On Campus - by Lucas Pattan on Thursday, February 19, 2009 4:44 - 22 Comments - 211 views
There comes a time in the life of an institution when its wishes and the wishes of its occupants are tested. Whether this event comes in the form of a riot, a strike, a collapsed building, a death, or a misconstrued signal, its incidence cannot be overlooked and the principles it raises or razes can no longer be ignored.
Yesterday evening, New York University experienced such an event. Students gathered within the third floor of the Kimmel Center for Student Life with the knowledge that their arrests, suspensions, or expulsions would come as quite a surprise to their waking parents on the morning of February 19th Jackal the download.
As NYU witnessed one of those singular moments that have the potential to define a new age of its existence, I was leaving the Kimmel Center after an exciting night of partisan debate with the College Republicans and Democrats of NYU. One of the night’s topics, gay marriage, touched on many events of great importance in the history of this country’s battle for civil liberties and rights. The battle for these rights, including equal representation, the right to privacy, and universal suffrage, took place only because of the efforts of a small group of people being willing to stand up for the righteousness of their positions. Take Back NYU!’s actions tonight, if presented appropriately and constructively to an administration that will surely be looking for a fight in the morning, can do such a thing.
I’m going to start by critiquing what I’m sure is apparent to anyone who has scoured the comments left here on NYULocal, specifically targeting some of the outrageous demands made by the organization that, in the long run, will prove to be regressive and irresponsible.
Firstly, the use of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is an attempt to tie TBNYU!’s exploits to a larger global issue that’s actually totally unrelated to the issues here on campus. The thirteen scholarships and the rebuilding of the University of Gaza, while popular among some internationally conscious circles, will be the first things to be pushed aside by the administration. These demands are simply attention-getters that, if framed as a separate cause, could gather support. As part of this list of demands though, they come off as petty and childish.
Secondly, I feel for it, too, but it is time we all came to the realization that the ban of Coca-Cola products at NYU was overturned by a majority vote of the University Student Senators Council after months of discussion and debate and, for all intents and purposes, is now dead.
While certainly the policy that strikes closest to the hearts of NYU’s students– freezing tuition– stands in direct opposition to many of the other demands TBNYU! lists. The principles of equality and justice for all of NYU’s workers are truly important goals, but there can be only so much leeway in how NYU pays its workers if cheaper-than-average labor is not attained. I say this, not as an advocate of such a policy, but as the bearer of the brutal reality. Either a tuition freeze is implemented, or the university should continue its active fight for fairness and justice in its hiring and salary habits. It is impractical to expect the implication of both.
Now – where do we go from here? What must follow is a regimented and strictly controlled course of action by TBNYU!’s members.
NYU’s willingness to use Bobst as a public library is entirely dependent upon TBNYU!’s willingness to speak to other universities about their own policies on the matter. Despite what many commenters say, this is a policy in place in a plethora of private universities across the country (including my hometown new-Ivy, Rice University, in the library of which I spent many an evening studying in high school). If TBNYU!’s efforts to explain to NYU how to put such a program in place are successful, the policy can realistically be put in place within the next year.
The most enlightening and promising demand put forward by TBNYU! is its proposal to create a Socially Responsible Finance Committee, a board to review the social righteousness of each of NYU’s investments, a policy that, if Sarah Palin can manage to pretend to follow, NYU should gladly take up.
And as a final comment on the way in which this protest occurred and what we can expect from this event, I suggest that there is a middle road to be had. TBNYU! will not succeed today. Its proposals will not be solidified within 24 hours and no administrative body will seek to affect the kind of change their demands suggest anytime soon. However, the administration will not succeed either. Students know the issues TBNYU! raises are major concerns that deserve attention. The student body cannot and probably will not continue to stand idly by as construction in Abu Dhabi continues without proper oversight, budgetary losses accumulate as the recession progresses, and ethically-questionable investments persist even as the rest of our educational peers at other schools encourage and succeed in applying divestment standards.
So tonight will stand as turning point in the complicated relationship our student body has with its administration. If engineered correctly, TBNYU! can inspire a new wave of student involvement in those clubs on campus that have powerful control over the school’s agenda. Town halls will no longer serve as Sexton-bashing galas, school elections will no longer serve as sad examples of democracy, and hearings for a variety of issues close to our generation’s hearts will no longer serve as mini echo chambers, absent of any recognizable student attendance. And if the administration plays its cards right, the role of mediator will be passed onto its student representatives, allowing for dialogue between students in the “system” and those outside of it to take place, all the while with the expectation that appropriate policies and stances make their way to the University Student Senators Council.
To the university, TBNYU! has thrown you a bone, not hit you over the head with it. Such a radical but peaceful step over serious issues warrants a renewed drive for compromise. And to TBNYU!, I suggest a level-headed approach to what comes next. Progress happens slowly, and as this drastic event has already occurred, its aftermath, in order to win anything substantial for the student body, must be calculated and meticulous.
Oh, and lighten up on the spray paint and dancing for awhile.
22 Comments
Sophia Tarabicos
I’m off to sleep after, but I feel I must say, Ms. Tarabicos, that your personal investment in the fate of Bobst Library, as well as the community-building you theorize it houses, are wildly exaggerated. And if that is your chief concern, hours of operation for non-NYU visitors could be established.
But please don’t hyperbolize upon what Bobst really is: a building with books, not a treehouse for club-gathering. Thank you.
Sophia Tarabicos
If you feel that way, then I suggest you come on down here one night and see what really makes Bobst tick: students putting in their hours all night long on LL1 and LL2.
Besides the Kimmel center, which desperately lacks any real space for significant community life, where else is everyone headed to meet friends, smoke cigarettes, study?
There are plenty of places for urban dwellers to head if they want to do a little research; maybe in your college towns there’s a bit fewer options…
ps. look who’s hyperbolizing.
John Lempka
I just don’t understand this “demand” in light of the fact that Bobst is often already at full capacity, i.e. during midterms and finals. It’s hard enough as is to find a deskspace at which to do work on campus during peak hours. Unless someone finds a way to make Bobst physically bigger, it just seems like a really bad idea, or, at least, a really bad idea for NYU students.
Zach Maher
“for all intensive purposes”
Really? You need an editor.
Zach Maher
Also you meant Abu Dhabi, no Dubai. There is no construction going on in Dubai.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?_r=1
@Zach
Thanks for the spelling/content check. It was a particularly long night, and honestly, how often do you see “Intents and purposes” written out?
Thanks again – now I know! [Cue NBC "The More You Know" song]
Sophia Tarabicos
@Zach
Are you kidding? No one cares; get a life. Better yet, become a real editor. Until then, learn to make inferences.
Zach Maher
I point it out with affection; I honestly hope that NYU Local will someday be a viable alternative to the WSN. For that to be the case though, one has to be able to read substantive stuff like this (rather than a live-blog, say) with reasonable certainty that the things being said are factual. I would think Abu Dhabi v. Dubai is sort of a big deal, and if the readership of NYU Local walks away with wrong information then NYU Local has done a disservice where they had the opportunity to inform.
While I Was Out, NYU Apparently Decided to Go Insane « Ned Resnikoff
[...] as Lucas helpfully points out, one of the demands–a “reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola [...]
@Zach
Abu Dhabi Vs. Dubai was my mistake – Lucas actually sent me a text message last night about changing it, but got sidetracked.
Chris Kennedy
I’m pretty damn sure that if NYU ever opened Bobst to the public there would be an enormous outcry from the student population against doing so.
I really hope they don’t take that demand seriously, otherwise they will be causing a lot bigger protests than TBNYU could ever muster up.
Bob
“Secondly, I feel for it, too, but it is time we all came to the realization that the ban of Coca-Cola products at NYU was overturned by a majority vote of the University Student Senators Council after months of discussion and debate and, for all intents and purposes, is now dead.” – This is a lie
The majority of the “University Senate” not the majority of the “University Student Senators Council” voted to overturn the ban. Most if not all of the Student Senators voted to keep the ban in place but remember the University Senate includes faculty, deans and administrators.
Jackson Griffin
@ Sophia Tarbicos:
As an “urban dweller” who you so righteously invoke I will point out very plainly that many of the libraries available to the public of the metro-New York area are sub-standard–for any sort of intensive research, autodidactic learning, and just plain fun–and those that are not are often geographically removed from any sense of accessibility to non-academic inhabitants of this city and its boroughs. The inclusion of even a limited time for city locals and the community around you would, no doubt, make the space you occupy accepted less grudgingly.
Would you rather take a page from the New School or Columbia and continue to cut your campus community off from the community-at-large?
Making your library accessible, if not necessarily always open–say at crunch times in your academic calendar–would the first step to actually making NYU a part of New York rather than just an icon. Those of you students who are not from New York, even those of you from New York, are going to a school in a city and cannot divorce yourselves from the people whose homes you’ve already absorbed. Further, the point of going to a school like NYU is to experience what it is like to be part of an urban community. I’m not trying to shame you, or be contentious, nor am I making any assumption as to where students are from geographically, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is the interactions you as a representative of NYU, as a member of an elite private university bring to the table. The effect of shutting down a resource that could be more than helpful–heck, it might even change how all schools in cities interact with their communities–if you (as a school) were to take this step.
NYU makes a big ballyhoo of being seated in New York, yet those of us who are not privileged enough–economically, racially, geographically and so on–to attend, yet live in The City feel no sympathy or desire to defend your institution. (Forgive the previous sentence for its run-on qualities.) As a self-identifying member of the New York “urban dweller” community and someone who did not grow up with a decent library in their community I will say that it is selfish and functionally racist, classist and elitist–whether you, as students, or the administration recognizes it as such. There is a real dearth of accessible libraries with decent academic resources, worse, the NYPL catalogue is spread over the whole of the five boroughs and very few of us who live in New York can access those branches, even fewer still recognize that there are any sorts of inter-library loan. The inter-library loan is also a problem in and of itself as many texts cannot be transported between libraries–due to age, status as a reference text and even high demand.
Making your library open to the public doesn’t mean you’ll have people staying and taking up your precious desk space at 5AM, what it means is that you’ll have to share resources and *gasp* perhaps have to make time to do work ahead of time and accessing the resources that have been made available to you earlier than you usually would. What it means is that you’ll be lending a helping hand to the community(ies) around you. What it means is that you will be relieving one aspect of the burden you present to the New York housing/academic resource infrastructure.
Simply put: Opening your library may be an inconvenience to individual students, but it presents a unique opportunity to undo the generations of harm NYU as an institution has done to the surrounding community(ies).
Take Back NYU! » Blog Archive » Press Coverage of the Occupation
[...] NYU Local: What Happens Next for Take Back NYU! and Our University? [...]
Joey Gillis
They want Bobst to be open to the public? Nice as that may be, it’s not even open to alumni. I believe you’re allowed to use it twice a year without paying additional fees. It’d be nice for at least that small step.
Sophia Tarabicos
@Jackson
“Would you rather take a page from the New School or Columbia and continue to cut your campus community off from the community-at-large?”
Uh, how could we possibly do that? we have no ”defined’ campus to begin with, so I think I have a fairly legitimate claim, as a student who does pay the 50k a year, to at least suggest what buildings I believe should remain for primarily NYU usage.
Listen, I didn’t plan on going on about this, and I know you probably mean well for “the community,” but I’m looking out for myself and my fellow over-burdened students. Coming from Delaware, where the largest and most accesible library was one from the local university (acess to which I had to pay for), I can understand why people would enjoy access to NYU’s wonderful resources. But not only am I relatively confident that there must be some way for the public to get access to Bobst, I also recognize that NYC is the greatest city in the world (in my opinion), and there are certainly other excellent resources out there. There’s always Colombia…
I will definitely be the first to say that I honestly don’t know what the University did to the Village community. And it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that we’re here now, we’re paying for it, and I’m honestly not ready to “inconvenience individuals” just yet. Any student who relies on Bobst for sanctuary during midterms, finals, or late-night paper writing knows that space is precious. I myself have spent hours sitting in the hallways of Bobst because of lack of accomadations on a few busy days.
Maybe I’m exaggerating and romanticising the library, but it’s only because I am taking serious issue with TBNYU! in general. The random demands being made against the University are unexpected and certainly do not represent my opinions, and I don’t appreciate the assumptions that this radical group is making. If I sound angry, it’s because of that, not in the arguing, itself.
(I probably have several misspellings, so go easy; it’s not my strong suit)
Sophia Tarabicos
@Joey
I didn’t know they were so harsh on alumni policy. I could support some leniency for that.
So, this childish temper-tantrum on the part of a bunch of entitled nitwits might get NYU to open up a building full of rotting tree carcasses to the public? There’s this thing, you may have heard of it, called the internet, where all sorts of content can be made freely available by pretty much anyone and isn’t restricted to a rather limited geographic region. Heck, you can even engage people in conversations on it.
Way to go by demanding a completely symbolic “give” in exchange for your completely infantile “revolt”.
NYU Admins: Next time, give a deadline, honor the deadline, shoot to kill. Not every tantrum deserves tolerance.
@sophia
So, where did you work to earn your 50K a year for tuition? I guess I’m asking “How many diamonds were you, back then?”
Also, spelling is not your only “weak suit”.
Sophia Tarabicos
@ “skippy” (btw, you could do better…)
how mature. I don’t have to apologize to a nameless idiot, so don’t hold your breath; wouldn’t want to risk losing someone who reminds me how inconsiderate most people are. I’m almost glad I don’t know who you are; I’m not fun to play with.
Dubai Cracks Public Morality Whip; Will NYU President John Sexton Roll Over? « Clyde Fitch Report
[...] questions still being raised — and unaddressed — regarding fiduciary shenanigans on the part of NYU President John Sexton as the [...]
Leave a Reply
may I say: first!
Pretty solid outline of points, Luke, but I still have to disagree with you about making the library more friendly to the public. On a “campus” like NYU’s, having student and faculty -only spaces are critical to attempting to maintain any sort of community, and losing that ability to congregate in places like Bobst at 5am would, I think, take a toll on NYU’s attempt at a community.
I am in agreement about the lack of efficacy in the execution of TBNYU!’s recent methods, and even though I have a feeling the general press will be overwhelmingly negative, I have to recognize that they are getting people to talk about this, even if it is a ridiculous spectacle.