Support the Student Committee for the Liberation of Legs
Feb 23rd, 2009 by Take Back NYU!
Friends,
As I’m sure you’re aware, about eighty students began occupying the Marketplace in the Kimmel Center on Wednesday night. We intended to stay until the administration negotiated with us regarding our list of demands focusing on democracy, transparency, accountability, and human rights. The administration repeatedly refused to negotiate. On Thursday night, a rally outside the building drew as many as a thousand supporters, who took to the street in front of Kimmel, dancing and singing and chanting. Around noon the next day, administrators drew some of us out of the space under the guise of negotiation, and told those individuals they were suspended. Administrators and guards then stormed the room and served the NYU students with suspension letters. Eighteen students of us were suspended.
Wanna help out?
- COME OUT! Come to our rally/press conference Tuesday at 7pm, south side of Washington Square Park. We’ll talk about what happened at out administrative meetings and a whole bunch of other stuff.
- MONEY! We have very friendly lawyers who have offered to help out temporarily. While they’re okay with spending tons of time this weekend and over the next two days helping out with initial meetings, it would be really good if we could throw them some funds. Their work is really valuable and I think it’s pretty necessary to help them out with some funds if we can.
Can you organize a pay-for-a-plate dinner, a benefit show, a keg party, a dance-off, a bake sale, or some t-shirt-/button- making and selling? Are you totally loaded and looking to redistribute some wealth? (I say that jokingly). Get in touch if you can - you don’t have to be ready to do something big, but if you know a band, can make really good vegan brownies (haha), or are a talented screen-printer, we’d love to know. - HANDS! There is going to be a lot of grunt work involved for the legal battle - things as tiny as finding a list of deans’ contact info, and as big as finding precedents to these types of disciplinary proceedings. If you’d be interested in helping out with this, please email Banu via beet AT riseup DOT net. Let me know what you are comfortable doing - research, compiling, telling Gideon that no, he can’t talk about unicorns or dryads in an email to JSex, proofreading legalese, and so on.
- THIS FIGHT ISN’T OVER! We might be suspended for the moment, but NYU’s actions have made even more clear the necessity for democracy, transparency, accountability, and respect for human rights. Have ideas? Want to be involved? Get in touch.
Love and rage,
Take Back NYU!
takebacknyu AT gmail DOT com
[...] 18 NYU students have been suspended following the occupation which ended on Thursday. Please check their site to see how you can help them. [...]
Did you guys get any of our demands?
It’s funny that people like you can give our school such a bad name, breaking the law means you deal with the out come not what you think it should be.
I fully support the administration of my school in dealing with people like you & hope that you go as soon as possible.
If you guys want NYU’s administration to take you seriously, it’s probably unwise to mock our President’s dead wife.
Perhaps a rally strictly dedicated to the cause of transparency would be a better political move than a rally about the students involved. The issues should be the focus, in order to effectively dispel the criticisms of self-importance levelled against TBNYU
focus on the issues! mature and thoughtful behavior is key as well. be smart!
A thousand people on Thursday night? Just because you pull numbers out of your ass doesn’t make it so. Have a source referencing that number of people?
NYU Community — I speak as a doctoral student who has questioned many of TB-NYU’s tactics, including the substance of many of their demands. However, I believe that you go to war with the army you have, not an army that you might want or wish to have at a later time–to paraphrase Rumsfeld’s poorly-conceived, but practical-minded philosophy.
The Kimmel students put their positions at NYU on the line. They undertook this protest fully aware of the potential costs of nonviolent disobedience. They took these risks with eyes wide open, cognizant of the life-changing consequences that could result of being exiled from the privileged position as an undergraduate at one of America’s most highly-regarded institutions of higher learning. Agree or disagree, we as fellow students and scholars must admit that such action does not result without a solid basis of belief and conviction. While any student gathering is prone to excess, this was not posturing or “Playing Che” as one poster has said.
Conversely, the administration of NYU demonstrated itself to be an institution with more security measures and disciplinary policies in place than means for students’ voices to be heard. Even the faculty senate, and T-A groups are marginalized by the procedures that NYU’s administration has in place. The fundamental question we have to answer is: ***Who is NYU?***
The Kimmel students had few choices for effective channels of communication with the administration. Their questioning of the administration was productive, smart, and too important to abandon. They have given the entire community the resources to re-engage the administration on new grounds. We should all take up this task, if we believe that there is anything that needs changing about our community. We must re-work, change, adapt, and add our own voices. I disagree with much of the current demands, but this is a vitally important debate to have. We do not need to embrace the individuals who shut down Kimmel–or their demands about Palestinian schools–in order to recognize that NYU needs more debate, not less.
Others have argued that there is no place for transparency or participation in private institutions (Washhington Sq. Times). I veheemently disagree. I propose that we Teaching Assistants pose this conception of the private universities in sections this week.
This is admittedly a political conversation. However, it is not irrelevant to any discipline within our institution. Rather, it addresses the fundamental questions about the insitution in which our disciplines are advanced.
My questions to my students:
1) What is the difference between public and private schools in America? <>
2) Do local property tax exemption and government subsidy make private universities fundamentally different from private businesses. (Someone with a background in finance law might have a better idea of the tax complexities and responsibilities — I would love to know, Sternies).
3) What are the appropriate roles of students in private colleges? Consumers? Scholars? Social activists? What is owed to a student once he is accepted into a “Community of Learning” like NYU?
4) What is the social position of students in America and in the world? Are there responsibilities that come with the privilege of a heavily-subsidized education (through tax dollars and through endowment)?
5) How should students engage their worlds? How do you answer the derisive charge to “Get a Job!”
6) What does “Get a job” mean? Who has perspective on the “real world,” and who claims that position, and with what social and political effect?
These are just some suggestions off the top of my head. I’d love it TBNYU would put together a WIKI or comment section for TA brainstorming on how we might discuss these issues in the protected and non-coercive environment of our classrooms.
POST SCRIPT!
1) I think you can safely delete comments by someone who calls himself “DIEHIPPIE,” as being out of line, and not appropriate to reasoned respectful dialogue. (Perhaps even as legally ambiguous as a threat).
2) About numbers: don’t just ask these guys to cite their numbers: you cite some yourself if you have a more authoritative, more objective source. These are simple first-year undergrad questions of intellectual honesty. That is what separates critique from snark. Aren’t you guys the “best and the brightest?” Come on. Up your game.
I love the irony that the very people enforcing disciplinary action lived in a time of real social unrest; namely, the 60’s. They must have been chuckling at your pathetic “civil disobedience”
Oh yeah, their protests were so much more real, man. They really changed stuff, dude, not like you guys.
Stop glorifying history, ya jerk. These amazing 60s radicals-turned-administrators faced more than one setback before their victories. Using this to build momentum and learn from our mistakes are the only way to progress.
Around the world, there is always “real social unrest.” We, like our historical counterparts, are bringing it home, bringing the effects home.
Post # 21
For the win
Don’t listen to these assholes leaving negative comments. Their points are invalid. Your occupation was commendable and, in some sense, a success.
Comment #24 is a member of TBNYU! deluding himself that he is actually an asset to the student body.
In this thread:
People in chairs being angry that other people got out of them.
Imagine this:
Imagine if everyone you knew was drugged into believing that it is possible to “do the right thing” while they are being complicit with and unquestioning of another group of people who has told them that “we can hurt you, so you should do what we say.” These people then, in the name of ideals that they have perverted (like freedom), proceed to systematically enslave everyone to a value system represented by what?
By small green pieces of paper.
Then some people wake up, realize the illegtimacy of both their authority and their way of quantifying human worth, and your heart breaks when you realize what you and your loved ones have been born into.
Even worse, those who are still drugged will see your action, and only criticize and hate from their computer screens. This is what is happening right now.
STOP BITCHING, DO SOMETHING. If you don’t like how the few who DID get up did it, then get the fuck up and do your own thing. Everyone has a stake in changing how things work here, both in NYU and the world.
Nice, I see you have stooped to deleting posts you disagree with, despite their well stated points. So much for freedom of speech, huh, guys?
If you guys can’t afford rising tuition, go to a public college like the rest of the country. I know it would be rather proletariat, almost as proletariat as the working class security guards and police officers you criticized and cussed out.
This is has to be a joke, right?
Please leave and never come back, thank you.
the revolution will be orchestrated via gmail!
LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!!!!!!
GREAT JOB
My comment was deleted because of the moniker Ive been using on wordpress from way before TBNYU? Alright, I guess? What did I say that was offensive or threatening? Bravo on the transparency once again. I merely asked for you to respond to the criticism that has been raised in the comments, but I guess this PhD with too much time on his hands wrote a practice dissertation for you. Anyways, I don’t support you, I hope you get what you deserve for your actions and finally, I hope you stand by the same standards that you were trying to “fight for” and keep these comments as transparent as possible.
Respectfully,
DIEHIPPIE
[...] the affectation of seriousness, the whole occupation ultimately felt like a joke. From wild exaggerations about crowd size to topless girls to chants like “This is what democracy looks like!” [...]
1000 PEOPLE????? I WAS THERE THURSDAY NIGHT. NOT ONLY SHOULD YOU GUYS BE EXPELLED, YOU SHOULD BE THROWN IN MENTAL INSTITUTIONS FOR YOUR PATHOLOGICAL LIES.
Thank you for the video and the web site. I haven’t laughed that hard since the “Anarcho Communist Syndicate” yelled “‘Elp! ‘Elp! I’m bein’ oppressed!” to King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I understand if you want to retract your comment about the President and his wife, and my comment chastising you for it, but you should at least change the title of the committee as well.
Awesome. That means there’s like 18 open spots in the dorms right?
After trying to figure out what the hell this Committee’s name was, this “PhD with too much time on his hands” has to agree with Guest #24 that you should change the name — and publicly do so. John Sexton is a person I happen to have some problems with, but also respect. You do not gain by calling him J-Sex, although it is funny. You lose a lot of goodwill by calling your committee Legs, and by presuming to comment on his emotional or private life, which is not at all funny.
I saw the whole “Legs” thing before you took it down, as well. For your information, John Sexton named his dog Legs not because he called his wife Legs, but because those were her initials.