The Proof is in the Pudding: RWU Among Top 10 College Dining Halls

Once again, the Dining Commons and Bon Appetit are lauded for locally sourced ingredients and diverse selection of standout dishes

“It’s Not the Abuse That Kills You, It’s the Silence”: The silencing of sexual violence activism in social justice movements in the UK Left

Widespread doubt and disbelief of women and non-binary survivors who disclose, speak out and demand accountability for the violence they have experienced within social justice movements in the UK Left reveals a painful impasse and persistent barrier in movement building. Systemic failures of criminal justice responses to rape, sexual assault and domestic violence coupled with State violence and regulation of social justice movements and marginalised groups has led to consideration of community alternatives to help transform activist communities into cultures of safety and accountability. However, ‘counter-organising’ (INCITE! 2003; 2006) can distort, scrutinise and dismantle the work of survivors and their supporters in developing community accountability and safer spaces processes. The salvage research project (Downes, Hanson and Hudson, 2016) used participatory action research approaches and qualitative interviews with 10 women and non-binary survivors to explore the lived experiences of harm, violence and abuse experienced in activist communities in the UK. This article will explore how resistance to disclosures of gendered violence and anti-violence activism can be as (or more) harmful than the violence initially experienced. Five key silencing strategies are explored: (i) discrediting survivors and supporters; (ii) questioning the legitimacy of claim; (iii) questioning the legitimacy of community accountability; (iv) avoiding troubling recognitions; and (v) placing burden on survivors. The silencing of survivors and their supporters permits unequal power relations to remain unchanged and removes any need for the misogyny and sexism produced in activist communities to be critically examined

‘Let Me Hear You Depoliticise My Rhyme’: Queer Feminist Cultural Activisms and Disruptions of Conventional Protest

Many, feminist identified and not, commentators have criticised contemporary feminism as lacking a strong public presence. In his summary of the British women's movement, Paul Byrne asserts that in the contemporary British landscape, 'the autonomous women's movement has largely disappeared' (1997, p.127). In a similar vein, Ruth Lister draws attention to what she terms the 'lack today of a collective, big 'F' feminist movement', constructing contemporary feminists as isolated and deprived from collective support(2005, p. 457). This belief, however, is not restricted to intellectual opinion as repeated assertions of the 'death of feminism' are a regular feature in the mass media (Hawkesworth 2004). This has led to a surge of soul searching and anxiety amongst women's movement participants, often leading to the question 'what happened to the women's movement?' (Epstein 2001; Staggenborg and Taylor 2005). In this chapter, I wish to draw attention to the potentially problematic tenets upon which claims for an active feminist movement are made. I argue that 'bounded' conventional conceptions of what constitutes 'legitimate' activisms and feminisms can be (re)produced within these accounts. In particular, reliance upon the contentious politics approach within social movement studies (McAdam and Tilly 2001; Tilly 2004) tends to privilege social movement strategies that are public, national, and state-focused. Perpetuating these conceptualisations of conventional protest tactics and targets, silences the contemporary presence and legacy of 'un-bounded' unconventional activist tactics within feminism, which push for social change in locations beyond the state's gaze. In the UK and US, feminist activists are engaging in cultural production strategies and grassroots organisation, to expose and resist the cultural invalidation of women in art and film worlds (Guerilla Girls,Big Miss Moviola, Birds Eye View) and music culture (Riot Grrrl, Ladyfest, Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls).Therefore, I wish to advance an understanding of queer feminist protest forms (Roseneil 2000). These tactics challenge multiple authorities through an engagement with a plethora of cultural, performative and discursive forms of resistance. Allowing for a dynamic set of tools within which hegemonic cultural norms of genders and sexualities are exposed, resisted and transgressed. I argue that research on contemporary feminist activism needs to broaden its definitions of activism and protest, to attend to the shifting targets and tactics of feminist activism. To re-situate contemporary feminist activism as an 'un-bound' dynamic praxis which responds to changes in social, cultural, political and technological climates (Staggenborg and Taylor 2005).This chapter also encounters the various causes, conflicts and contexts in which claims for the death of a contemporary feminist movement can emerge. This exploration inevitably confronts diverse tactics of 'soft repression' that aim to disarm feminist identification and dismiss the threat of feminist activism within industrial democracies (Ferree 2004). The issues feminism gives voice to run the risk of becoming incorporated, and some would say neutralised, in governmental committees, academic feminism, popular culture and organisations. This creates a situation where it is possible to talk about and gain empowerment from feminist issues, albeit in a depoliticised manner, often avoiding explicit references and involvement with feminist politics and activism altogether. This cultural shift is accompanied by a crisis within the contemporary feminist milieu, wherein the impacts of post-structuralism, queer theory and post-modernism has fragmented the feminist movement. It has become increasingly difficult to identify a coherent feminist subject or feminist activism. This dilemma in feminist subjectivities has led to a critical reconstitution of feminism, often associated with the 'third wave', that questions what it means to be a feminist, what issues are feminist issues, and what feminist activism should look and sound like. In this contemporary location the boundaries of feminist activism have become critical sites for the continuous discipline and negotiation of feminisms. In particular, I interrogate the constructions of 'authentic' feminist subjectivities within 'generational' debates and tensions between so-called 'second wave' and 'third wave' feminisms, drawing upon my own (and others) experiences as a 'third wave' feminist cultural activist in the UK. In order for a fuller recognition of feminist activism the benefits of dialogue and 'radical openness' (Purvis 2004) will be briefly explored. Generational divisions are challenged through re-situating 'third wave' strategies within ahistorical feminist legacy. Forms of social protests that engage decentralised targets of social and cultural experience to resist hegemonic genders and sexualities often termed as 'third wave', can be reconceived as a continuation and defence of radical feminist possibilities in a contemporary UK context

Multifluid magnetohydrodynamic turbulent decay

It is generally believed that turbulence has a significant impact on the dynamics and evolution of molecular clouds and the star formation which occurs within them. Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic effects are known to influence the nature of this turbulence. We present the results of a suite of 512-cubed resolution simulations of the decay of initially super-Alfvenic and supersonic fully multifluid MHD turbulence. We find that ambipolar diffusion increases the rate of decay of the turbulence while the Hall effect has virtually no impact. The decay of the kinetic energy can be fitted as a power-law in time and the exponent is found to be -1.34 for fully multifluid MHD turbulence. The power spectra of density, velocity and magnetic field are all steepened significantly by the inclusion of non-ideal terms. The dominant reason for this steepening is ambipolar diffusion with the Hall effect again playing a minimal role except at short length scales where it creates extra structure in the magnetic field. Interestingly we find that, at least at these resolutions, the majority of the physics of multifluid turbulence can be captured by simply introducing fixed (in time and space) resistive terms into the induction equation without the need for a full multifluid MHD treatment. The velocity dispersion is also examined and, in common with previously published results, it is found not to be power-law in nature.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

School Finance Reform and School Quality: Lessons from Vermont

In June of 1997, the elected leaders of Vermont enacted the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (Act 60) in response to a state supreme court decision in Brigham v. State. Act 60 could provide a unique opportunity to determine if dramatic school finance reforms like those enacted in Vermont generate greater equality in measured student performance. This paper represents an attempt to document the changes in the distributions of spending and of student performance that have occurred in the post-Act 60 period. This paper begins with an overview of the institutional structure of educational finance and provision in Vermont. One purpose of this overview is to make the argument that the Vermont case is particularly interesting because there have not been dramatic demographics changes that could obscure the impact of finance reforms. With this context established, I then use a panel of Vermont school districts that spans the pre- and post-Act 60 period to examine the extent to which there has been convergence across school districts in per pupil expenditures and in student performance. Spending has clearly converged; a definitive answer on the extent of convergence in student performance must wait until more years of data are available.