HAMMOND, October 1 – A local university that serves mostly working-class and international students has seen a dramatic surge in fightback over the past few weeks. In response to the university bosses’ racist lies and indifference to their needs, hundreds of students and supporting faculty have built a struggle to challenge the bosses’ power.
Comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been in the thick of this fight, building working-class support and helping push revolutionary communist politics. Collectively with other anti-racist, anti-sexist fighters, we are fast learning that life’s most important lessons are taught in class struggle!
Multiracial Unity against Admins’ Lies
Purdue University Northwest (PNW) is a smaller satellite campus of the much larger and highly-endowed Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. The PNW distinction reflects a recent merger of Purdue Calumet of Hammond, IN and Purdue North Central of Westville, Indiana. Both of these satellite campuses traditionally served as commuter campuses for working-class and non-traditional students, including many Black and immigrant workers. However, many top-down, anti-working class decisions from the university administration have alienated these student populations and made the university less accessible for them in recent years.
Case in point, since the merger PNW students were promised that they would receive a standard Purdue University diploma upon graduation. But on September 28, the chancellor sent an email to students stating that their diploma would in fact be different to the one received by students at the main Purdue campus. And just like that, a decision that could have serious consequences for graduates’ futures was shoved through with little to no input from students, faculty, or alumni.In response to the bosses’ shady decision, a petition began circulating to keep the Purdue degree at PNW (which 18,000 students and supporters signed), and students planned a protest to occur on the following Monday.
The protest, organized by a multiracial collective of Black, Latin, and white working-class students, turned out over 650 students and supporters from both campuses to push back against the bosses’ racist slap in the face. The action lasted about an hour as students began with chants and speeches in an open area between two main buildings. Students and supporting faculty and staff – some who serve double-duty – marched to the administration building where they soon found out that the chancellor did not show up to work that day. Students were demanding answers, and shortly after the action ended, an email was sent from the chancellor announcing an “open conversation.”
At that conversation, the chancellor admitted that PNW’s advertising has been a “bait-and-switch” all along; admitting that he has always felt “uncomfortable” with the idea that PNW was selling Purdue degrees.
Fight Racist Attacks in Education with Communism
The racist university bosses made this change in a primarily Black and Latin neighborhood, where over 28% of the Black population has dropped in the last year. Recently, at a Black Student Union cookout, when asked why there has been a decrease in Black student enrollment, one university stooge admitted to the university trying to attract more Latin students in order to receive federal funding. This same racist also said “kids from Gary, Indiana just don’t go to college” -- only reinforcing the racism that exists in higher education.
The truth is, all colleges and universities under capitalism foster and push these types of racist, anti-working class lies because their main purpose is to reproduce pro-capitalist, individualist ideology among the masses. Under the guise of “higher learning,” they serve to groom the next batch of capitalist bosses from the student body, stifle any real development of critical thinking for the majority, and charge astronomical tuition fees before throwing young people out into a highly competitive and cutthroat job market.
As communists, we fight for an education system that meets the needs of the international working class, not those of the bosses. Learning from the advances in education made in communist revolutions in Russia and China in the 20th century, we will make education free, accessible, and meaningful for all workers. Using our state power, we will completely erase any racist, sexist, and anti-scientific garbage in our schools and develop lifelong collective learning as the means to further liberate our class.
The Fight Continues
Students are planning to meet the Board of Trustees directly on October 12 at their meeting at the main campus in West Lafayette. We will come at the trustees with our sharpened understanding of our power as a multi-racial, multi-gendered fighting force. Working-class students united, will never be defeated!