As you may know York University has been on strike for about 10-weeks now. Obviously, strikes are not fun for anyone, but school strikes are particularly bad for students (especially students who pay thousands in tuition). Usually the administration and the striking employee groups say that they want to get the students back to class as quickly as possible, but often the students are used in the negotiations (ever wonder why faculty don’t strike in the summer?)
Recently, I’ve read a number of articles about students weighing in on the issue. What’s interesting is that students are self-organizing with their favourite tool – Facebook (are we really surprised?). This changes the game somewhat – after all, if enough students join these Facebook protest groups, the two sides have to listen… right?
Somewhere Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) is smiling, this is yet another example of people organizing without organizations…
