Featured, On Campus - by Charlie Eisenhood on Sunday, April 12, 2009 23:58 - 19 Comments - 58 views
WSN reported over the weekend that three NYU students – (from left) Eleanor Kahn, Drew Phillips, and Farah Khimji – were arrested during the police roundup of student occupiers at the New School Friday. All were protesters during the TBNYU Kimmel Occupation in February.
Each was charged and released, and will return to court on April 24th.
On Friday’s coverage of the occupation, I wrote, “Something tells me that some NYU students may be inside….If there are any of the ‘Kimmel 18′ there, here’s an open question: will NYU consider this act a violation of the terms of their get-out-of-suspension-free card?”
NYU spokesman John Beckman’s response and my thoughts after the jump.
Beckman said:
I understand your question. At this point, I can say that the University will be taking this matter under advisement. Speaking generally and without regard to any individual student — because federal law prohibits the University from publicly discussing individual disciplinary matters — NYU takes seriously allegations of student misconduct, no matter where this behavior occurs. Under University policy, students may be subject to NYU’s disciplinary procedures for misconduct occurring off-campus.
Presumably, if NYU decides to take disciplinary action against the students, the offset punishment for the Kimmel Occupation could come back to haunt them. There’s no doubt the University could decide to expel them.
But would expulsion be justified? Yes. This excerpt from the New School press release shows why:
At 5:25 a.m., a maintenance employee for The New School was in the cafeteria in 65 Fifth Avenue. He heard a loud bang when over two dozen protesters with crowbars broke the locks on the side door on 13th Street. As he exited the cafeteria, he was overwhelmed by another group of protesters, some wearing face masks. He reported being physically grabbed by four men and forced out the door. During this time, they stole his security two-way radio.
A security supervisor responded to a call from the maintenance employee and went to the building’s entrance on 13th Street, where he interrupted the protesters in their effort to block the doorway. Although students have publicly denied that anyone was hurt, participants slammed the supervisor’s leg in the door as he tried to enter through the door. He sustained injuries to his leg and went to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
The protesters carried crowbars, bolt-cutters, mace, paint, hundreds of feet of security cable, masking and duct tape, kryptonite locks, and hundreds of feet of nylon rope into the building. They were also carrying sleeping bags and food, indicating they planned to be in the building for some time.
…
The protesters, some but not all of whom were New School students, blocked all building entrances. They used conduit pipe, or hollow metal bars, heavy, plastic-coated security cable, and gravity locks to block the doors, which were then reinforced with desks and chairs. They used Crazy Glue on all the locks. They put duct tape over all security cameras and transmission devices, effectively cutting off the building’s network service. They also cut through the cage inside the building to the cafeteria and smashed the cash register.
…
At approximately 11:30 a.m. a group of students tried to escape through an exit on 14th Street. It is estimated that eight participants escaped down 14th Street. Three were caught by the N.Y.P.D. and resisted arrest. The individuals included three students, one from The New School, one from Brooklyn College and one from N.Y.U., who was confirmed by N.Y.U. security as a member of their previous occupation. These protesters hurt two police officers and face charges of assault in the 2nd degree. One protester, a New School student, was hurt in the altercation.
I’m not against civil disobedience, I’m really not. It is an important tool for progress. But this behavior is not civil – these students really crossed the line with their tactics. NYU would be totally in the right if they chose to expel Eleanor, Farah, and Drew for their involvment.
But will it choose expulsion? I don’t think so. The incentives just aren’t there. If NYU decides to, the administration risks making the story much bigger news than it is now (which could be another PR fiasco). And they would indirectly align themselves with the NYPD, who have a lot of questions to answer after this video was made public and they tried to deny the use of pepper spray until confronted with the videographic evidence to the contrary.
The NYPD released this video (likely as damage control) showing much calmer, more polite arrests being made inside the occupied building:
Whatever happens, I hope that both the protesters and the NYPD take it down a notch – this kind of behavior isn’t furthering anyone’s cause. Property damage and any kind of violence destroy your credibility, protesters. So does using mace and a disproportionate amount of force, NYPD. Can we please end this dangerously escalating nonsense?
19 Comments
Eric Levin
Matthew Belos
Agreed that both sides acted inappropriately, but it wasn’t the NYPD who broke into the school, destroyed property and started this whole thing. Also, an NYU student is one of the 3 being charged with assault. Hope he gets expelled.
You can’t take the New School press release at face value. New School is going to do whatever it takes to justify giving up control of their building to the NYPD. This is an incredible decision and you can tell, through the rhetorical techniques of the press release, ‘black masks’, crowbars, etc, that they are pulling every string possible. Because the protesters did such a poor job handling their own media, it’s hard to see what actually happened.
And even if the protest was violent in the way New School described you need to establish that Eleanor Kahn, Drew Phillips, and Farah Khimji advocated and were a part of that violence.
Charlie Eisenhood
@ Cody: You’re right – the way New School handled this was bad, but, rhetorical devices aside, I haven’t heard any rebuttals of the major points of their timeline. Breaking in with a crowbar? Crazy gluing the locks? Busting the cash register? Stealing the guard’s radio? Not OK.
Also, after looking again at the charges, it seems that Eleanor wasn’t in the building, so there’s no reason she should be expelled. But if Farah and Drew are convicted of criminal trespass, that, I think, establishes that they were a part of the property damage. The violence isn’t the crux of the issue here (on the protesters’ side) – the damage is.
@ Eric: I don’t think it’s unprecedented for schools to discipline students who get in trouble outside of the schools’ turf. I don’t know about NYU, though. I’ll ask John Beckman.
Henry Chan
@Cody: How could the three not be advocating for the use of violence? Even if they didn’t commit the acts themselves, their participation in the occupation implies an approval of such acts.
Jordan Budd
Call me ignorant (because I don’t really know what policy is on this kind of thing), but I feel like NYU doesn’t have any grounds to expel people because of criminal charges.
Perhaps as a result of convictions, but not separate from them.
@Jordan: I’m pretty sure as a private university, NYU has really broad latitude to expel people for whatever reason. It certainly seems like they have the authority in this case.
That being said, though, I hope these three aren’t expelled
“I’m not against civil disobedience, I’m really not. It is an important tool for progress. But this behavior is not civil – these students really crossed the line with their tactics.”
Quoted for truth.
The theatrical protests are getting out of hand. Guards sent to the emergency room? When will it stop?
Chris Kennedy
This quote by John Beckman disturbs me:
“Under University policy, students may be subject to NYU’s disciplinary procedures for misconduct occurring off-campus.”
So I’m subject to NYU speech and conduct codes while I’m off campus? What happened to free speech? And why should NYU have anything to do with something done off-campus?
Charlie Eisenhood
I poked around NYU’s website and found this:
“The University should not use its powers to interfere with the rights of a student outside the University campus. In general, a student’s off-campus activities should be subject only to sanctions of the public authorities. Where a student is convicted of a violation of law, he should not be subject to University discipline for the same offense unless his conduct seriously affects his position as a member of the academic community. Where a student’s conduct on campus constitutes violations of both University rules and public law, he may be subject to both University discipline and public sanctions.”
http://www.nyu.edu/students.guide/policies/student_conduct.pdf
I now question Beckman’s response – is there a case here that the students “seriously affected [their] position[s] as [members] of the academic community?” I’m not convinced there is. This makes expulsion even less likely than I thought it was.
Jordan Budd
@Charlie
Yeah, unless they’re convicted and serve jail time, and they probably won’t, NYU can’t (and shouldn’t) really do anything.
Nick Mester
Why do people think that NYU can’t take action against students for things that occur off-campus? NYU’s rules explicitly state that this can happen.
NYU has a no plagiarism policy. If an NYU student writes a book and is found to have committed gross plagiarism, they can be sanctioned by the school.
If an NYU student murders or rapes someone off-campus, the school doesn’t have to wait for a conviction before they can decide to take action against them.
Phil Saunders
The New School’s press release is not entirely correct. First of all, there is no record of the security supervisor mentioned being admitted to St. Vincent’s, and according to the New School in Exile blog (which admittedly is definitely not an unbiased source) witnesses saw him on his feet around the occupation site for much of the morning.
Secondly, if the protesters “used Crazy Glue on all the locks,” how did they unlock the interior doors so easily in the video of the arrests provided by police? It appears on the video that someone simply turns the lock to open the door.
These aren’t major issues- the occupiers were definitely trespassing, and definitely broke the law. However it mars the credibility of the New School administration when they release ANY false information, just as it marred the credibility of the NYPD when they claim no pepper spray was deployed when it so obviously was.
NYU may have the RIGHT, being a private institution, to punish these students. However, as Charlie points out, it is against their own rules. Let the courts deal with legal issues and the school deal with academic ones.
Chris Kennedy
@ Nick Mester: They do not have the authority to punish students for off-campus speech (expressive protest, in this case). Not even to mention that the speech had nothing to do with NYU itself. Students are not walking ambassadors for NYU wherever they go and whatever they do.
We do not sign away our rights when we agree to attend this University…
Plagiarism on the other hand is directly related to the academic responsibilities of NYU and NYU students. Relating plagiarism to the New School protests is not valid.
Also, your rape analogy is disturbing as well. NYU shouldn’t wait for someone to be proven guilty before they punish the student in question?
jay thompson
From Adbusters, thought this was cool. Not sure if you guys ran this before:
http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/student_militancy_increasing.html
I’m sure there are more than 31 schools/universities around the world occupying/protesting. Greece and the rest of Europe?
Pat McClellan
@jay: The problem with school occupations is that they tend not to work. They’re an annual occurrence at a lot of European universities and it becomes a cycle where students hold an occupation, get little or nothing of what they want, the police overreact, and university officials come to see the students as incapable of dealing with their concerns in a mature or constructive way. This fuels a cycle where the university becomes evermore distrustful of its own students and becomes less likely to engage in a productive dialogue while the students in turn become more resentful, less likely to utilize the proper channels, and more likely to hold occupations that are counterproductive. Police brutality makes the problem worse on both sides because students become violent themselves and lose what faith they had left in the authority figures at their university while university administrators come to rely on the force of the law rather than the force of argument and school conduct codes.
I have no problem with peaceful protests or demonstrations, or pressuring a university to change its policies through petitioning, PR campaigns, and using existing conduits like student council, school forums, or campus media to have an honest debate and productive resolution of the issues bothering students. However, there can be no place for violence or law-breaking that goes beyond the understood boundaries of civil disobedience, on either side, as it fuels distrust and an endless cycle. Furthermore, student groups that hold occupations and then issue absurd demands and communiques regarding big issues like the economic system or the structure of modern society encourage people to not take them seriously. It’s my understanding that the New School students have some legitimate issues with the current administration of their school, and I have no problem with them protesting to resolve those issues. Wearing masks and reading out critiques of the capitalist system through a megaphone don’t help to resolve those issues. SImilarly, protests at other schools regarding the burden of tuition or inadequate financial aid structures are completely legitimate and commendable; tying these issues to broad topics like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or critiques of modern society as we know it make the protests easily mocked and discourage serious attempts to resolve the direct issues at hand.
Eric Levin
@Chris: What are you talking about? NYU is a private institution. They don’t have to take your money. They can kick you out if J-Sex doesn’t like the way you looked at him one morning.
Eric Peters
Photographic evidence of Eleanor Kahn, courtesy of Gothamist.com
Chris Kennedy
@ Levin: That’s not how agreements work. Students pay NYU for a service. NYU can’t just take your money and not supply that service without good reason. Neither can NYU just decide to give a student’s money back at any random time without putting them in jeopardy of being sued. They can’t just waste our time and resources we spent in coming to NYU throughout the semester because they disagree with something we did off-campus.
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Yeah, it would be nice. The problem is that each side thinks the other is out to get them and will never concede one iota. TBNYU(!) thinks that the system itself is so entirely corrupt that the only way to resolve it is to go outside the system. This, of course, is immature.
That said, I’d be very suspicious of having students being punished by NYU for their behavior outside of NYU. I think that sets a dangerous precedent.