After emerging breathlessly from her 3rd day spent holed up in Kimmel, TBNYU!’s Farah Khimji had much to say concerning her epic ordeal. Alongside New York City Councilman Barron, Khimji made claims of security guard brutality, including “3-4 big men throwing [her] to the ground.” She explained that all TBNYU students that remained until Friday (an estimated 10 students) were to be suspended and kicked out of NYU housing.
According to both Khimji and James Devitt of the NYU Public Affairs Office, the protesters will be escorted by security to collect their belongings, but they are not allowed back into any NYU buildings, including their dorms. The administration will be offering those without a place to go “alternative housing” for a period of time, but Devitt would not go into specifics with me. Some students accepted this proposal, while others declined After school special download. However, all students involved who were suspended have lost their housing.
As for whether or not the university has the right to take this action, the answer is a definitive yes. Students must follow the university policy regarding student conduct in order to remain a resident at NYU. Here are the rules (in PDF) on Maintenance of Public Order, which may be applicable in this case.
Below, too, is a portion of NYU’s Housing Policy, which confirms that students’ housing deposits will not be returned, and that they are still responsible for paying the full sum of their housing expenses despite the fact that they must move out.
I’m so happy that we were too busy blogging and posing with our new sunglasses instead of helping out with the cause. Now we can get on with our little splendid lives and hate these dumb assholes who are fighting for something. YAY COLLEGE!
@B: My point is that, although they were fighting, they were fighting in such a way that discredited their ability to actually effect change in the university henceforth. Yes, there is a certain merit in fighting for what you believe in and to change what you feel is wrong, but the key problem here is that you have to think through the logistics of such an action before you actually take it. For instance, no football team ever goes onto the field without extensive study of their own game film and their opposing team’s game film. As a result, they are better prepared to face the challenges presented to them on the field. TBNYU does not seem to have realized that you have to categorically and effectively study the bureaucracy in place at NYU in order to effectively undermine its efforts. What they did suffered from a lack of planning, dealing a crippling blow to their cause. No general goes into a fight without a plan of action and several contingencies based on what they know and perceive about the enemy. A fight for fights sake does not accomplish any sort of point and does injustices to the causes they were fighting for.
@ Bob Watson WORD
A lot of people were most upset at TBNYU’s 1st demand: amnesty, as in, “we’re sorry it had to come to this but please don’t punish us!”
I’m really weary of this sanctimonious meme that says, “Wow, at least they were fighting for something.”
Abortion clinic bombers believe in something, fight for it, and certainly risked more than most of these idiots.
A few years ago, the college republicans pulled some idiotic stunt regarding illegal immigrants. Hey, they were fighting for something!
Just because someone is working towards some goal does not, in any way, shape, or form, mean that they deserve respect, especially in the case of TBNYU, who not only failed to achieve anything, they have most likely greatly undermined any serious efforts to affect the change that they desire.
~D
While I disagreed with their methods and found their protest to be poorly planned, among other things, there seems to be a disturbing trend here with regard to this topic.
For the past few years, TBNYU was the only coalition on campus campaigning for budget disclosure, among a few other reasonable goals, and in a completely peaceful, reasonable manner, including education sessions, petitions, and letters, and very few people stepped up to help them. All these people seem to be emerging who claim that the group is ruining chances for real change because of the occupation, but none of these accusers participated in any of their more practical campaigns in the past. Of course, the administration completely refused to even have a dialogue about any of these issues. Unfortunately, TBNYU went down this path in response.
Again, I disagreed with the occupation and with some of the demands, but if there’s anything sanctimonious here it’s the alleged progressives who have negative comments to make about TBNYU but who never contributed anything themselves.
LoL. I can’t believe some of these kids even live in NYU housing. If they are so worried about money, they could have found apartments in Brooklyn for about $500 cheaper like I do. But hey, if their mummies and daddies can pay for it, why not!
By the way, does anyone know how long the suspensions will last?
@ Jack Manley-
Bravo! Like you I agree w/ many of TBNYU’s demands. If only they’d followed your suggestions and gone about things differently (and more thoughtfully), perhaps the outcome would be different and they wouldn’t be the laughingstock of the school (not to mention neighborhood and city) right now. Case in point – tonight I told my family about the whole fiasco and they just could not stop laughing. That kind of image they made for themselves is a shame because some of their ideas were pretty worthwhile, they just alienated a lot of people with their shenanigans over the past couple of days.
FYI, none of the students “assaulted” a guard. The guard who was injured ran into a door.
Right Claire! Also, I didn’t beat Rihanna, she just “fell” down some stairs.
If your going to go after a private institution that you believe has wronged a lot of people, you do it with a class action lawsuit. Perhaps these genius kids could have consulted the law school before making complete asses out of themselves and their parents.
[...] Aftermath of NYU lockin. [...]
eff the haters. i like these kids. they had fun. just saying.
@ Logic: I just got here last semester. I haven’t had time to pursue any real sort of activism on my own part. The truth is, the one thing in this whole debacle that I feel strongly about is that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right. That’s the main reason I provided the points above.
[...] that was exhausting By jessroy Now that this is over, let’s get fucking [...]
[...] orchestrated by “Take Back NYU!” (around a fairly schizophrenic agenda) ended in suspensions and the loss of campus housing (”rustication,” for you Rice alums) for the organization’s ringleaders. This [...]