Comments on: State of the Student Union: Reclaiming Student Unions as Civic Spaces http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/state-of-the-student-union-reclaiming-student-unions-as-civic-spaces/ Wed, 15 May 2013 14:27:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Harry Boyte http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/state-of-the-student-union-reclaiming-student-unions-as-civic-spaces/#comment-655 Tue, 17 May 2011 20:36:24 +0000 http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/?p=1754#comment-655 I see the idea of student unions as civic spaces is extremely promising — especially when such unions take on the quality of “free spaces.” Free spaces are places people “own” and create together, in which there is room for free intellectual life, socializing, and learning civic skills and habits that can feed into larger intellectual change. Many student unions were actually created through the work of students — COffman Student Union at the University of Minnesota is an example, from the late 1930s. And when they have elements of free spaces, they are places where students create their own environments, not receive services.

When I was at Duke in the 1960s, such free spaces were found in places like the Methodist student center and the Triangle coffee house near to campus, where blacks and white students had a rare opportunity to mix it up, interact, talk and strategize about the freedom movement. We need similar free spaces again — in Student Unions and elsewhere — where students can help to birth a deep movement for democratic change.

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