On Campus - by Cody Brown on Friday, May 1, 2009 16:31 - 23 Comments - 22 views
The following is a first hand account originally published as a Facebook note by Elizabeth Zahler, as a letter to TBNYU!.
Dear TBNYU,
I thought we had had this discussion. I thought you understood that your tactics were immature and ineffective, and that you had already garnered enough of the hatred of the entire student body to convince you to lay off for good.
It appears we have to have the talk again.
You know why your original protest was dumb? Because it provoked the anger of the people it was meant to inspire, because it was factually incorrect on pretty much every point, and worst of all, because it showed absolutely no knowledge of history. And yet, here you are, making the exact same mistakes again.
Do you know what you get by handing out fliers to passing tour groups, encouraging them to ask their tour guides about NYU’s ‘overseas corruption’, ‘union busting’, ‘massively inflating tuition’, and ’student discontent’? You don’t convince anything of the tour groups, because they ask their student guides if it’s true and the guides just explain how everyone on campus hates you. What you DO accomplish is to alienate yet more of the smartest and most engaged students on campus How did you think you were going to effectuate any kind of change without the best and the brightest of NYU on your side? Poor choice.
But it also demonstrates that you’re only interested in controversy, not being a part of the solution. If you really wanted to make NYU more affordable, more amenable to GSOC’s claims, or more willing to listen to what you have to say about Abu Dhabi, you’d try to engage the students and administration in constructive dialogue. Handing out an anonymous flier and leaving us to clean up the damage is neither constructive, nor dialogue.
Lastly, it once again shows how out of touch you are with both current reality and history. Your facts are just wrong – no, 70% of classes aren’t taught by TAs, no, the campus hasn’t been ‘wracked by protests’ – but so is your perspective. You seem to think that you’re part of some proud tradition. But your actions in the past and now show how disconnected you are from the true spirit of protest and liberalism. When security guards walked into the cafeteria you thought you were occupying, you shouted ‘police brutality!’ – despite the fact that none of you were injured, and two NYU security guards were sent to the hospital. How unbelievably arrogant and disrespectful to the memories of those who HAVE died at the hands of police brutality, to imagine that you could possibly have any understanding of the depth of their suffering.
And now – to imagine that you’re representing the ‘real’ NYU, or ‘unions’ in some vague sense, or any sort of ‘grassroots movement’?
My father marched with Martin Luther King. My mother had to be escorted to work by armed guards to protect her from violent anti-abortionists.
You are an embarrassment to liberalism.
Sit down, shut up, and go back to class.
23 Comments
Pat McClellan
Lauren Barra
Hell yeah! I love that your FB note made it onto NYULocal. Hopefully some of those spoiled jerks from TBNYU will read this and stop being so obnoxious. Dare to dream.
Duncan Meisel
Did anyone bother to figure out if this was actually TBNYU!? A few groups have been hitting up campus tours. Unwise, perhaps, to take Facebook as your only source.
Also, how is this any different that NYU telling poor students not to come here?
@Duncan
The source is NYU Tour Guide, Elizabeth Zahler, not Facebook.
nice work Liz
Dina Ragab
Liz! You forgot the ! in TBNYU! God! Radical revolution deserves an ! Duh!
ps. I love you!
Lauren Barra
Liz is simply pointing out what a terrible, poorly implemented strategy the clowns at TBNYU are pursuing now. TBNYU is making life harder for STUDENTS, not the administration, which is your “target.” If you can’t see the difference, I feel incredibly sorry for you.
Andrew Bailey
“Also, how is this any different that NYU telling poor students not to come here?”
- Huh? Did they say this? Heh, explain.
Cooper Cheatham
Is it really TBNYU who’s doing this or some other group?
(so, to reiterate – IT’S GSOC, NOT TBNYU!)
Duncan Meisel
I wouldn’t trust this tour guide.
NYU has been sending letters to poor students accepted this Spring, telling them they should reconsider attending b/c NYU costs so much.
Sara A
Silly NYU Local, you forgot to fact check! There’s more than one group on campus trying to provoke critical thought and discussion!
Sara A
Also, HA to being an embarrassment to liberalism–just a guess, but I think more than a couple folks in TBNYU! are embarrassed BY liberalism.
Elizabeth Zahler
@ Duncan, Cooper, ‘beet’, Sara A
The bottom of the flier read, ‘to learn more, visit takebacknyu.com’.
@ Sara:
took the words right out of our mouths.
i wonder how the author’s parents would feel about her putting down campus activism, seeing as MLK Jr himself was often told to “sit down, shut up” and wait quietly for change to happen in it’s own good time.
also, speaking of immaturity, how mature is it to post a rant on your facebook page about people you don’t like? wouldn’t it be more productive to, i don’t know, actually SEND it to tbnyu! instead? nah, whiny gossiping is soooo much more fun. lolololol.
Kevin O'Brien
I’m also a tour guide with Liz, and this particular petty stunt is being pulled by TBNYU, not another organization. My tour group actually laughed when I shooed the sheepish little TBNYU girl away from my tour, so at least their childish forms of protest are good for some comic relief.
mike crowley
it would make sense if people who disagree with the tactics but agree with some of the demands/goals of recent actions would, instead of telling activists to stop doing what they are doing, make suggestions, add constructive criticism, point their motivation(which i know from personal experience is intense) in a way you think makes more sense.
questioning tactics alone is about critiquing communication without talking about the content of the message…if your going to criticize how others are communicating, you should think about how you communicate with these people. maybe then there will be more listening in general. maybe these messages boards could turn into a big collective discussion on how to make nyu a better place, instead of a never-ending list of problems with the way that some are going about trying to do that.
Sophia Tarabicos
Great letter, It reiterates what 95% of students on campus feel. Whenever my professors would bring up TBNYU, entire lecture halls would burst into laughter.
Regardless of whether the group warning prospective students is TBNYU, this group has some serious issues.
You want suggestions? There are plenty floating around, but it’s not like TBNYU is tuned into the NYU community, so I wouldn’t expect them to pick up on it. First of all, if you haven’t noticed, NO ONE appreciates your ambush tactics which just feed your vanity to soak up some limelight. If no one is willing to listen to “how you communicate” then don’t you think it’s time to change what you’re doing? The point of communication is to encourage dialogue between people, not start shouting matches with everyone you meet.
Now, i don’t think NYU is perfect, but i also don’t think it is a corrupt, intentionally distrustful institution. There are avenues of communication that clearly have not been explored by TBNYU, since, as am active member of a couple clubs on campus, I know that there are people who can help you and listen to you, and if that doesn’t work, they can provide you with a means of positive organization, which doesn’t mean sitting and whining like a spoiled toddler in the safe, warm and well-supplied Kimmel Dining Hall. Was it clever? Sure. Was it meaningful? Uh, no.
Matthew Belos
The fact that TBNYU spends this much time trying to deny responsibility for their own actions says it all.
Julianna M.
Bravo! Well said Elizabeth. On behalf of all of the NYU student employees who have had to deal with TBNYU! bullshit creeping into their job, I salute you.
Lindsey Jones
As someone who does not agree with TBNYU for most part, I hate this person’s letter. NYU is a union busting university and so are most institutions in the U.S. today. Since the 1970s unions have been attached from all sides.
The janitors and facilities management had their contracts outsourced last fall. I’d call that union busting.
Also, I really hate that people believe they can invoke relations to 1960s activism to make them somehow above discussing politics today.
Henry Chan
@Mike: Many people have offered suggestions on how TBNYU! could possibly improve their communication techniques. Or, how to go about achieving their goals. Look at the many posts regarding TBNYU! in this website, and you’ll find comments where people HAVE offered constructive criticism.
Has TBNYU! attempted to change/listen to suggestions? Nope. They have either denied that these suggestions work, or have just ignored them.
francis ko
“Liberalism” and “constructive dialogue” are empty words. It seems like the conflict here is between those seeking agency through DIRECT action and those who only claim to do so. This is totally the situation, am I wrong?
More so, I believe that it will persist as such until we all have woken up. However, that day seems light years away when are means of communication are trite and impersonal. I think there is capacity for real discussion that can manifest itself in a diversity of actions at this school and in this city. So lets approach each other, and do it up. Otherwise we might end up like those people on the tour: confused, bored, possibly hungry, and passively accepting everything and anything we hear about our education.
rant
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^FTW