Students Occupy The New School
December 18, 2008 6:29 AM   Subscribe

In protest to tuition increases and the anti-democratic policies of President Bob Kerrey, students from The New School, CUNY, NYU and others have occupied the Graduate Faculty building of The New School at 65 5th Avenue.
posted by dskinner (92 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
*shrug*

As long as they stay off the lawn...
posted by jonmc at 6:34 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


Protesters have also set up a blog, the New New School University.
...
In an attempt to bring his case to a wider public, Kerrey launched a blog, and was almost instantly battled by commenters.
....
The best collection of links concerning this action are to be found on the New School in Exile website.
The future is now.
posted by DU at 6:38 AM on December 18, 2008


The future is now.

Didn't they do this at Columbia 40 years ago? The future is a rerun.
posted by jonmc at 6:39 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


Watch out for shoes, Bob.
posted by Xurando at 6:41 AM on December 18, 2008


Egad, people are still using Blogger for their rapid-fire political statement needs? How very 2006.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:43 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


Columbia had blogs 40 years ago? Man, they should have patented that.
posted by DU at 6:43 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I am totally tempted to go over there now, so I can tell my professor "sorry I can't give that talk tonight, I'm occupying an administration building." hmmm...
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:45 AM on December 18, 2008


Protestors are occupying my university president's office too. Does anyone outside the immediate university community actually care?
posted by Clandestine Outlawry at 6:46 AM on December 18, 2008


For just a second there I misread the name and I thought I had awoken in an alternate universe where John Kerrey won the election.
posted by jefeweiss at 6:47 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


Didn't they do this at Columbia 40 years ago?

The Grateful Dead played at that one, who'll show up today?
posted by fixedgear at 6:49 AM on December 18, 2008


I'm sure Kerrey will just send in a security team and the whole thing will be resolved quickly and silently.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:49 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


"Thus: with this occupation, we inaugurate a sequence of revolt in New York City and the United States, a coming wave of occupations, blockades, and strikes in this time of crisis.

Be assured, this is only the beginning,

With solidarity and love from New York to Greece, To Italy, France and Spain,

To the coming insurrection.

-New School Occupation Committee"


Granted I am now old and bitter and on another continent, but I heartily endorse this kind of youthful enthusiasm, faith in the power of a citizenry to change its political institutions, and spunk. Even if it amounts to little, at least they cared.
posted by From Bklyn at 6:51 AM on December 18, 2008 [19 favorites]


NYU could cut expenses dramatically if they'd simply stop printing those oversize, umpteen-page, full-color, glossy magazines they send my daughter every...fracking...week.
Dear NYU...She's not interested. 50k/yr is far too salty for us. And, frankly, your promotional efforts pretty-much indicate that you aren't interested in controlling costs.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:54 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


I can't get through to the New School in Exile blog. It never loads. Maybe they should have used Blogger.

That said, anyone who can see it, and would be willing to text dump some more of the content here, would meet with my warm gratitude.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:10 AM on December 18, 2008


(And thanks to From Bklyn for the quote!)
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:11 AM on December 18, 2008


We demand infinite resources freely distributed to all plants, animals, and people on earth, and we're going to sit here until we get it!
posted by norabarnacl3 at 7:12 AM on December 18, 2008 [12 favorites]


Thorzdad, I know a college president who has been transitioning their promotion to online, with the hope that they can stop producing the kind of glossy color brochures you describe.

Their market research thinks there is still a segment that needs those. Midwestern parents, sending a child to a city neither has ever visited, want to sit on the couch with their child and solemnly turn the pages together.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:13 AM on December 18, 2008


Seems Kerrey, having lost Provost after Provost has now taken on that role in addition to being the President at the same time. questionable doings to say the least.
posted by Postroad at 7:18 AM on December 18, 2008


But will the available weed be better or worse than what was available during the Harvard Yard sit-in for a living wage back in 2001?

That's the make-or-break question right there.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:19 AM on December 18, 2008


I know a college president who has been transitioning their promotion to online, with the hope that they can stop producing the kind of glossy color brochures you describe.

Good way to double the cost.
posted by 3.2.3 at 7:37 AM on December 18, 2008


Does anyone outside the immediate university community actually care?

Apparently someone in Mexico does.
We have received a message of solidarity from Mexico as well:

English translation followed by Spanish original/traduccion al ingles seguida por original en castellano

GREETINGS FROM MEXICO

[translation]

Compañeros [comrades]:

With this message we send you greetings of solidarity from Mexico. The news about the courageous action that you have undertaken, by occupying the New School for Social Research facility, is already spreading around the world. You should know that in this struggle, you are not alone. In Mexico, throughout the last ten years, there has been a whole series of struggles by teachers, education workers and the students themselves against the continuous attacks that the bourgeoisie, its government and its parties have launched against public education. In Oaxaca just two years ago, the elementary-school teachers took over their schools and began a strike that turned into a social struggle of enormous proportions when the bloody governor Ulises Ruiz tried to take down a plantón [occupation of the city center] through a huge deployment of the police.

Ten years ago, tens of thousands of us students at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM—National Autonomous University of Mexico) began the winter by occupying the campus of our university. So starting in April 1999, we were on strike, fighting against the attempt to impose tuition at the university. We fought so that, in reality, the already small proportion of sons and daughters of workers able to attend the university not suffer a de facto expulsion [because of having to pay tuition]. We also insisted that for the democratic right of education to be real, it is not enough for education to be free. We Trotskyists of the Grupo Internacionalista stressed that it was necessary to fight for a living stipend for students, together with the abolition of the university administration (rectoría) and its immediate replacement by a university government of students, workers and faculty.

Our key experience in this struggle was the formation of worker/student defense guards which, at critical moments, guarded the occupation in order to prevent an announced military attempt to eject the students who were occupying the university. Hundreds of electrical workers and university workers joined our barricades at campuses of the UNAM system. Thanks to this support from workers, the strike was able to hold on and stay strong for ten months, until 6 February 2000, when the newly-formed Policía Federal Preventiva (Federal Preventive Police) was used for the first time, with the forcible eviction of the strikers from University City [the enormous main UNAM campus in the south of Mexico City]. A thousand of us who were participating in the assembly of the Strike General Council were imprisoned. However, our tenacity bore fruit, since despite the repression, the university authorities were unable to impose tuition. Today, UNAM continues to be a university with no tuition, where do you not have to pay to study.

Today, our compañeros at the university and its preparatory schools continue to confront the rage of the reactionary administrations which have reactivated shock groups [thugs] called porros. In March of this year, students at the College of Sciences and Humanities-South campus [one of UNAM’s preparatory schools] occupied their school for a week to protest the coordinated actions by the porros and the authorities at their campus. Through this action, they achieved the sacking of the bloodhound [repressor] who was in charge of campus “security.” The massive mobilizations of students were key to this victory, together with the support of the campus workers, who are members of STUNAM (Union of the Workers of the Autonomous National University of Mexico).

Because of all this, compañeros, in the midst of your cold northern winter we send you our very warm greetings in the struggle.

J. Santamaría, for the Grupo Internacionalista.
posted by felix grundy at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2008 [6 favorites]


colleges and universities provide rare opportunities to learn outside the classroom. so i don't doubt this plunge into political theater will be instructive to the participants. i just wish that this re-staging of "the classic" was not so uninspired and esoteric.

the cited manifesto at "open anthropology" boils down to a complaint over a lack of jobs. is their university the best place to stage a protest over same? did their university trigger the recession or tilt the financial sector towards destructive practices? (the new school?! really?! why not walk the ten blocks to the Stern School of Business at least.)

and solidarity with the teens in Greece? what about the teens in the five boroughs, for starters?

etc.
posted by noway at 8:09 AM on December 18, 2008


This thread's been open for an hour and a half and no one's made a The Big Lebowski reference yet? For shame.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:11 AM on December 18, 2008


That said, as a NSSR student I have mixed feelings about all this.

Kerrey's been pushing for this flagship building at 65 5th Avenue—the building the students are occcupying, which is slated to be torn down in the next year and replaced by some flashy thing; in the meantime we have an interim building designed by some business architect that is the most unfriendly academic environment I have ever been in and is falling apart to boot; I don't like his politics; I don't like that the provosts keep getting thrown over just when we're starting to make progress in hiring people; I don't like that his reaction to 74 of his senior tenured faculty voting that they had no confidence in him was "Well, that's only a small percentage of the total faculty"—a sort of aspect blindness that I take to be telling of his general lack of respect for the academic side of things (and I'm not buying that his reversal on hiring a new provost instead of acting as provost himself was 'admirable'); I don't like that our library has been taken away and that we are reliant on Bobst (NYU) for all our studying needs. My immediate reaction is to stand with my professors and fellow students, which I have been doing.

But it's not clear that everyone's in solidarity here, or what that solidarity consists in. My advisor was talking on Tuesday about how she's worried that we will lose Kerrey, and that it's not good for the university to be going into a recession without a president (or a provost); it seems that some would be satisfied to work out a new plan for the university that included more transparency w/r/t the administration, more input from the faculty in academic decisions, and didn't include Kerrey's being ousted or the old building (full of asbestos and non-fire-safe furniture!) being preserved. "No-confidence" doesn't mean get out; all this feels like panic on a sinking ship, no organization deep down despite the high level of organization among different groups.
posted by felix grundy at 8:18 AM on December 18, 2008


reading on to another manifesto:
We in the Radical Student Union believe in a democratic university where we have a say in university decisions in proportion to the degree we are affected by their outcomes. As such, we believe deans, faculty, and students should not be denied the right to be involved in the decision-making processes that Kerrey and Murtha consistently keep us out of. We have the right to voice our opinions in regards to the future of this university and how it could be run under such freedoms.
Should all school policies be determined via the vote of students? Does radical democracy work with a transient or temporary population? And didn't the students already get to vote for that school's administration when they choose to attend it?

In any case, it would appear the students are, yet again, the shock troops. The real rebellion is with the faculty to whom the students, as always, are beholden: Kerrey Moves to Bolster Support at New School (New York Times):
Sixty-seven professors from two of the university’s eight divisions, Milano the New School for Management and Urban Policy and Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts, voted overwhelmingly late Thursday that they had no confidence in Mr. Kerrey. Only one professor offered support for him.
posted by noway at 8:22 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


And didn't the students already get to vote for that school's administration when they choose to attend it?

Was I supposed to go somewhere else to study with the professors I wanted to study with?
posted by felix grundy at 8:26 AM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


Midwestern parents, sending a child to a city neither has ever visited, want to sit on the couch with their child and solemnly turn the pages together.

How about a freakin DVD? Midwesterners have DVD players, yeah? They can watch the green green grass of Harvard Yard in HD on their couch together.
posted by spicynuts at 8:26 AM on December 18, 2008


As a new Parsons (part of New School) transfer student, I have to say that it's kind of sad that it's very possible to not know about much of this. There should be more summaries available. Just talked to a friend of mine on campus and he says there's no sign of it where he is (across the street). Right now I'm working on a huge final project due at 6, but I'll be stopping by there before or afterwards.

newschoolinexile.com crashes Safari everytime for me, but they also have a blogger available. Latest update:
Tension is high!!!!
Security has begun to reach beyond their mandate of protecting and have harmed one of our comrades!

And the Photojournalist from the New York Times who has stayed with us all night and all day had her camera grabbed ad thrown to the ground!

Join Us and help put a stop to such unacceptable reactions!

yours in solidarity,

The New School in Exile!
posted by Brainy at 8:27 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


Security has begun to reach beyond their mandate of protecting and have harmed one of our comrades!

so cliche. what did they do, bruise his ego? and are we adopting soviet lingo now? 'comrades'? TOVARISHII, KONETS!
posted by spicynuts at 8:35 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


I hate to say it, but where was this kind of vocal social demonstration when they put up "free speech zones" or renewed the Patriot Act?
posted by paisley henosis at 8:42 AM on December 18, 2008 [5 favorites]


Does anyone outside the immediate university community actually care?
Nope, probably not. Nobody cared when a bunch of people occupied my university president's office fifteen years ago, and nobody paid any attention when they did it again the next year. People assumed it was histrionic kiddies with fantasies of reliving the '60s. Students occupying buildings is kind of a dog bites man story. It's not very original, and you can't assume that everyone is going to drop everything to pay attention.
posted by craichead at 8:50 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


"Thus: with this occupation, we inaugurate a sequence of revolt in New York City and the United States, a coming wave of occupations, blockades, and strikes in this time of crisis.
Be assured, this is only the beginning...
To the coming insurrection."


Ahhh, how cute. It's almost as if these kids seriously believe this preposterously naive, narcissistic tripe.

People assumed it was histrionic kiddies with fantasies of reliving the '60s.


In other words, people were fully able to grasp the reality of the situation.
posted by dios at 8:58 AM on December 18, 2008 [5 favorites]


I hate to say it, but where was this kind of vocal social demonstration when they put up "free speech zones" or renewed the Patriot Act?

Are you kidding? There were demonstrations like this going on left and right in the days leading up to (and following) the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Or rather, in NYC there were. It was pretty incredible.

Though really, this kind of protest lends itself to issues that affect the adjacent communities, which is why it's bound to be more effective this time around than it would be if they were protesting federal policy.
posted by hermitosis at 9:04 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I'm not really sure what to make of the cynicism here. The critique seems to be that these students are both naive and redundant in their concerns and their strategies for voicing their frustrations, but I can't figure out what the better solution is. Do you really think this is just a bunch of kids playing 'protest'? When did the sit-in become ineffective and cliche? At the end of the day, it's entirely effective within the New School University system and surrounding colleges. If anything I hope to see something like this come to CUNY to protest Chancellor Goldstein and the tuition hikes coming our way.
posted by thankyoujohnnyfever at 9:09 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


NYU could cut expenses dramatically if they'd simply stop printing those oversize, umpteen-page, full-color, glossy magazines they send my daughter every...fracking...week.

NYU is a real estate company. More students means they have a reason to build more buildings which they can then rent out at Manhattan prices, both by renting to the built-in customer base of students in dorms and by including even-more-valuable commercial rental space in buildings.

These days the top administrators often seem to run schools basically as for-profit enterprises with a college on the side to provide non-profit status. Sports is another big one. They're basically working with the same mindset that ran us into this economic shit, and now with the depression there's probably going to be an interesting popping of the "college bubble."

That's not to say NYU isn't a decent college, but that's on the faculty and students, not on the administration. (Well, those students who are there to go to college instead of to be vapid and do way too much coke.)
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:11 AM on December 18, 2008 [5 favorites]


I should add: it's a shame that these students--who had an opportunity to learn the kind of valuable lessons college should strive for about petitioning their government (in this case, the administration) through collective action and the power of persuasion in the marketplace of ideas to achieve political consensus and effect change--instead got self-absorbed in insipid, pseudo-marxist babble about global insurrections and solidarity with their "comrades."
posted by dios at 9:11 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


NYU is a real estate company

More like a sinister octopus.
posted by The Whelk at 9:12 AM on December 18, 2008


It doesn't really matter if this starts a chain reaction of insurrection; I'm more worried about whether it will help or hinder fixing the university. But that's because I'm selfishly more interested in the health of my department (and my school) than in whether Kerrey is or is not our president—if I were more concerned with his war record, I would be in the cafeteria instead of reading emails from my student representative and doing my reading for my class this afternoon.

All seriousness aside, though, this thread reminded me of the only Shouts & Murmurs column that has ever made me laugh out loud:
III. How College Kids Imagine the United States Government


THE PRESENT DAY

—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.

—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?

—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.

—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?

—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.

—Oh, right, I remember.
posted by felix grundy at 9:13 AM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


it's a shame that these students...instead got self-absorbed in insipid, pseudo-marxist babble about global insurrections and solidarity with their "comrades."

Surely you don't think that all or even most of them are on this trip? You can't judge something this comlicated based on what a few of them are saying.
posted by hermitosis at 9:15 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Hmm, they didn't express solidarity with the dozen protesters in at York University in Toronto, who are hanging out outside the President's office. Surfin' on their laptops. Waitin' for the President...who apparently said he hopes they're comfortable. I think he's already left for the holidays.
posted by chococat at 9:17 AM on December 18, 2008


The critique seems to be that these students are both naive and redundant in their concerns and their strategies for voicing their frustrations, but I can't figure out what the better solution is. Do you really think this is just a bunch of kids playing 'protest'? When did the sit-in become ineffective and cliche?

Your missing the point of emphasis (at least from me). There is certainly nothing contemptible about their desire to effect change. And while winning through the marketplace of ideas is preferable to disruptive protest, if that was the only avenue left to them, there is no quibble with them doing that. But they lose credibility when they try to make it about something bigger than effecting change at their school.

The better solution is to do it without the all the nonsense about solidarity and global insurrections and running around calling each other comrades as if they are a bunch of modern-day Ches. That babble is what makes it smack of "kids playing protest" and renders it cliche.
posted by dios at 9:18 AM on December 18, 2008 [6 favorites]


~ Are you kidding? There were demonstrations like this going on left and right in the days leading up to (and following) the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Or rather, in NYC there were. It was pretty incredible.

No, I'm not kidding. I know there were some protests, but were college kids taking over University buildings? Because if they did, good for them, but I didn't hear the tiniest peep about it.

Not snarking, not kidding. Just a little confused that people seem to be playing their trump cards at the wrong times.
posted by paisley henosis at 9:20 AM on December 18, 2008


By the way, here is an account of the faculty meeting that was the spark to all this discontented tinder: new new school university.
posted by felix grundy at 9:23 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Surely you don't think that all or even most of them are on this trip?

This is a fair point. And you are correct that it is wrong to paint them all with that brush. So let me make it clear if my earlier comments appear to apply to everyone involved: I support making yourselves heard and learning about how to effect change; my criticisms only apply to the comrades who are posting the garbage that I have criticized above. It's a shame that, like all the protests of the war and of Prop 8, the looneys get more coverage than the sincere, credible protesters.
posted by dios at 9:24 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


pseudo-marxist babble about global insurrections and solidarity with their "comrades."

Amen. These are real issues, and yet every time legitimate issues are addressed in this way the marxist lingo comes out and every fringe leftist group on earth bandwagons onto it and son the Free Tibet banners are out and immediately anyone in the middle who should care and pay attention goes 'ugh..stones'. Problems like this are not an opportunity to have a I Wish I Were Che Geuvara Party. Deal with it like people who are angry and concerned, not like people who want to show up on a tee shirt some day.
posted by spicynuts at 9:26 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Surely you don't think that all or even most of them are on this trip? You can't judge something this comlicated based on what a few of them are saying.

Yeah, but that's how the LOUDEST of them tend to come across. And everyone knows how the media work. Focus and be intelligent and use them!
posted by spicynuts at 9:28 AM on December 18, 2008


Just a little confused that people seem to be playing their trump cards at the wrong times.

How at the wrong time? They didn't have a trump card in the Iraq war protest, though there were protests over Kerrey's support then, too. They may or may not have a trump card now, but at least they're in the right game to play it. Again, I don't know if I agree with this strategy, but I don't necessarily want the same things out of this shake-up.

(It also helps that the building they're occupying is essentially abandoned at this point, as all the academic departments and classes and administrative offices have been moved to the (crappy) new building at 79 5th Ave.)
posted by felix grundy at 9:28 AM on December 18, 2008


“How about a freakin DVD? Midwesterners have DVD players, yeah?”
*looks up from shucking corn*

Dee Vee Dee?
*removes hayseed from lips*
*bites plug o’chaw*
Wassat like herpes?

“instead got self-absorbed in insipid, pseudo-marxist babble about global insurrections and solidarity with their "comrades."”

So...you’re saying those folks are just full of hot air?
Pshaw! I say. Given the resources they can bring to bear...oh, yeah, right.


“Even if it amounts to little, at least they cared.”

Yeah, 2nded.
posted by Smedleyman at 9:29 AM on December 18, 2008


Whoops...my comment above should say 'ugh....STONERS'. not 'ugh..stones'
posted by spicynuts at 9:29 AM on December 18, 2008


Columbia had blogs 40 years ago? Man, they should have patented that.

The patent would have expired before they could make any money, just like Author C. Clark and his satellite patent.
posted by delmoi at 9:32 AM on December 18, 2008


And everyone knows how the media work. Focus and be intelligent and use them!

I agree in theory, but I don't think it's possible to "use" the media like this anymore, at least not for laymen. The media is always using you more than you're using it. Anytime they sense that this is no longer the case, then they shift their attention to someone else.
posted by hermitosis at 9:33 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


No, I'm not kidding. I know there were some protests, but were college kids taking over University buildings? Because if they did, good for them, but I didn't hear the tiniest peep about it.

How would taking over university buildings have prevented the Iraq war?
posted by delmoi at 9:34 AM on December 18, 2008


I can understand the complaint about using pseudo-marxist language and its ability to undermine credibility. It doesn't strike me as insincere though, just a little awkward. With regards to their language of solidarity, I suspect that the comment upthread about students being the 'shock troops' is pretty accurate here. Whether or not they expect student protesters in Greece to share that perception of solidarity isn't really the point...The point seems to be - take over a building and make a lot of racket so that a targeted community will pay attention to something people are angry over. If that's the true function of the sit in, then why not go all out? If you only get a moment to wave flags and chest thump you might as well reach out to everyone else and see who's around.
posted by thankyoujohnnyfever at 9:38 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Brown University just concluded possibly-resulting-in-expulsion discipline hearings for 8 students protesting the Corporation.

But, yeah. Mostly no one cares. It's too bad, really.
posted by lunit at 9:39 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I can't figure out what the better solution is.

Transfer. They don't like the policies and administration of this university. There are over 2500 others to seek admission to in the US alone.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:42 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


so its for real? i saw the twitter announcements on someone else's stream yesterday and remember thinking 'how odd'
posted by infini at 9:49 AM on December 18, 2008


I can't figure out what the better solution is.

Transfer. They don't like the policies and administration of this university. There are over 2500 others to seek admission to in the US alone.


That seems a little glib. Colleges aren't baseball cards. There are a variety of factors that go into a student's decision to stay at one school instead of transfering; the city they live in, the quality of the faculty (and often individual departments), the friends and connections they've made, and perhaps most importantly the effect that one's college has on the total formation of an identity. These students clearly care about what the school of their choice means to them academically and personally.
posted by thankyoujohnnyfever at 9:49 AM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


Protestors are occupying my university president's office too.

I went to UC Santa Cruz. The president's office had one of those airplane style "Occupied"/"Not Occupied" signs above the door.
posted by tkolar at 9:56 AM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


No, I'm not kidding. I know there were some protests, but were college kids taking over University buildings? Because if they did, good for them, but I didn't hear the tiniest peep about it.

How would taking over university buildings have prevented the Iraq war?


In the case I was present for, it started as a rally protesting NYU's relationship with the NYPD. Since 9/11, there had been a police officer present at every entrance of every school building checking ID's and basically keeping the entire campus -- which happens to be squarely in the middle of one of the biggest tourist areas in the city -- completely locked down and secure. But as the war was starting, there were more and more student protests relating to it, resulting in some pretty ugly (and in some cases, violent) interactions between students and the NYPD. Students felt that even in off-campus rallies such as the large Feb 15th 2003 UN protest, they were being singled out by police for violence and arrests (if you're a cop on horseback, who are you going to shove or detain, a middle-aged mom or a punk kid?). They tried to convince NYU that the overwhelming NYPD presence on campus could lead to potentially dangerous problems between officers and students.

So it wasn't about ending the Iraq war per se, but neither was it merely about administrative issues. What started as a rally in Washington Square Park grew out of control and one of the adjacent Student Life buildings wound up being taken over. On the eve of war, NYC was still on much more of a hair trigger with regards to security, so think they were in there only a few hours before the NYPD swept them out. But I know this was not the only such event that year. The reason you never heard a peep about it is because the media was too busy doing a war-dance and talking about how soon it would all be over, and there was almost no trace of dissent to be found anywhere.
posted by hermitosis at 9:56 AM on December 18, 2008


previous fun with bob kerrey and the new school: Graduates at New School Heckle Speech by McCain

this was before mccain had announced his candidacy. kerrey asked him to speak at the graduation ceremony over the objection of the graduating class and the whole thing turned out a most entertaining experience.
posted by krautland at 9:57 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why "Pick another university!" seems like such an easy option to people in this thread, nor why disliking some of your chosen university's policies means that you ought to leave it rather than trying to change them. ("New School University, Love It or Leave It!"—is that the idea? Bullshit.) Plus the decline in the school has been cumulative, so a lot of us have memories of a better university that we're willing to struggle our way back to.
posted by felix grundy at 10:02 AM on December 18, 2008


The whole claim that students should transfer if they don't like it treats the students like consumers, rather than participants. Apparently the New School accepted them for admission. The students themselves chose to go there. They're stakeholders in the outcome of the New School's problems, as much as the faculty and alumni are, and in the same way that residents of a city have an interest in the outcome of a mayoral election. No one tells people petitioning Congress to pass their favored legislation to move if they are unhappy with the current state of things.
posted by deanc at 10:11 AM on December 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


Hold the phone. "I don't like that our library has been taken away and that we are reliant on Bobst (NYU) for all our studying needs."

NSSR does not have it's own library? WTF? That's just . . .

I have no words for that. I can't believe it. Really.

It makes me glad I decided against going there for grad school.
posted by oddman at 10:14 AM on December 18, 2008


~ The reason you never heard a peep about it is because the media was too busy doing a war-dance and talking about how soon it would all be over, and there was almost no trace of dissent to be found anywhere.

Thanks.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:22 AM on December 18, 2008


Ahhh, how cute. It's almost as if these kids seriously believe this preposterously naive, narcissistic tripe.

40 years ago and across an ocean a similar occupation (in sort, if not scale) would come to play a key role in spreading revolts that seriously threatened to topple a government. Or, as was hinted at by the Mexican solidarity statement above, you don't have to look so long ago or far away to see student actions having major political impacts.

If there is any scorn to be heaped here, it's on the modern American relationship to political action and learning, not on the students. I'll take messy, idealistic naivete over an anodyne symphony of cynical shrugs any day.

That said, it's sad to see the occupiers making little or no effort to formulate or communicate links between critiques of the culture of their school (and modern schools in general) and the greater society. That was a keystone in France, and, I gather, Mexican student revolt as well. Maybe the difference in Mexico is that they were fighting against tuition being imposed at all - here in the north, I guess we think the idea of still having important, distinct things of vital social importance to give much of a real damn about is a bit quaint.
posted by regicide is good for you at 10:24 AM on December 18, 2008 [7 favorites]


deanc writes: No one tells people petitioning Congress to pass their favored legislation to move if they are unhappy with the current state of things.

Sadly, they do. Do you remember the "America: Love It Or Leave It" bumper stickers?
posted by anifinder at 10:30 AM on December 18, 2008


I can't figure out what the better solution is.

Transfer. They don't like the policies and administration of this university country. There are over 2500 hundreds of others to seek admission to in the US on Earth alone.
posted by waraw at 10:32 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I stayed in a house full of New School (mostly Parsons) radical-punk type kids one summer while I was doing an internship in NYC. "pseudo-marxist babble about global insurrections and solidarity with their 'comrades' " is pretty much how I would describe every interaction I had with them. I mean, I am an artist so I lean pretty hard to the left but these kids were every walking stereotype you can think of when you say 'radical art student'. Reading over these blogs reminds me of the gibberish they would sit around and plan while they drank cheap 40s and reveled in how long ago their last shower had been. None of them saw the irony in pretending to be poor artists and slumming it up in Brooklyn while cashing that $50k/yr tuition check from mom and dad. Those couple of months there it seemed like none of them actually produced any work (kind of strange for art students, you know?) but boy they could rattle off a feminist-marxist-post-modern-vegan-anarchist critiques on the spot.

So I guess it doesn't surprise me at all that they took their legitimate issues and turned it into a liberal circus with blog entries probably copy and pasted from their term papers. I wonder if they made some sweet puppets for their sit in?
posted by bradbane at 10:39 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


[quote]I'm not really sure what to make of the cynicism here. The critique seems to be that these students are both naive and redundant in their concerns and their strategies for voicing their frustrations, but I can't figure out what the better solution is. Do you really think this is just a bunch of kids playing 'protest'?[/quote]

That's actually not my critique. I just think that occupying offices isn't a very effective tactic, because it calls up all sorts of stereotypes about self-indulgent, destructive student activism. It doesn't help that you can always count on a few jerks from the ISO to reinforce that stereotype. I don't know what a better method of activism might be, but I think it would behoove the New School students to come up with one. They're smart, creative, passionate people. I bet they could come up with something.

And in the meantime, you can't assume that the rest of the world is going to pay attention to your protest just because you think they should.
posted by craichead at 10:58 AM on December 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


When did the sit-in become ineffective and cliche?
Once a specific tactic is used, it ceases to be outside the experience of the enemy. Before long he devises countermeasures that void the previous effective tactic. Recently the head of a corporation showed me the blueprint of a new plant and pointed to a large ground-floor area: "Boy, have we got an architect who is with it!" he chuckled. "See that big hall? That's our sit-in room! When the sit-inners come they'll be shown in and there will be coffee, T.V., and good toilet facilities—they can sit here until hell freezes over."

Now you can relegate sit-ins to the Smithsonian Museum.
That's Saul Alinsky writing in 1971, in Rules for Radicals.
posted by enn at 11:11 AM on December 18, 2008 [11 favorites]


No one tells people petitioning Congress to pass their favored legislation to move if they are unhappy with the current state of things.

Barney Frank told one of his constituents that on election day, actually. But yeah, I agree with you. And to be fair the constituent wasn't exactly presenting a stance on issues that Frank could really find any middle ground on. It was a very "I don't like to pay taxes and I dislike your positions greatly" kind of exchange, if I recall correctly.
posted by Tehanu at 11:14 AM on December 18, 2008


Colleges aren't baseball cards.

Yeah. They're a lot harder to flip.
posted by jonmc at 11:14 AM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why "Pick another university!" seems like such an easy option to people in this thread, nor why disliking some of your chosen university's policies means that you ought to leave it rather than trying to change them.

On the one hand, maybe these students are the sort of over-the-top stereotypes of student radicals who hold protests at the drop of a hat. But let's say that these students really are shocked and dismayed and feel, deeply, like their education should be different, so their sit-in should be seen as a shocking act of defiance and outrage.

They've already tried to change things. The university administration has already proved more or less intransigent.

So, here you are. Column A, you've been burned by an early college experience, so you research other schools and their policies as they seem to be actually enforced, and you apply to several that seem to fit your vision of a university better than New School does in practice. Column B, you sit around in a largely unoccupied building and for the most part get ignored while you pen screes that wouldn't be out of place coming from the People's Front of Judea.

Which do you think is more likely to get the students the educational outcomes they claim to want?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:16 AM on December 18, 2008


Reading over these blogs reminds me of the gibberish they would sit around and plan while they drank cheap 40s and reveled in how long ago their last shower had been. None of them saw the irony in pretending to be poor artists and slumming it up in Brooklyn while cashing that $50k/yr tuition check from mom and dad.

I knew it -- deep down, every thread on MetaFilter is ultimately about hipsters.
posted by hermitosis at 11:41 AM on December 18, 2008


An acquaintance of mine took a position at The New School a couple years ago, I asked him how he liked it, what he thought of Kerrey: "I like it a lot. Kerrey? Kerrey wears a very nice suit."
posted by From Bklyn at 12:26 PM on December 18, 2008


Didn't they do this at Columbia 40 years ago?

They bombed banks back then too. My Goodness, it's the return of the 60's!
posted by chlorus at 12:41 PM on December 18, 2008


In Kapitalist Amerika (tm) the banks bomb you! (With money! Quantitative easing, baby!)
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:08 PM on December 18, 2008


Protestors are occupying my university president's office too. Does anyone outside the immediate university community actually care?
posted by Clandestine Outlawry at 9:46 AM on December 18 [+] [!]


I care that York's having another really long TA strike (3rd - or more? - in 15 years) more than I care that the President's office is being occupied. People used to occupy the office all the time, and it was pointless.

What's the story on the strike? Last time (c2000-2001), it seemed that the union was less intransigent than the university, and not demanding that much, though undergrad feeling still went against them strongly. Mostly because striking is the worst way to handle employment negotiations in any public sector service, and really there should just be mandatory arbitration.
posted by jb at 1:17 PM on December 18, 2008


ROU_Xenophobe, the university administration has been intransigent, but that is to some extent changing. The original article is somewhat sensationalist and not very responsibly reported, but here's another version: Last Tuesday--or maybe it was Wednesday?--the senior tenured faculty (exluding younger, less job-secure faculty, since their jobs are, obviously, more threatened by such an action) organized an emergency faculty meeting, attended by 77 senior faculty members (who slowly trickled out to classes as the meeting progressed, so the voting members goes down to the low 50s at some point). They voted almost unanimously on 5 resolutions, two of which were no-confidence votes in Kerrey and in the vice-president, Jim Murtha. The third was this letter:
Third motion

Statement of Concerns

The Senior Faculty lacks confidence in President Bob Kerrey and Executive Vice President James Murtha.

We can no longer tolerate the constant turnover of provosts – five provosts since the appointment of President Kerrey in 2001.

This turnover has made it virtually impossible for the faculty to be properly involved in thoughtful and effective academic planning; for our staffs to provide proper and consistent academic services; and for the Deans and faculty to help the Provost develop University-wide employment systems that appoint, review and promote faculty in a timely and fair manner.

There is a widespread perception that the President has allowed the Executive Vice President to frustrate and sometimes sabotage many of the academic initiatives of the Provost, Deans and faculty, as a result of which there has been a substantial reduction in the effectiveness and efficiency of all those directly involved with academic affairs.

Besides such costs, we also fear that the reputation of The New School is at risk, as is our continuing ability to recruit and retain the best candidates for top academic positions, and our future ability to recruit and retain students.

We are appalled by the abrupt and unexplained dismissal of Provost Joe Westphal, who represented a welcome transition towards better academic leadership and a greater openness in shared governance with the Deans and faculty. We reject the appropriateness of President Kerrey unilaterally appointing himself the acting Chief Academic Officer of the University for an interim period that is likely to last months if not years. In both cases, there has been no reason given why there was no prior consultation with Deans, the Faculty Senate, or senior faculty.

These events appear to be part of a larger pattern, characterized by unilateral, impulsive, and sometimes secret decision-making, concentrating power in the hands of the President and Executive Vice President, without due deliberation or proper consultation with Deans and Faculty.

The founders of the New School hoped to foster democratic ideals of governance and open inquiry. It is ironic, and deeply troubling, that Bob Kerrey and James Murtha have governed the University in a way that subverts one of its constitutive ideals.
The fourth expressed their unreserved confidence in all of the deans, and the fifth recommended that the deans meet with a subcommittee of faculty to determine a plan for the university to move forward.

Here I can only speak for my division, but our student senate met and drafted a letter in support of the faculty, which was voted on in the various subdivisions of the NSSR and, at least in the philosophy department, passed unanimously.

Since this has all begun, Kerrey has reversed his position on acting as provost in the interim, and the deans have been meeting with all the involved parties and trying to, as they say below, use this moment of crisis to really move the university forward:
We have worked - and continue to work - assiduously toward a strong, unified, and ever more intellectually and creatively vibrant university. We share the faculty’s position that the best route to that goal is to build a strong, well functioning provost’s office, able to advocate academic and creative quality - scholarship, art, design and performance -- and shared faculty governance as vital to the future of the university. Working toward that goal is how we understand our mandate. Faculty have left no doubt that their commitment is to bringing the university to ever greater levels of academic and creative excellence. To this end, the deans are working diligently, meeting with faculty, administration, and, as resolved by the faculty, with trustees as a first step in using this moment of crisis to effect real progress.
(That's from an email sent to the whole NSSR; I hope I'm not remiss in quoting it here.) The deans are in a sticky position because they are ethically beholden to the faculty and contractually beholden to the administration, but they seem to be making the best of these straits. There's a University Student Senate meeting this evening, which should be, I imagine, the most widely attended USS meeting in years.

Further, the full faculty has since met and passed their own no-confidence resolution, with Kerrey present in the room as they voted and voiced their grievances.

It's not just a hundred students sitting in a cafeteria in an abandoned building. It's a whole university standing up against the declining quality of their academic life, and the failure of the school that they love to live up to its founding ideals. I don't mean to single you out here, but I think that it's wrong to think of this reaction as isolated, or as the single last ditch result to ineffective policies. It could just as well have been the beginning of something important; instead it is one facet of a university wide reaction to something that has been simmering for a long time. I wish it were being reported differently, so here's an attempt to set that right.
posted by felix grundy at 1:17 PM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


We liberate this space for ourselves, and all those who want to join us, for our general autonomous use. We take Metafilter in explicit solidarity with those occupying the blogs and forums in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, and Wyoming.

This occupation began as a response to specific conditions at Metafilter, the corporatization of the web and the impoverishment of FPPs in general. However, it is not just this section but also all Meta sites that are in crisis: in the next several months, thousands of us will be losing our favorites, while ponies remain unaffordable and unavailable to many and the number of deletions skyrocket.

So we stress that the general nature of these intolerable conditions exists across the spectrum of online existence, in our intranets and our extranets, in all of our social networking sites. For this reason, what begins tonight at Metafilter cannot, and should not, be contained here.

Thus: with this occupation, we inaugurate a sequence of revolt in Metafilter and the internet, a coming wave of comments, tags, and favorites in this time of crisis.

Be assured, this is only the beginning,

With solidarity and love from Metafilter to boingboing, to Kottke, Youtube and Flickr,

To the coming return of the image tag.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 1:18 PM on December 18, 2008 [7 favorites]


Further, thankyoujohnnyfever's comment is exactly to the point. It's not a matter of some restaurant giving you bad service. And it's not a matter of a bunch of punk undergraduate art school kids (no offense, Parsons!) who could transfer to the Museum School or Mass Art or RISD except that NYC is the best place to live out their ideal of urban cool. I know four of the kids who spent the night in that cafeteria; they are graduate students committed to the program they enrolled in, and all of them have been here for three years or more. (One of them for nine, but dissertation procrastination is not to the point here.) It's not that easy to just trade out, even at the undergraduate level (though I don't know enough about Lang and Parsons to know why someone might stick at switching out, I certainly have an almost nationalistic fervor about my own undergraduate institution); at the graduate level you have the added complication of having developed relationships with your advisors and your colleagues, as well as, for many of us, with an ideal of the New School as the University in Exile that it began as (back in the days when the president would go up to Rockefeller center and demand that 100 fellowships be endowed to get fringe intellectuals out of occupied France--true story!). Those crazy expats are our own version of a constitutional ideal, and while I still don't know that a sit-in is the right action, I stick at the idea that they're foolish to stand up for it.
posted by felix grundy at 1:31 PM on December 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


We can no longer tolerate the constant turnover of provosts – five provosts since the appointment of President Kerrey in 2001.

We've had three since 2001, and it looks like the current provost is here to stay. The turnover was not the administration's fault, but the faculty are just barely getting a sense of how we balance research and teaching, what it takes to get tenure and promotion, etc. etc. Five provosts since 2001 virutally guarantees that the faculty are dysfunctional and demoralized, despite their best efforts to cope. I would bet that New School is suffering from severe "brain drain."
posted by Crotalus at 3:29 PM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


I a bit surprised at all the shrugging going on here about the possible effectiveness of this sit-in. There was a lot of praise here recently for what turned out to be an effective sit-in in Chicago. Then again, even the protesters were surprised by how well the sit-in worked.
posted by msbrauer at 5:15 PM on December 18, 2008


I was there a couple of hours ago, at 6pm EST. They are not letting anyone who is not a New School student in the building, so I was outside. There is a small contingent (15 or so people) picketing outside the building, and about as many cops. The number of cops was steadily increasing, presumably in preparation for 10pm, the time when the building is scheduled to close.

The suggestion that students should pack up and go elsewhere if they have disagreements with the way their university is run seems unfair to me. Universities are not (just) businesses. They are communities of scholars, and if you are invited to be part of the community, you should have a voice in its administration. Not just a symbolic voice, either.

I support the students, and I urge others who are in NYC to go out and support them in person.
posted by limon at 5:37 PM on December 18, 2008


NYU is a real estate company

Having just learnt that my alma mater on the other side of the world owns at least two condominium complexes and a golf course in addition to the vast auditorium that it regularly rents out to 'national' and corporate events, I've come to the conclusion that _all_ universities are becoming... something else. I'm sure someone with a better control over management-speak can come up with a term for this; "diversification" is one possible choice.

I'm not entirely certain where I stand on this one though, on the one hand, increases in educational costs _is_ a massive concern; the sheer fact is that, world over, universities are simply not able to scale up to the demand.
posted by the cydonian at 7:34 PM on December 18, 2008


Are these the same people who rallied for higher pay for professors last week?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:37 PM on December 18, 2008


... for many of us, with an ideal of the New School as the University in Exile that it began as (back in the days when the president would go up to Rockefeller center and demand that 100 fellowships be endowed to get fringe intellectuals out of occupied France--true story!). Those crazy expats are our own version of a constitutional ideal, and while I still don't know that a sit-in is the right action, I stick at the idea that they're foolish to stand up for it.

Yes.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:53 AM on December 19, 2008


Whoa, the university has agreed to quite a few of the students' demands. See: demand and response.
posted by ryanrs at 1:57 AM on December 19, 2008


This thread may be dead, but, from this NYT article, or rather, the comments that follow it, a lack of money / resources appears to be at the core.

To Felix Grundy: in a series of questions about how much power students should have, I suggested that students get to elect the administration they want when they choose what school to attend. You answered: "Was I supposed to go somewhere else to study with the professors I wanted to study with?"

I sympathize with the difficulty of having to balance your choice of professors with your choice of administrators but that is precisely the choice to be made – when choosing a school. Or, would students be justified in using a sit-in to ask for a new slate of professors should these, too, prove unpopular?

Again, if magically schools had twice the resources, many of these issues could be resolved as the best social organization do: slowly and fairly. I have no idea how to provide schools – rather, students – with the resources they are due.
posted by noway at 7:30 AM on December 19, 2008


noway, that answer was one of the more glib of my many responses in this thread, and I'm sorry that you chose to focus on it. I tried to give a deeper explanation in this comment—the gist of which is that it isn't as though these students are new citizens complaining about the constitution of the country they've decided to join. Rather, the feeling among students and faculty both is that we are the inheritors of a proud and often imperiled tradition that is being directly threatened by the current administrative practices (see the letter from the faculty here).

I can't tell if you want to talk about how students should behave towards their institutions in general or if you want to talk about what has happened here. But my broad reaction to your question is that you've made the relationship too simple, as if it were an all-in vote at the beginning rather than a decision to join up with a living community, participation in which includes holding it up to its own ideals, its own image of itself. We don't hold stock in the New School, we are the New School. The questions are different in this situation.

Further, it shouldn't be a balance between administration and academics. One is the heart of the program, the other is no more than necessary. (That's chiasmus there. Don't get me wrong.) If the administration is getting in the way of academics, then there's a problem. This problem is what the faculty and the students are responding to.

Which brings me to the specifics of the situation. There are unsolvable money problems which we would be quixotic to fight against. Kerrey originally responded to the situation as if this were what was at stake, saying that any president would be unpopular during a recession. But there are also very solvable administrative policy problems, which have been hindering academic life and which can be fixed. A part of this problem is that people don't have a voice where they should—this is what the faculty has been reacting to; this is what the students are complaining about—and so they have tried shouting elsewhere for a while. And it's leading to structural changes, just like we wanted.

And yes, if students had no say in the appointment of new professors, I should think that was a problem. Here it is not: in my department, we have student involvement from the APA interviews to the final decision. Our vote isn't weighted as heavily as the faculty vote, but it's in there: as it should be, since we have a stake in who comes, in what and how they teach. I don't know if I think this should be the case for undergraduates as well; I haven't given it enough thought. But I would look askance at a graduate department where the students weren't listened to at all.
posted by felix grundy at 8:56 AM on December 19, 2008



How about a freakin DVD? Midwesterners have DVD players, yeah? They can watch the green green grass of Harvard Yard in HD on their couch together.


I can firmly attest that yes, they have DVD players. They just don't understand what all those thin plastic coasters are for.


As far as the whole "if you don't like it leave" option, well, frankly, oftentimes it simply isn't an option at all. I don't know about the NYU students, but after my first semester at a shitty evangelical university in the South, I needed out. Problem was, I had a full scholarship there. It took me one and a half years to extricate myself from Falwell's geriatric jaws (since dead).
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 10:26 AM on December 19, 2008


If anyone's still following along under their recent activity, I thought this article in today's paper was pretty good. To New School Critics, Their Leader Lacks Focus.
posted by felix grundy at 12:34 PM on December 21, 2008


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