In the world of student protest, the kids from Parkland are justifiably getting all the attention, but there are other interesting manifestations of student protest that are important to note.  A quick round-up of other movements:

In the United States, maybe the most interesting story of the last few weeks has been the student occupation of the Administration Building at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington DC.  The ostensible trigger was the revelation that several university employees had been effectively embezzling student financial aid money, but it also had deeper roots in the sub-standard housing available to university students.  The sit-in ended a week ago with students winning either 8 out of 9 or 1 out of 9 of their demands, depending on who you listen to.  I don’t necessarily get the sense that this is the “start of something big” – this is not yet linked into any kind of national movement such as Vietnam or apartheid sanctions – but I suspect one thing that may resonate is the call for more financial transparency around administration at private universities.  Students and their families are spending a *lot* of money at those schools; it’s long overdue they get better accountability around those dollars.

Bangladesh has just endured a week of protests and clashes over affirmative action which, in South Asia, students tend to be against.  For various equity reasons, governments in Bangladesh (as in India) have a history of setting aside jobs for people from certain castes.  Where this extends to positions in the public service, this tends to work against university graduates who tend to be from higher castes/social groups (though India, for instance, also has a policy of reserving spaces at universities for what are known as “scheduled” castes in order to widen participation).  In Dhaka, the PM last week announced a set of quotas which would have reserved 30% of positions to the children of those who fought in the country’s war of liberation in 1971.  Students protested/rioted (depending on who you listen to), which resulted in a very quick about-face from the government.

Meanwhile in France, a protest movement against major change in access rules (allowing universities to actually select students) is sputtering along unevenly.  Despite oodles of May 1968 nostalgia in the press, and a series of sit-ins at institutions across the country, most students don’t seem to be particularly energized by the protests.  Last week only 1200 students turned up for a manif at “Sorbonne University” (the university is the result of a now-three-month-old merger between the old humanities-focussed Paris IV and the science-focussed Paris VI down the road).  However, there has been violence elsewhere, notably in Montpellier where an occupation of the law faculty by students was broken up by masked, club-wielding unknowns, and computer servers have been trashed to prevent students from taking exams.  President Macron says the protests are mostly fringe-left types trying to tie various anti-capitalist themes to the access debate (a phenomenon everyone in Quebec must remember well from 2012) and that the reforms themselves have generated remarkably little disaffection.  But based on the past history of student protests, I’d say wait until June and see how things go before accepting that proposition.

Over in Seoul, things are quiet, but students are still taking some satisfaction that it was a protest in favour of integrity in university admissions that led to the downfall and now 24-year jail term for former President Park Geun-hye.  Ironically, of course, Park’s father came to power in 1961 on the back of student protests which led to the removal of Syngman Rhee the previous year.