Tent State University

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

this page needs to be edited to Wikipedia standards of formatting and balence

Tent State University is a national movement going on at various universities in the United States, at which students, staff and community members set up tents and build an alternative University. The main lobbying focus is on policies which they believe harm higher education. This includes the defunding of education at the federal and state level as wel, the lack of democratic influence in school governance, while rejecting the annual excuse of a budget crisis. It also calls special attention to the war in Iraq which it considers an imperialist occupation.

       Tent State is most distinct in its emphasis on democracy at all levels of society to be about "People who work together make decisions together, and peopele who make decisions together work together." It also places a tactical emphasis on coalition building across diverse communities.
This movement started at Rutgers University in 2003 and has spread to many other schools. Universities involved include the University of California, as well as the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, the University of Missouri, Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, and SUNY.  Even though its main focus is higher education and democracy in the United States, an increasing number of left-wing organizations have used Tent State as a forum for its agendas.

Tent State University National Statement of Purpose

Tent State University is a national network of alternative universities that embody the principles of grassroots democracy, community, and solidarity. The Tent State University model is spreading across college campuses, uniting students, faculty, and university staff, while reaching past the campus community, uniting with veteran, peace, and labor organizations.

Education is a fundamental human right, one that is increasingly being denied to residents due to national spending priorities that favor imperialistic wars over education and other social rights.

The history of the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the women’s suffragist movement to the civil rights movement, has involved the expansion of access to public higher education in the U.S., while our generation’s era is marked with its destruction. Across the United States, public higher education is losing support, and access to a quality education is systematically being denied to our communities.

The dismantling of higher learning has an especially detrimental impact on working and middle-classes, as well as communities of color. We acknowledge tuition increases and scholarship cuts to be methods of exclusion that disproportionately affect those communities that public education should serve. The average college student works an increasing number of hours, graduates in debt, and must focus more on ‘getting by’ than on the quality of their education. In order to finance their education, many students are enticed into military service, believing this to be their only option to a successful future.

Through Tent State University, we focus on democratizing the decision-making processes that control state and national spending priorities. These decisions must not be made by and for elites; instead, they must reflect the rights of residents to education. Further, we believe in democratizing our own universities. Students must be included in the decisions regarding how their universities are run and how their education is shaped. Student interests must be prioritized over private interests.

Tent State, the realization of an alternative university in the midst of the old university, dramatizes our dissatisfaction with the direction of the education system in the United States. It further depicts that, as a result of irresponsible and inhumane state and national spending priorities, education has lost its home in our country. Beyond criticizing these problems, Tent State becomes what a university should be, a model for society - a democratically-controlled, progressive public space that fosters an open exchange of ideas, art, culture, music, and expression, unity and solidarity among diverse groups, empowered communities, and a space where disenfranchised groups can collectively discuss and debate their idea of democratic process and collective decision-making.

By offering a space to proactively address common concerns by working to build lasting and sustainable solutions, Tent State University bridges the gap between often segregated student communities for the purpose of pursuing like goals. As an empowering, participatory space that features collaborative workshops, discussions, diverse forms of cultural expression, and various forms of public displays that raise awareness in the surrounding community about a variety of local and national issues, Tent State stands in stark contrast to the hierarchical nature of the modern university and the oppressive processes of society at large.

Tent State engages its participants in a dynamic process that will ultimately lead to social transformation on a scale far beyond college campuses. During Tent State, a collective sense of power and efficacy is developed among its participants that, along with the progressive power they have built in their community through the creation of Tent State, allows them to use their power to take action in spaces well-beyond their universities. The Tent State University model has been received so widely, not only because it is a powerful form of resistance, but also, because it is fundamentally based on the creation of vibrant alternatives.