The Disorientation 2022 event will take place on Saturday, Sept. 10. At 5 pm, we’ll meet on Krentzman Quad for a campus tour, where we’ll highlight ongoing social issues at Northeastern and campaigns to make Northeastern a more just place. We’ll return to Krentzman around 6:00-6:30 pm, where there will be food and representatives from campus groups involved in organizing for social justice on Northeastern's campus and the surrounding community. Hope to see you there!
This online guide contains more information about social justice issues and organizing at Northeastern. Articles will be added throughout the week.
Welcome to Northeastern University! During orientation, Northeastern likely told you the basics of what your freshman-year classes will be like, how to navigate between your dorm, your classes, and the dining halls, and the different Boston neighborhoods surrounding campus. However, what they likely didn't tell you is that many of the faculty and grad students teaching your classes are overworked and underpaid, that the dining workers running the Northeastern dining halls are fighting for the same pay and pension that dining workers at Harvard and MIT already have, and that many residents in the surrounding neighborhoods are having a harder and harder time paying rent because of gentrification caused by Northeastern. As you settle into campus and your new college experience, we would like to tell you more about these social issues that affect the Northeastern community and how you can get involved in organizing to address these issues.
Many people hold the misconception that student organizers and activists' only purpose is to complain about everything wrong with their university, but in reality, we are the ones putting the work in to make Northeastern the best institution it can be. Universities rely on students (and our tuition money) in order to operate, so student organizers leverage this unique power to create the changes we want to see at our school. The causes we organize around are not unique to Northeastern: almost every major college or university faces similar social and economic issues. However, universities like Northeastern also have diverse coalitions of student-led groups that dedicate their energy to the organizing that is necessary to combat these issues and change their universities into better institutions with a more positive impact on their communities.
With this guide, we want to shine a light on the many ways that students, faculty, and workers, past and present, are working to create lasting change on Northeastern's campus and beyond. We hope that the information presented in these articles will inspire you to get involved in current campaigns for justice at Northeastern, and to start organizing new campaigns around the issues that you care about. We also want to give a voice to members of our campus community whose concerns deserve to be heard, because acknowledging where there are problems at Northeastern is the first step to eventually solving them. Lastly, this guide is intended to connect you all with resources, tips, and a community of social justice-oriented students to make your time here the best it can be.
We hope that you learn something valuable in these articles, and we can’t wait to meet and work with the next generation of student organizers and activists at Northeastern!