Georgia Students for Public Higher Education formed in 2009 to address the rising costs of public higher education in Georgia. Since 2009, the organization has changed drastically. As the economic crisis progressed, so changed the political landscape of our state. Our fight against tuition and fee hikes in the university system necessarily grew to include the fights against cuts to the HOPE scholarship, anti-immigrant legislation, the execution of Troy Davis. Recently, GSPHE lent its verve to the international, ongoing occupation of public spaces, as many of its members participated in the occupation of Troy Davis Park (previously Woodruff Park) in Atlanta.
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Georgia Students for Public Higher Education must address the issues that are most pertinent to students and Georgians alike; and thus, the constant threat of further privatization and corporatization of our schools and our state — rule by the 1%, rather than by the 99 — demands our utmost attention. GSPHE has therefore placed its organizational structure on hiatus to promote the development of Georgia State’s very own occupation, which, we believe, has taken up the issues most pertinent to Georgia students.
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Occupy Georgia State began in reaction to Georgia’s ongoing educational crises, fueled so clearly by corporate greed. As do Occupy Wall Street and other occupations, Occupy Georgia State exists as a general people’s assembly, promoting the direct participation and control by students and educators in the functioning of their university. The university belongs to those who use it!
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The democratic participation of students and educators in their university is exactly what GSPHE stands for; and the general assembly at Georgia State is a plausible model of exactly that: a way to involve students, faculty, workers, and allies in the administering of their school, and a way to involve them en masse. The general assembly of Occupy Georgia State is therefore one means available to those who would resist their subjugation at the hands of a corrupt Board of Regents and apathetic administration–both who serve corporate interests over the interests of students, educators, and workers.
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GSPHE continues to resist any attack on education in Georgia, whether those attacks are tuition increases, scholarship cuts, anti-immigrant policies, or one-sided “austerity” measures that remind us how some animals are more equal than others. And the shape of GSPHE’s resistance is presently the Occupy Georgia State General Assembly. GSPHE will maintain its information: we will continue updating the WordPress and making announcements through email and Twitter – but the active resistance of GSPHE is currently bound to the Occupy Georgia State General Assembly.
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Because GSPHE hopes to remain a statewide network, please feel free to contact us about setting up occupations or student groups attuned to the needs of your own schools and communities.
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Please follow these social media to stay informed. The attack on education is an attack on the potential of a generation, and the fight for our generation is merely begun.
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In Solidarity,
GSPHE
GEORGIA STUDENTS FOR PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION 