On Campus - by Dean Stattmann on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 17:57 - 15 Comments - 44 views
On a quiet Wednesday afternoon last semester, an angry mob tore through NYU’s campus, waving colorful signs and chanting in unison beneath plexiglas sheets. The group that organized this was Take Back NYU! (exclamation point included), a student organization known for various demonstrations and acts of vandalism under the banner of transparency and accountability. However, ironic as it may be, TBNYU! is becoming the organization that students love to hate.
Inspired by student activism group Students Creating Radical Change, TBNYU is based upon three central demands, with public disclosure of NYU’s annual budget taking top priority. Other demands include full transparency of all the university’s endowment holdings and investment strategies, as well as the addition of a student to the board of trustees.
But beyond its function as an organization working towards a specific cause, TBNYU! also serves as a vehicle for other student organizations to be heard. The National Organization for Women at NYU, for example, recently borrowed the services of TBNYU! for a protest against gender discrimination within NYU’s faculty. Members of TBNYU! and NOW paraded around campus holding plexiglas “glass ceilings” above their heads, chanting slogans like “equal work for equal pay, transparency’s the only way” and “disclose it, get off it, put students over profit,” in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the coveted annual budget.
But perhaps decisions like these are what prevent TBNYU! from gaining the campus support it needs to make any real progress towards its goals. The protest, as students soon discovered, was based on carefully chosen, ambiguous data from NYU’s 2006 Faculty of Arts and Sciences Report, which in no way definitively proves the existence of gender-based pay inequity within the department. But the protestors already knew that.
“They’re saying that we have no proof, therefore there’s no evidence that there’s no equal pay. I’m not saying that [they discriminate]. Maybe they don’t,” says TBNYU! member Drew Phillips, a philosophy major in the College of Arts and Sciences. “The burden of proof is on them, because they have to show their innocence.”
Maybe TBNYU! just needs to take a more diplomatic approach. If fighting the system doesn’t work, perhaps using it will. But according to Phillips, that’s not a viable option. “The problem is there’s no dialogue. This school doesn’t believe in actually speaking to you about something and having a conversation.” Even town hall meetings, which offer open discourse with President John Sexton, don’t quite cut it for the members of TBNYU!, who spent an evening last semester interrupting Sexton as he attempted to answer questions, disrupting conversation with exaggerated coughing and laughter and enthusiastically reading the day’s paper.
Take Back NYU! is not a radical organization with far-fetched goals. It has simply adopted methods that evidently do not work. NYU is one of the most liberal universities in the country, if not the world, and it’s hard to believe that it would shun proactive students uniting for an honorable cause. Perhaps it’s just waiting to be approached in a different way.
Photo by Dean Stattmann
15 Comments
LOL
Morgan Long
While the student body of NYU is relatively liberal, this does not translate to NYU’s administration. All of Take Back NYU!’s goals are completely justified and within reach. Even though you don’t agree with their tactics, they serve a valid and much needed role within NYU’s student culture. The group encourages dialog and student interest which is refreshing against the apathy of the average NYU student.
“Take Back NYU! is not a radical organization with far-fetched goals. It has simply adopted methods that evidently do not work. NYU is one of the most liberal universities in the country, if not the world, and it’s hard to believe that it would shun proactive students uniting for an honorable cause. Perhaps it’s just waiting to be approached in a different way.”
Did you even read the article?
What I find really interesting about the tbnyu! “haters” is how easily they ignore all of the campaign’s work that has been less confrontational and more in line with the rules of our systems here at NYU. For example, Dean, ded you know that Take Back NYU! got a senator elected to the University Senate? Caitlin, the CAS senator, was elected last spring on an explicit tbnyu! platform and has been tirelessly pushing for scrc/tbnyu! related causes like the Coke ban and the Fair Labor Code of Conduct for NYU-Abu Dhabi. The first thing tbnyu! members did after beginning to understand the importance of transparency was to go to one of those “open discourses” with John Sexton, where he treated them with condescension and refused to even entertain a dialogue about why they cared so much about budget disclosure (and the same went for the next 5 town halls they attended). I wonder if you realize that over twenty student groups, organizations ranging from the Graduate Student Organizing Committee to the Malaysian and Indonesian Student Society, officially endorse tbnyu! and signed a letter stating their support and demanding a response which was hand delivered to John Sexton on the first day of school. Maybe the reason you didn’t hear about that is because even after repeatedly requesting meetings to discuss transparency and student voice with the administration, President Sexton didn’t find it necessary to even dignify this group, which together represents more than 2,000 of his students, with a response.
Drew says there’s no dialogue because he, and the rest of tbnyu!, has tried over and over and over to engage the administration in discussions about student priorities, and has consistently been met, not with resistance or antagonism, but stubborn refusal to acknowledge the importance of student thoughts and concerns. We’ve all experienced this in the bureaucracy at NYU: how many phonecalls do you have to make, how many different offices do you have to visit before you get an answer to a simple question about financial aid or registration? Protesting in the streets wasn’t the first thing tbnyu! tried, just like frantic, exasperated tears aren’t the first thing we try when attempting to register late for a closed course or to move out of an awful housing situation. Loud, confrontational pressure tactics are a last resort. For me personally, the successes and failures of the tbnyu! campaign prove something I already believed to be true about NYU. If you think what you have to say is important enough to be heard here, you have to *make* people listen. If we want to reclaim our power in this university, we can’t politely ask and wait for someone to hand it too us. We have to stand up and take it back.
Oh also, Dean, I’m curious about the impetus for this article? I don’t think tbnyu! has had an event or action since the dance party last semester. What got yer thinkin’ gears a-spinnin on this one?
Zach Maher
“how many phonecalls do you have to make, how many different offices do you have to visit before you get an answer to a simple question about financial aid or registration?”
Actually, and this is completely anecdotal of course, I’ve always been impressed with the Bursar Office. For such an enormous school you would think Bursar would run like a haphazard assembly line, but it doesn’t. I’ve always dealt with the same lady there who’s very nice, who remembers my name and my mom’s name, and seems to genuinely care about the students she deals with. It seems like the ‘So Much Red Tape’ criticism was just an assumption, or may have once been the case, but is now something of an untrue truism.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the voter turnout for the student council elections?
Pat McClellan
Take Back NYU have their hearts in the right place (I mean who isn’t sick and tired of NYU’s bullshit?) but their methods are just wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah, Sexton is a condescending tool. But you know what isn’t going to make him any more honest? Going out of your way to be an asshole to him.
Claire, if there is anything factually incorrect about this article, please email me at statt88@gmail.com.
Angie G
It’s one thing to demand a government to open their records and budget, but some people apparently need to remember that we go to a private university. You CHOSE to go here, you knew what you were getting into, and you can transfer if you don’t like it.
It’s only a couple years of your life. I can understand if you’re concerned that they’re funding terrorists or something, but we all know that’s not the case.
Kaela Rae Jensen
I firmly believe that Take Back NYU should direct the totality of their efforts towards discovering the truth behind Nicole He’s surprising claims. How can we waste time on corporate corruption and administrative apathy when the sanctity of goats is on the line? I’m just saying.
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Wait Angie, how do you know who we are or aren’t funding? Until a few months ago, our endowment was funding genocide in Sudan. And we still might be, because the Board of Trustees refused to disclose the investments in a “black box” part of the endowment, even to the Senate Financial Affairs Committee.
I <3 my school and want to trust the people who run it. But it’s not *their* school, its ours, and we have no mechanism to ensure their priorities reflect ours.
Zach, I wish I had dealt with the same folks in the bursar office you did! But you’re right there are def nice people at work in giant bureaucratic structures. They have about as much control over the procedures as we do.
And Dean, I don’t think there are any inaccuracies in your article. You just haven’t done any research.
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I’m not saying that NYU admins eat children and rape goats. Maybe they don’t. The burden of proof is on them, because they have to show their innocence.