Student Union
Young Bernie Sanders Supporters Wait for Reward
Young people who avidly supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president before he urged them to vote for Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden in the November 3 election are waiting to see what rewards Sanders might reap.
“I thought that was a really good show of leadership back in March or so, and I'd love for him to just keep being a figurehead on some of these major progressive legislative actions going forward,” said Peter Ditzler, a senior at Temple University in Philadelphia, who was the co-leader of Temple for Bernie.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is an advocate for the environment and health care, issues that many young voters between 18 and 29 feel passionately about.
Sanders dropped out of the presidential race April 8 and asked his supporters to endorse Biden, who defeated Republican President Donald Trump in the election.
"Bernie Sanders. He [was] the only candidate truly dedicated to including students and young people in the movement. We need to transform our nation,” tweeted Christopher Badillo in response to the question, “What candidate do you think excites young people the most?”
Sanders reached young voters by campaigning for universal health care, free public college tuition and cancellation of student debt. On the Green New Deal — a legislative package on the environment with an emphasis on sustainability — he partnered with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York congresswoman, 31, represents a new and younger wave of governmental leadership to many younger voters.
“I think young people have loved very old candidates, and they have sometimes loved very young candidates,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research at Tufts University (CIRCLE) in Medford, Massachusetts.
“Values and authenticity are very important,” she said.
“I think what stood out to me was his authenticity,” said Ditzler. “Every time he spoke, it really felt genuine.”
Green agenda
The Green New Deal calls for making energy systems 100% renewable, providing the Green Climate Fund with $200 billion and rejoining the international Paris Agreement on climate change.
“With the Green New Deal, I think that's really kind of what really spoke to me because I am pretty concerned about the environmental impacts of climate change and us as a country working to mitigate any kind of oncoming damage and destruction from climate change,” said Ditzler.
“I think Bernie recognized the anxieties that come with a huge economic transition that the Green New Deal would require,” he said.
Sanders’ campaign included support for universal health care, a leading issue for young people in the presidential election.
“All Americans are entitled to go to the doctor when they're sick and not go bankrupt after staying in the hospital,” Sanders said on his campaign website.
Sanders is not a member of either major party but usually sides with the Democratic Party. He is serving his third term in the Senate.
He has served longer than any other independent member of Congress in the United States; he has been a senator since 2007 and spent 16 years in the House of Representatives before that.
Once Sanders dropped out of the presidential race, many people questioned whether young voters would turn out for Biden. After Sanders endorsed Biden, about 89% of Sanders supporters said they would vote for Biden, according to YouGov data from August.
Disappointment
“It's tough because, I mean, I voted for Biden and I'm already getting extremely disappointed with some of his Cabinet picks and the people he's intending to appoint to his transition team and everything,” said Ditzler.
“I think the media and a lot of people are praising [Biden] for picking a very diverse Cabinet, in terms of he's picking a lot of women and people of color,” said Ditzler. “I think that's great and all, but if you look at their track records, they haven't exactly been great at fighting against systems of oppression like Bernie's campaign and movement were kind of hoping to dismantle.”
Sanders has expressed interest in joining Biden’s Cabinet as labor secretary.
"If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families, would I do it? Yes, I would," Sanders told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on November 11.
Biden hinted in a recent interview with NBC News that he would rather have Sanders continue his role in the Senate than join the new administration.
Holding Biden accountable
Ditzler said he would love to see Sanders continue to have a large role in the Senate.
“He helped us help educate a whole generation on what we could fight for, what's reasonable to fight for, and he offered explanations for why we would all be better off if we fought for someone we didn't know,” said Ditzler.
“Since young people have less of a tendency to identify with a party as older voters, I do think that you'll continue to see young people really pressing on issues and holding Biden accountable to things that he said during his campaign,” said Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s director of impact at Tufts.
Biden is to be sworn in on January 20.
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
American Academy of the Arts College announces closure
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
