Spring Protests Galore: Hunger Strikes, Naked Bodies, and Street Sleeping

On top of the recent football ticket uproar at Penn State and the antinuclear-research protest at UC-Santa Barbara, it has been an eventful week for student demonstrations nationwide.

At Harvard, one of 11 students on a hunger strike was sent to the hospital with dangerously low sodium and electrolyte levels after a week of fasting, the Crimson reports. The protesters are demanding that the school intervene in a wage dispute involving security guards who work on campus. "It's exciting that the administration is responding," says senior Jamila R. Martin. It only took a week of not eating to get there.

Meanwhile, down south, another 11 undergraduates at Princeton pretended to be pieces of packaged meat in a demonstration co-organized by the Princeton Animal Welfare Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Daily Princetonian reports. The students stripped down to their underwear, covered themselves in fake blood, and wrapped themselves in plastic. While the protest did persuade one student passerby to get a slice of pizza (presumably not Meat Lover's) instead of a hamburger, another was more skeptical. "It's absurd. You just see people spooning each other under a plastic bag," sophomore Justin Karfo said.

Finally, at Northwestern University, a lone demonstrator is sleeping outside until June 9 to replicate the experience of being homeless and raise other students' awareness, according to the Daily Northwestern. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nicky Smith–the protester–was recently fired from his job at a residential college and was forced to move out. "I got kicked out of the dorm, so I might as well sleep outside," he said. –Alison Go