Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University

This article critically examines recent revisions to student codes of conduct in Ontario’s universities, by focusing specifically on York University. It illustrates how these policy changes have been informed by a new rights and responsibility discourse designed to reduce political conflict on campu...

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Main Author: Elizabeth Brulé
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Brock University 2016-03-01
Series:Studies in Social Justice
Subjects:
Online Access:https://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/SSJ/article/view/1154
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author Elizabeth Brulé
author_facet Elizabeth Brulé
author_sort Elizabeth Brulé
collection DOAJ
description This article critically examines recent revisions to student codes of conduct in Ontario’s universities, by focusing specifically on York University. It illustrates how these policy changes have been informed by a new rights and responsibility discourse designed to reduce political conflict on campuses. Couched in terms of promoting student inclusion, fairness, and campus safety, this discourse works with managerial technologies to increase the surveillance and regulation of student political advocacy work. I argue that these changes to student codes of conduct obfuscate the ways in which corporate-service sector relations operate to depoliticize student dissent and silence marginalized student voices, especially voices that raise controversial issues of oppression and challenge the status quo. In developing this argument I also discuss the contradictory and uneven ways that student activists respond to these discourses, and the effects of this new regime on the social organization and social relations of students’ political activist work.
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spelling doaj.art-4b05b817f18f4e189d92ffab93778dc32022-12-22T00:10:03ZengBrock UniversityStudies in Social Justice1911-47882016-03-019215917510.26522/ssj.v9i2.11541239Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate UniversityElizabeth Brulé0York UniversityThis article critically examines recent revisions to student codes of conduct in Ontario’s universities, by focusing specifically on York University. It illustrates how these policy changes have been informed by a new rights and responsibility discourse designed to reduce political conflict on campuses. Couched in terms of promoting student inclusion, fairness, and campus safety, this discourse works with managerial technologies to increase the surveillance and regulation of student political advocacy work. I argue that these changes to student codes of conduct obfuscate the ways in which corporate-service sector relations operate to depoliticize student dissent and silence marginalized student voices, especially voices that raise controversial issues of oppression and challenge the status quo. In developing this argument I also discuss the contradictory and uneven ways that student activists respond to these discourses, and the effects of this new regime on the social organization and social relations of students’ political activist work.https://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/SSJ/article/view/1154student activismuniversitiescorporatizationinstitutional ethnographyrisk management
spellingShingle Elizabeth Brulé
Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
Studies in Social Justice
student activism
universities
corporatization
institutional ethnography
risk management
title Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
title_full Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
title_fullStr Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
title_full_unstemmed Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
title_short Voices From the Margins: The Regulation of Student Activism in the New Corporate University
title_sort voices from the margins the regulation of student activism in the new corporate university
topic student activism
universities
corporatization
institutional ethnography
risk management
url https://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/SSJ/article/view/1154
work_keys_str_mv AT elizabethbrule voicesfromthemarginstheregulationofstudentactivisminthenewcorporateuniversity