Student Alleges NYU Is Forcing Her To Live With Her Roommate’s Four Year Old Son

January 17th, 2013 by Myles Tanzer

Part of learning to love NYU is adjusting to the unique set of challenges that living in New York throws at you, all while dealing with the regular complexities that happen to normal college students. But everyone has their personal limits. Last year, a student had problems with completing an assignment that forced her to go down to Occupy Wall Street. She raised email hell with administrators over it.

And one year later, we now have Shasten Snellgroves, a junior at NYU who says that NYU is forcing her to share her living space with her roommate’s four year old son. Snellgroves says that with NYU’s sign-in policy, the child could spend every day in her room and sleep over six nights a month. She is not comfortable with this situation at all. When she approached a residence hall director about her concerns, Snellgroves says that the NYU employee “compared the situation to one roommate being uncomfortable with another having a homosexual partner stay the night.”

Read her full email to NYU Local after the jump.

Read more…


Members of NYU Generation Citizen Chapter Struggle For Club Status

December 11th, 2012 by Olivia Loving

Drew Lombardi was consistently late for last semester’s 12:30 Thursday class.

It was a pattern he had to justify to his teacher: He had only thirty minutes to make the commute from a Long Island City high school, which meant “sprinting up the stairs” to the Q train, transferring to the 6, and dashing from Astor Place to campus. There, he made the transition from teacher to pupil.

At the time, Lombardi was beginning his work with Generation Citizen, a non-profit that pairs college students with public high schools in the area. Now he runs the NYU chapter. To call it a “chapter” just yet is not entirely accurate; though Lombardi has petitioned relentlessly for club status, he has been denied over and over again by the University.

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NYU Student Weaves Elaborate Email-Drama, Beefs With Administration Over OWS And Student Ethics

January 6th, 2012 by Myles Tanzer

Mass emails sent out to departmental listservs are mostly servicey and rarely very interesting. But at 3 AM Wednesday morning, NYU senior Sara Ackerman mailed out a group of emails very worth opening.

Ackerman sent seven lengthy emails, which NYU Local has obtained, to students in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis that elaborately chronicled a situation in which she fought with NYU professors, mental health experts, and university deans.

Sara Ackerman’s beef with NYU started over an assignment that involved going down to Zuccotti Park and writing an ethnography on the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Sara says she refused to go down because of ethical disagreements and concerns about “the criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill people” that were there. She requested an alternative assignment, but wasn’t granted one by CAS Dean Kalb until, she had already gone down to OWS “with two other young girls, who are quite attractive and thin, and don’t look particularly physically fit enough to take on a potential predator, rapist, paranoid schizophrenic, etc” and felt like she “escaped an extremely dangerous — and even, life threatening — situation.” Sara still hasn’t completed her alternative OWS assignment.

The full emails and NYU’s response after the jump. Read more…


A Tale of Red Tape and Useless Swipe Cards

October 13th, 2009 by Keyana Stevens

Street kings download.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/secondary.photos.6.jpg” alt=”secondary.photos.6″ width=”287″ height=”71″ />On my first day of jazz class this semester, I arrived at the Tower Building on Lafayette only to discover that the door required a card swipe for access. Because I’m not a music major, my ID didn’t work, and I had to wait around until someone in the department arrived and let me in. Forget for a moment the fact that not being able to access NYU facilities for class even though I’m a student is kind of ridiculous. Instead, assume that NYU has a good reason for making its students’ lives more difficult, and that this is a minor problem that can be easily solved.

At first, I really believed those things. I would have to contact 7 different people in 3 different departments before being disabused of that overly-optimistic notion.Welcome to a tale of red tape and excruciating obnoxiousness. Read more…


Fire Inspections: Time to Hide the Vodka!

November 12th, 2008 by Palika Makam

Lodge the download.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/2474301912_6e78956565.jpeg” alt=”" width=”248″ height=”180″ />Time to put the Grey Goose back under your bed and hide those rose scented candles you bought in a failed attempt to lure girls into your dorm room.

That’s right, its fire safety inspection time! While your R.A. claims he or she is just coming in for a brief scan of any potential fire hazards you have lying around (cough, the futon you snuck in after welcome week, cough), you and I both know this is just another excuse to bust your ass. So as tons of NYUers prepare for these mandatory inspections, which may or may not take place while you’re present, make sure to stow your growing collection of Jack Daniels bottles and that gravity bong you brought back to New York after your last visit home. Don’t forget that any additional furniture you might have or pretty princess Christmas lights and fancy mood-setting light bulbs count as potential hazards, too. Bottom line: put all that shit away and don’t be lazy because even so much as an empty beer bottle turned flower vase (I know this from experience) could get you into trouble.

Photo: flick courtesy of mudpig.