A group of students are reviving the inactive campus chapter of Students for an Ethical and Participatory Education.
John Dellapelle, a junior studying political science at EMU, said the organization
focuses on increasing student involvement in campus governance.
“Our organization stands to have students participate in structures of power. So like
with the Board of Regents, we’d like to have a few people on the board who are students to represent our causes,” Dellapelle said. “That goes for any setting or power structure. We want people to be able to participate and engage with their causes.”
In the SEPE pamphlet, students stressed solidarity between students, faculty and staff.
“Professors’ wages are threatened while students’ tuition increases. This is not a coincidence,” the pamphlet said. “We must recognize that the opponents of education are often the opponents of the workers, and our liberation is bound up with theirs.”
The other major issue stressed in the pamphlet was the organization’s campaign to end campus support of sweatshops. The organization hopes to accomplish this by having EMU join the Worker Rights Consortium and sign onto the Designated Supplier’s List.
“If EMU signs onto the DSP we will have a guarantee that all our EMU licensed apparel will be produced under conditions that conform to human right’s standards,” the pamphlet said. “Workers all over the world suffer for slave wages in the name of corporate profit. 185 colleges and universities have already joined the WRC…It’s time for EMU to join forces with those schools and say no to sweatshops.”
The students also said the Student Center seems to belong more to corporations than to students. They hope as an organization to change that.
“You come in here and it’s incredibly hard to get a table for a student organization to advertise themselves to the students…It doesn’t feel like a place for students,” one of the SEPE members said.
SEPE’s first meeting will be at 4 p.m. today in Room 320 of Halle Library.
