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***PRESS RELEASE***
For Immediate Release
Inspired by Columbia-Barnard YDSA Strike, Vassar College students announce tuition strike
A tuition strike can - and will - create a new Vassar: one that operates not in the interests of capital, but in the best interest of students, faculty, and workers.
May 17, Poughkeepsie, New York - Today, students at Vassar College announced a tuition strike for the Fall 2021 semester, to protest the school administration's repeated disregard for democracy on campus. We are joining thousands of other young people on strike at educational institutions across the globe, including those attending the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Cambridge University.
For years, Vassar students have struggled against the College Administration and Board of Trustees. From the decade-long campaign for fossil fuel divestment to the Nobody Fails VC strike, our voices have been disregarded in favor of an all-powerful dictatorship of capital - thirty wealthy Trustees and the College's multi-millionaire and billionaire financiers - who operate the school without regard for the needs of students, faculty, and staff. To take power back from this dictatorship of capital, we must speak in the only language the College oligarchy understands - money. Justice can only be delivered by a tuition strike.
We will be striking for the following demands:
A three-year freeze on tuition.
The creation of a joint administrative, faculty, and student Senate wherein only faculty and students have voting rights.
Divestment from all direct and indirect investments in fossil fuels, the prison industrial complex, and the military industrial complex, and adoption of BDS.
Full ADA compliance in all campus buildings by 2026.
Increase the campus minimum wage to $15/hour
Voting powers for students on the Board of Trustees
A No-Fail grading policy, implemented until the end of the pandemic.
Termination of plans for the construction of the so-called "Inn and Institute" project.
Abolition of campus security.
Transformation of the College golf course into a sustainable space.
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