NASCO Institute 2015 Plenary - Democratizing Higher Education (audio)
Channel: NASCO Videos
Date: 2016-11-23

NASCO Institute 2015 Plenary, delivered by Lauren Ressler and Ian Trupin, titled “Democratizing Higher Education: How Campus Organizing Can Fight Privatization.” Ann Arbor, MI - November 01, 2015.

--

In 2015, many universities function as for-profit businesses, foisting the costs of education onto students, families, campus workers, and professors while simultaneously making record high returns on their investments. During this plenary session, the Responsible Endowments Coalition will be diving into the history of how this model became the dominant structure for universities, how embracing the values and principles of the co-operative movement can shift the direction of higher education to one that centers families and workers, and what people right now are doing to make that happen. 

--

Lauren Ressler has been fighting to address social and economic injustice for nearly a decade. Currently she supports the national Private Prison Divestment Campaign and Fossil Free Divestment Campaign in her role as Campaigns Director for the Responsible Endowments Coalition. Prior to her time at REC, she worked to address the student debt crisis and make higher education accessible to all. In 2011, she was involved in resisting the development of coal export terminals in her home state of Washington. Lauren spends a lot of her time thinking about ways to build community ownership and creating tools to better help people talk about the economy.

Ian Trupin works with student groups around the country who are demanding that their schools divest from private prisons and fossil fuels. As a student, Ian worked on a successful campaign that led Brown University to divest from HEI Hotels and Resorts, a hotel chain notorious for its labor rights abuses, as well as numerous campus and international solidarity campaigns with Brown Student Labor Alliance. This involvement led to an interest in endowment justice which he pursued as a student representative on Brown’s advisory committee on investor responsibility. A proud Tanzanian-American, Ian seeks to bridge corporate campaigns against the prison industrial complex and other exploitative, extractive industries, with social movements and alternative economic models, including the inspiring philosophy of ujamaa. Ian enjoys traveling, learning about history, cooking, and southern African music.