Sarah Shears wrote this article for The Arch webjournal, thearchjournal.com:
A Proletariat of Undergraduates
Taking shots at the students behind the great NYU cafeteria occupation of 2009 is about as fair a sport as fishing with hand grenades, and the usual name-callers have already called them all of the usual names. These young radicals embody everything Bill O'Reilly imagines the sixties to have been, from their incoherent list of demands beginning with amnesty for themselves to pleas for vegan food—not provided by companies that use prison labor—to all-night Hegel study sessions. Even a belated note of support from Noam Chomsky himself.
With the hope of uncovering something deeper, we interviewed three of the press contacts listed on Take Back NYU's website. Colin Dillon, a 2008 alumn, told us, "I think the way people are framing it —'How can you go to a 50k-a-year school and complain'—you can tell how they're going to react." The group he says, has been working for the past two years, with little success, to pressure the administration on the school's affordability.
But it's not clear how else this can be framed.
To recap: The occupation began last Wednesday when a group of students—many of them TBNYU members, and not all of them from NYU—gathered in a cafeteria at the Kimmel center on Washington Square South and barricaded themselves in the building. While the administration waited them out, the students issued a set of ambitious and wide-ranging demands, beginning with amnesty for all involved and moving on to a seat on the University's board and scholarships for 13 Palestinian students. They also appealed for the "human right" (their phrase) to leave the barricades they'd erected, and to use bathrooms.
Much of the best reporting on the occupation came from Charlie Eisenhood of the impressive student website NYU Local, who filed dispatches while embedded in the cafeteria.
Outside, supporters and opponents of the occupation competed for attention but were united by their common acknowledgment that laying the shtick on heavy was the best response to the situation. Dissenting students held signs saying things like "YOU SUCK", and "PROTESTING-you're doing it wrong." Two female supporters displayed solidarity by standing outside topless with signs vowing "Exposure until Disclosure"—a display that inspired a professor at another New York university to crack, "at least something good came out of all this."
After a two-day standoff, the occupation ended riotously but without much violence when the authority figures—after the expiration of a deadline to leave or be punished—pushed the piled-up chairs and tables out of the way. The end of the siege was recorded In this damning video taken by a young, non-NYU, student who had been part of the occupation and somehow thought it was a good idea to share his record of it with the world.
Do yourself a favor and watch the video in full—it’s the “This is Spinal Tap” of campus radicalism and a more powerful indictment of TBNYU than anything their detractors could hope to produce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q6KAg6qEGYThe security guards and administrators wait patiently as the students stall and curse at the university staff. As a staff member asks the students for identification, the man filming raves turretically about the need for "consensus", and "Democratic process". The camera then turns to a young woman—keffiyah about her neck and arms flailing in the air—screaming "brutality! brutality!" As security guards gingerly try to remove her from the balcony she'd been on she yells "Don't fucking touch me" and "He touched me."
In the background a white, dreadlocked student putters about with a skateboard as various refrains are heard: "scumbag fucks, that's what you are" and "dirty fucking rats." The cameraman implores his fellow protesters to be civil: "we need to look at the situation, the hierarchy here, the power relationship".
That relationship is established by a middle-aged security guard with a paunch and an eastern European accent who'd been patiently waiting in the background: "Son, there's no co-cooperation. You just, you guys need to leave."
The cameraman replies, "We need to democratically decide on that... in a consensus area." He's granted 10 minutes in said "consensus area," and when the security guards following him decline his request to leave, he asks them to cover their ears and pretend they're wearing earmuffs. He adds, "This is all on camera, so if there's brutality it'll be, uh, it'll be filmed."
You get the feeling the consensus auteur feels some remorse over a lost opportunity when the students are peacefully escorted from the cafeteria he'd deemed their "safe space."
In our exchange, Mr. Dillon was convincing when he talked about why there should be protest over the high cost of NYU, but not when he tried to justify the “direct action" and the conduct of the protesters. He said the administration had been dodging the group for two years, but declined to answer on the record if TBNYU saw the occupation as a sensible means to achieve redress.
"I have not been a part of the research, I have mostly been involved with the organizing of events," said Emily Stainkamp, another TBNYU press contact, responding to a question about whether her organization reviewed public records such as NYU's IRS 990 form, the reporting form for nonprofits, before they occupied the Kimmel center.
Perhaps before getting the university to ship surplus supplies to Gazan students or reforming NYU's powerful bureaucracy, TBNYU might want to brief their press contacts on their core issues.
What is it with these kids, we wondered. Maybe their education is to blame.
The Wednesday after the liberation of the cafeteria, an article ran in the New York Times questioning the value of studying the humanities in a period of economic distress, and expressing concern the field would become the redoubt of the wealthy.
It's a cynical view, but one borne out by a petition posted on NYU's Faculty Democracy website, and reposted on the TBNYU site, signed by almost two hundred NYU professors, most of them in the Humanities:
“Allegations of excessive use of force against the protesters should be investigated promptly by an independent university committee. We view the Kimmel occupation as symptomatic of a deeper malady afflicting NYU: a lack of educational community. In such a community, students would not find it necessary to take over buildings to make their voices heard and their ideas respected.”
Huh? It's a thoughtful petition, just one responding to some parallel-world protest. It's clear the students have been paying attention to their professor's double-talk. Consider their decision, “in the interest of tactical flexibility” to reverse their original position against property destruction. "Though we realize that this choice to revise our original policy may undermine ideological consistency of this action, we feel that reacting to the changing situation of the occupation is more important than adhering to any dogma, even our own."
It's hard to see how students breaking into a private space with a laundry list of incongruous demands, and then holding a dance party—really!—is an honest attempt to create an "educational community." Perhaps we haven't been well enough educated.
On the phone, Stainkamp said, "I'm kind of depressed to see the media coverage of us, but extremely pleased to see all the support." Asked if she'd encountered any professors hostile to her political views, she said, "I am mostly involved with radical professors with radical views that are in support of us."
When we asked Dillon, who's now working as a tenant organizer and otherwise came across as the most articulate of the bunch, what went wrong with the brave rebel's reception, he said:
"I think that there' s strong Zionist presence at NYU and in the U.S. and the Gaza demands set many people who feel passionately about Israel against us."
Clearly, that was the problem.
By Sarah Shears
Harry Siegel contributed to this report.
Naturally I don't condone violence and frivolity in my politics. But...that corner of my heart that sinks into my stomach when it thinks of my parents paying $50,000 a year responded in this way:
"I feel compelled to throw in my two cents here, as I'm currently enrolled at NYU. I was not involved in these protests, merely a spectator, and I've been highly entertained by this whole media circus.
And it was a circus. I myself am a senior studying politics, and I think these students were tactless and deluded.
Of course they come across as arrogant, used force when it was entirely unwarranted (a security guard was injured when a group of students raided the building from the outside), and certainly the list of "demands" is laughable. As for trying to recreate the 1960's, sure, there were probably plenty of Tisch film students in that crowd who worship Godard and wanted to put on a show.
But to say that these students are all trust fund babies is unfair. It's easy to say that, to write off these kids as spoiled hipsters who are infiltrating your east village haunts. I can say that in my experience, that's a huge part of going to school in this city. It's annoying, no doubt. There are still plenty of hard-working students here, whose parents simply wanted them to go to the best school they could get into. Maybe that's trite and misinformed, the allure of a 'big name' private university. They're not necessarily rich. Maybe that makes them irresponsible. Higher education should be affordable, and schools like NYU shouldn't cater solely to the upper crust. It's a generational defect.
Budget disclosure is absolutely an issue that should be addressed, but unfortunately, the efforts of Take Back NYU have been completely derailed and mishandled. Projects like the new campus in Abu Dhabi, the increasing presence of NYU abroad, an almost nonexistent diversity policy...and my TA's still aren't being paid fairly? That's bullshit, and John Sexton is a crook.
I'm sad that this project was led largely by kids with Che Guevera tee-shirts and hammer and sickle tattoos, but what can you do. At 18, 19, 20 years old? Of course, they're going to do whatever Noam Chomsky tells them to do."
What do you think? Too defensive? I don't want to sound like a crybaby. I'm annoyed that I published an unnecessary comma in the last sentence.
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