NYU SLAM Delivers Letter to Administration, Demanding Student Representation on Board With a Little Help from Bill de Blasio

The NYU Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) delivered a letter to President Andrew Hamilton today, demanding student representation on the NYU Board of Trustees.

In the letter, SLAM derides Hamilton for urging the organization to go through the “school’s established channels for student power” in attempting to get a student on the board, only to fail to deliver on a promise to place putting a student on the board on the University Senate’s agenda.

The letter spares no words for how urgent the organization believes putting a student on the board is.

“Without student power,” it reads, “this university would cease to promote the democratic ethos it so ferociously wants to maintain.”

Placing a student on the Board of Trustees has been a prominent goal of student activists at NYU for decades. In the letter, SLAM quotes New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, an NYU alum, from a 1983 Washington Square News article where he makes the case for placing a student on the board, saying that it would provide more transparency and accountability in the opaque board’s decision-making process.

Also, de Blasio visited Weinstein — his old dorm — today. SLAM activists protested outside the dorm and asked de Blasio whether he still supported putting a student on the board of trustees, de Blasio said he did. The activists believe that having the Mayor of New York City on their side may help exert pressure upon the university to act.

“Attention is attention, especially from the Mayor of New York,” SLAM member Marley Kinser said. “I am not Andrew Hamilton, I don’t know his decision-making process. But, it can’t hurt to hear that public figures that have been through this university and who’ve succeeded immensely outside of it are supportive of this campaign.”

Rose Asaf, an organizer with SLAM, said that Hamilton should be expected to take student concerns seriously and, therefore, read the letter.

“We expect the president of our school to take into consideration correspondence he is receiving from a sizable student group speaking out on student issues,” she said. “So, it would reflect very poorly on President Hamilton if he didn’t read our letter.”

SLAM was initially told that they would be met by an administration official in the Bobst Lobby. Ben Zinevich — an organizer with SLAM who was one of the three students to go to the administrative offices — said that this was a “power move,” but that the main objective was to deliver the letter. When public safety intervened in the deliverance of the letter, SLAM questioned whether the administration was treating the event as a public safety concern, and why.

SLAM was allowed to bring three people up to the university’s administrative offices in Bobst; reporters were not allowed. According to SLAM, the letter was received by Lynne Brown, Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs. President Hamilton was in Washington D.C. to meet with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney about DACA and the travel ban. Brown assured SLAM that the letter would be read by Hamilton.

Zinevich was not surprised that Hamilton was not present. “They say he’s not here,” he said. “He’s always not here.”

Activists argue that putting a student on the board will allow students to have a say in the school’s financial decisions. Currently, financial decisions are controlled by major donors to the school, who may not be sympathetic to the plight of students who are having a difficult time paying for college.

According to the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, approximately 21% of private universities have a student trustee, including Cornell and Amherst. Approximately 71% of public universities have a student trustee.

Hamilton has called putting a student on the board a “conflict of interest.” This stance is seen as hypocritical by student activists, as the board is populated by such figures as an advisor to President Donald Trump, and several people who have financial ties to predatory student lenders and speculative real estate.

SLAM has utilized numerous organizing tactics to attempt to achieve its goals, from letter deliverance up to sit-ins and occupations of university buildings. Asaf said that SLAM’s actions are “escalatory,” based on reactions from the administration.

“If our demands are not met, and the university won’t take student concerns into account, we will escalate,” she said.

Here is the full text of the letter SLAM delivered to President Hamilton:

Dear President Hamilton,

During the 2016–2017 academic year, the NYU Student Labor Action Movement took various actions to implement students on the Board of Trustees. These attempts were met with varying degrees of disapproval from yourself and members of the administration. Unfortunately, SLAM does not see your initial decision as a setback, but rather an opportunity to prove that your students want representation and transparency on the Board of Trustees, and will not stop until we get it.

Per your suggestion, we proceeded with our resolution through the school’s established channels for student power that you have long championed, only to be thwarted when you went against your promise to put the resolution on the University Senate’s agenda. This is unacceptable. The student body no longer has time for bureaucratic dead-ends. As the framers of our Federal Constitution remarked,

“Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

You may think students on the Board would be a conflict of interest, but if this university has given us anything, it is the skill to rise to challenges and to relentlessly believe in our abilities. Without student power, this university would cease to promote the democratic ethos it so ferociously wants to maintain. We are here to help you do that, to help NYU be the shining example it is known to be for this country’s academic community. In his own fight for student representation at NYU, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the following:

“Students should be able to have more knowledge about the Board of Trustees’ meetings…They should be able to express their ideas and hear the proceedings… Input is the issue.”

We know you’re skeptical to provide students with such power, as only 21 percent of private universities have student trustees. Even so, it makes us wonder why someone who has praised NYU for being a beacon of innovation wouldn’t want NYU to stand with Cornell and Amherst at the forefront of the student power movement. The number of student trustees is increasing, NYU should be leading this stride, just as we did in the Fight for $15.

Your commitment to affordability would be solidified by introducing student trustees. As you noted one of your emails to the student population, “Affordability has been a priority since my very first weeks as President, and it remains so.” Now is your chance to prove this to your students. Otherwise, your history of ignoring student financial insecurity will live on. As Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, you argued that a university’s fees should rise from £9,000 to £16,000, prioritizing a university’s competitiveness over the needs of its students. Those who can afford such increases in tuition are already top competitors. We hope you are true to your words that, “We are guided by high principles- academic freedom, openness, inclusiveness, and diversity,” and do all you can to make NYU a financially inclusive institution. This starts with representation.

The necessary condition for any university to further ideals of prosperity and excellence is the presence of a student body. Only students will allow NYU to attain these characteristics, in the classroom, and on the Board. We hope in time you will manifest this realization with the introduction of elected Student Trustees.

Onward,

The Student Labor Action Movement

P.S. — Attached is a clipping from a 1983 Washington Square News headline, when Bill de Blasio, FKA Bill Wilhelm, organized students in the effort of putting students on the Board. He started this fight and we will end it.

Editor’s Note: After the time of publication, NYU Spokesperson Matt Nagel, released a statement on behalf of the school board:

The University continues to respectfully disagree with this position. The Board of Trustees remains committed to having board members who are prepared to take a holistic perspective, so they can make judgments based on the well-being of the University as a whole and all of its stakeholders.

The NYU Board of Trustees is not alone in this stance. The Association of Governing Boards, the leading organization representing and advising boards of trustees, recommends against have a student on the board and nearly 80 percent of private research universities in the U.S. follow that advice and do not have student representatives on their boards.

Even though the board does not agree with the appointment of a student to the board, it does value student input. To that end, The Board meets annually with the leadership of the Student Senators Council and Chairman Bill Berkley periodically convenes students in informal meetings — as he did last semester — precisely to elicit student views and concerns.

There are specific examples within the last year that show the Board’s listening to student concerns and taking action. The Board moved to offer student workers a $15/hour minimum wage following a compelling argument that aligned with the University’s affordability priority. Additionally, when the harmful impact of the checkbox on the CommonApp was first raised by student organizations, the Board listened and considered multiple points of view, including student safety. The Board encouraged the CommonApp to conduct research on the value of the criminal history question, and ultimately, supported a move for NYU to change its position on how it would view an applicant’s past criminal history, ignoring the CommonApp checkbox in favor of a narrower question on violent crime.

In both cases, students voiced their support for the issues. The Board considered their positions and enacted change.