EXCO - U of M Chapter

History:
The EXCO of U of M began in the Fall of 2007 at the Twin Cities campus. EXCO was one of many movements started across campus in response to the AFSCME strike in September 2007, an event that served as a catalyst for re-thinking the U of M as a public, land-grant university.

The Experimental College movement began in 1966 when universities and colleges across the U.S. sought to include more alternative voices in the culture of the university. The EXCO chapter at the U of M forms a Twin Cities EXCO network with the chapter at Macalester College in St. Paul, which began in Spring 2006.

CHECK OUT OUR SPRING CLASSES! (click on "take a class" above)
Intellectuals in a Time of War
Gentrification and Minneapolis Neighborhoods
The Politics of Public Space
The Art of Political Organizing
Crash Course in Capital(ism)
Rasaboxes Performance Workshop
Russian Conversation
Theorizing the U
Vegan Cooking

UPCOMING EVENTS
Next EXCO meeting: Monday Jan 21 noon at Espresso 22

Teacher Training Session: Wed Jan 16, 6-8pm Plymouth room (second level, next to sanctuary), at the Plymouth United Church 1658 Lincoln Ave St Paul, MN 55105

CLASS SIGN-UP: on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday during the first week of the U's semester (Jan 22, 24, and 25) from 11am - 2pm, EXCO will have a table set up in Coffman where prospective participants can learn about and sign up for EXCO's spring classes. Look for us on these days at these times under the escalator at Coffman!

INFO SESSION: Participants and facilitators can meet each other at this event. Join us Saturday, Jan 26 in Coffman # 303 at noon. EXCO will provide lunch.

Mission Statement

The Experimental College (EXCO) is an autonomous university that both envisions and enacts a “public” university by offering unique courses that are free and open to anyone.

EXCO seeks to embody the vision of a democratic university that serves the common good.

EXCO is committed to inclusion, community involvement, and progressive social change.

EXCO offers both a model of what the U might be, and a tool to make it so: EXCO is both an alternative university outside the U of M, and a subversive university that seeks to change the U of M from within.

EXCO is designed to both examine and overturn the alienation and exclusion created by the political hierarchy, bureaucracy, and neoliberalization of the university, by

CONNECTING:
--theory with praxis
--scholarship with activism
--campus with community
--workers, students, and faculty with each other
--the university communities with communities at large

And

CREATING:
A space where people come together to:
--share their talents in an inclusive, open, non-hierarchical, non-coercive setting
--become authentically involved in their education
--question, live, and transform their education
--build networks between and among groups
--build solidarity on campus to grow a public university
--organize for social change

EXCO COURSES:
--provide a large imaginative net to welcome any kind of content and form
--respond to community, campus, and public needs
--offer truly public access, involving university and non-university members not just as participants, but also facilitators and collaborators
--employ a variety of educational and pedagogical tools
--meet regularly as decided by those organizing them
--channel the U’s resources (classrooms and monies); use existing infrastructure

EXCO COURSES MAY:
--collaborate with other grassroots groups on campus
--carry out original research committed to social change
--arise from problems and material realities right here at the U, the community, or the world
--culminate in direct social action in response to problems and realities
--be taken for credit as part of Independent Study

EXCO-UMN Officers:

Arnoldas Blumberg, BA candidate, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, blum0136@umn.edu

Isaac Kamola, PhD candidate, Political Science, kamo001@umn.edu

Eli Meyerhoff, PhD student, Political Science, meye0781@umn.edu

Amy Pason, PhD candidate, Communication Studies, pason001@umn.edu

Lucia Pawlowski, PhD candidate, English, pawl0068@umn.edu

Kathryn Wodtke, BA candidate, Liberal Arts, wodtk005@umn.edu