never be defeated.”

University police announced the building would be closed at 10 p.m. and anyone inside would be cited for trespassing.

The students took to their cell phones, rallying support from around campus. A crowd of several hundred gathered outside the south door of Waterman, cheering and singing.

Jean Marie Pearce, 21, a senior history major from East Albany, was one of those seated in the corridor.

“For the past six months, we’ve been trying to convince them that cuts need to come from the top, not from our beloved and needed faculty,” she said. Pearce said she was willing to protest, though she will soon graduate. “It’s still my community and my school,” she said. [read complete story]

BREAKING: Student Lockdown in UVM Pres. Fogel's Office

THIS IS A CALL OUT FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT AND SIGNS OF SOLIDARITY

Via Facebook:

there are 12 students in president fogel's office at UVM right now. 7 are locked down with the demands of:
- revoke all dismissals and non-reappointments thus far issued
- terminate all plans for more layoffs and non-reappointments of staff and faculty
- establish with us a democratic process by which students, staff, and faculty have a decisive role in decisions regarding the budget

there are 10 more demands they are waiting to hear about.

the students arrived shortly before 2pm. there was a meeting b/w fogel, sga, and other student groups happening. the meeting was coming to a close when they arrived and they spoke with fogel. they are discussing demands among themselves and awaiting negotiations.

contact cecile reuge at 631.275.1546 - community outreach contact.

PHARMA ETHICS, AGAIN

If this week's SCOTUS ruling on Wyeth vs. Levine wasn't enough, there are two New York Times stories by Duff Wilson about the influence of corporate pharmaceutical companies on faculties - and their veiled threats on students - at Harvard Medical School.

One is about the ethics of faculty being paid consultants of pharmaceutical companies:-- In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.

Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”

Mr. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has lately grown into a full-blown movement by more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories, as well as in Harvard’s 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes.

This is all to reminiscient of the commotion in 2006 about pro-fluoridationist Dr. Chester Douglass, a professor of Dentistry at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, who also served as editor of one of COLGATE's company publications and was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Delta Dental Foundation of Massachusetts, a trade organisation. Harvard did indeed investigate Dr Douglass' questionable ethics, but it was a whitewash. We'll have to wait and see what comes of the med students' protests.

In 2005, a scientist at NIH was punished by that government agency for asking that pharmaceutical companies' payments to academic researchers be made public.

The second article concerns Pfizer photographing Harvard Medical School student protesters:-- ... David Tian, a first-year Harvard medical student, said he found it “strange and off-putting” last fall when a man who identified himself as a Pfizer employee took a cellphone photo of students as they demonstrated against pharmaceutical industry influence on campus. “We could only assume he intended to share this with his company,” Mr. Tian said.

The students did not get the man’s name, but they took his picture.

Asked about the mysterious Pfizer man on campus and shown his picture, a company spokesman said he had recently contacted the employee and concluded that he had done nothing wrong. Declining to name him, the spokesman, Ray Kerins, said the employee had photographed the students for personal use.

Mr. Kerins preferred to talk about Pfizer’s support of the medical school, which, according to Harvard officials, includes private payments to at least 149 faculty members, corporate donations of $350,000 to the school last year, $234,000 for continuing medical education classes, and two Pfizer-financed research projects on campus.

QUESTIONS: What are the pressures of pharmaceutical companies put on students, researchers and faculty UVM's College of Medicine and the Dartmouth Medical School? Which members of their respective faculties are paid consultants of corporations and trade organisations? Is there a code of ethics in place against such influence?

(Thanks to The Cockroach Catcher for the heads-up about the NYT story.)

THE STEIN/UVM BROUHAHA

C'mon, this hockey puck has been kicked around the rink enough. We all knew that Ben Stein is a fuckwit, but UVM President Dan Fogel embarrassed himself even more in his attempt at damage control.