TBNYU!’s Updates on Last Week’s Events
Feb 24th, 2009 by Take Back NYU!
Your antidote to the latest admonishments sent via campus email:
NYU’s latest public statement by Provost David McLaughlin continues a series of personal attacks against student activists participating in the Take Back NYU! occupation, and signals an interest in exacting revenge against students pursuing democracy, accountability and the protection of human rights at our university. The statement reduces to mere rumor mongering and character attacks against the largest and most active student movement at NYU. NYU’s Administration owes it to its students and the campus community to stop drawing out conflict by issuing threats and half-truths to the public.
NYU’s ‘thoughtful and measured’ response to the occupation was characterized by a multi-day refusal to meet face-to-face with students, and an insistence on discussions without any negotiation about student demands. Despite claiming to support a ‘robust campus discussion,’ about democracy, accountability and human rights, over two years of organizing the bulk of Take Back NYU!’s communication with NYU has involved only the disciplinary threats made by NYU over the past few days. These include suspensions and threats of expulsion and eviction from campus housing.
To clarify several points made by Provost David McLaughlin:
- NYU insisted on discussion without negotiation – Provost McLaughlin knows that the only offers made were for discussions taking place after the occupation, and his claim that TBNYU! rejected negotiations is nothing more than a character attack. TBNYU! remains open to good-faith negotiations about the issues raised during the occupation.
- Students clearly do not have the power to shut down the Kimmel Center, and Take Back NYU! tried to maintain open access throughout the occupation. At its own discretion, NYU chose to close the Kimmel Center and the Commuter Lounge out of fear that more students would join the occupation.
- Take Back NYU! maintains its commitment to non-violence. We believe that the visual, verbal and physical evidence from the occupation soundly refutes NYU’s overstated claims about injuries sustained during the protest. We had no knowledge of guards being injured from passive resistance or otherwise until informed by friends downstairs and outside.
Stop convincing yourself that what you did was democracy and stop ignoring your blame. You need to step it up, and apologize for the poorly executed protest you influenced. Maybe then I will support your cause. Maybe if you issue an official apology statement (in person preferably) to the injured officer (regardless of whose fault it is, your fellow NYU students (for embarrassing us), the NYPD (obvious reasons), and staff… then you may have a chance to redeem yourself. It won’t make you look weak.
Couple of other notes:
1. NYU shut off electricity in Kimmel. They saved money. Shouldn’t that make you happy?
2. If the school offers you food while you’re on strike, don’t refuse it because it’s not vegan. Vegan costs more money. Beggars shouldn’t be choosers on strike.
A well-planned protest would have blockaded one of the dorms. There would be no charge with which they could suspend you.
Nick, it’s clear your criticisms simply give you an excuse to stay at home and obey.
Vegan costs money because corporations would rather produce shitty food at low cost. In other words, shut the fuck up.
To Antifa:
Nice ad-hominem against someone who dares disagree with you. Being critical, as well as advocating an alternative course of action, isn’t necessarily indicative of a “stay at home and obey” mentality. Rather, it’s the personification of what you claim to advocate- democratic, grassroots involvement of students. Every “movement” has its critics, and by not listening to yours, you’re going to doom yourself to irrelevancy.
TBNYU accuses the administration of misinformation. You’re equally culpable of that. You didn’t have the mass student support you claimed. You argued that you had a right to the space, after committing what’s clearly criminal trespass. You seized private property (no, just because you pay tuition doesn’t mean you ‘pay their salaries’ or you own Kimmel’s space) and then expected the university to rush with their hats in hand.
Negotiation implies that each party has something the other wants, and is willing to concede something to get it. You have nothing the university could want: indeed, it’s a pretty big concession in and of itself that the students involved are only facing suspension and loss of university housing instead of a litany of felony charges (namely, conspiracy, battery, criminal trespass, burglary, etc.) By resorting to direct action FIRST, you’ve undermined your legitimate demands by completing removing any standpoint from which to negotiate. Over the course of two days, you’ve destroyed your credibility.
My advice? Next time, engage in REAL grassroots organizing. Talk to students, talk to your professors, talk to your department heads. You’d be surprised at the commonality of interests that many people in this university have, and then, you’d have the kind of support and platform from which to negotiate from.
If this comment is deemed fit for approval by the TBNYU cadre, I’m sure you’ll accuse me of being some sort of Zionist, fascist, or someone who just wants to mindlessly consume and live in fear of the outside world. I’m not. I’m someone who’s been on both sides of the fence- I’ve participated in direct action and confrontational protest, and I’ve also negotiated with university staffers both here and elsewhere to achieve goals. Guess which one has a tendency to work out better in the long run, and guess which one tends to get you nothing but ill will and undercut what would otherwise be legitimate queries.
Better luck next time.
You guys are beyond cringe-worthy. I’m suddenly a little embarrassed to be an NYU grad.
To suboptimal:
Within the power dynamic of “us” vs. “them” (not to create any strict dichotomy, as one of “them” can easily become one of “us”), “they” have the upper hand on all counts. Therefore, Nick’s negative criticism of something that barely has any foothold but lots of potential is very stupid and indicative not of democracy, but of psychological silencing by the system that currently dominates.
Of course movements are capable of misinformation. That’s not the worst of our problems, however. The worst problem is the oxymoronic liberal like yourself, who revels in the pretentious legitimization of their tactics as a means to discredit those who are willing to risk their privilege, even their lives, for social change.
You’re not a fascist, You’re worse: a liberal. You really think you can play by their rules and win, and all the while you take all measures, even self-defeating ones, to discredit activists who don’t have the time for pandering to those who wouldn’t take liberation unless it can be delivered to their door.
I agree TBNYU made mistakes. I also agree that we need both types of protest: direct action and non-confrontational negotiation. You, however, seem to think you have a moral high ground in making meaningless accusations of ad-hominem attacks.
In a democracy, social change is passed by majority rule.
The majority of the student body at NYU does not support the cause.
TBNYU lost it’s chance at negotiation the moment its occupation ran over Thursday night. They lost our ears the moment they barricaded the doors.
Worse than a fascist?! A LIBERAL, of all things!? Heavens! And here I sit, nearly four months after voting for Obama, anxiously twirling my MoveOn.org keychain and feverishly worrying why things haven’t magically fixed themselves yet.
Seriously though, if you want to get in my face about my supposed self-righteousness, then you’d better get your own house in order first. My “pretentious legitimization” of “my” tactics is based on personal experience having been involved in direct action AND negotiation, as well as seeing how either method has fared in other cases. I readily concede that negotiation has its limits, but in a situation like this, direct action is even more limited. “Diversity of tactics” seems to be the one post-left word of the day you haven’t thrown at me yet.
Furthermore, I’ll never criticize someone who puts their life on the line for a cause, but let’s be honest about something: TBNYU didn’t risk their lives, or their freedom, or their privilege in any real capacity. With only one real exception (the arrest) most everyone else is getting off with suspension and maybe some non-judicial sanctions. Considering that the first demand was for amnesty and the amount of (now curiously deleted) posts by TBNYU demanding no punishment at all, it’s clear that those who took part in this action weren’t willing to shoulder the burden of potential negative consequences. How’s that for risking anything?
If you want to call me out on acting like I have the moral high ground in criticizing TBNYU or by working with and through others you’re in opposition to, then you’d do well to re-examine the amount of pretentiousness and self-righteousness you’re throwing around yourself. No real change can be achieved in a vacuum. Sometimes, you have to play nice with others even when you don’t like them very much.
Because of the heroic and morally justified actions of the TNYU student activists, NYU students are now more respected within the United States and around the globe than are Columbia University’s more politically passive and apathetic students. But apparently NYU Provost McLaughlin thinks he’s still living in the 1950s era of Joe McCarthy (although NYU’s board of trustees apparently paid Provost McLaughlin an annual salary of over $499,000 in 2007).
Given the connection between NYU Trustee Lester Pollack and NYU College of Business & Public Administration Dean Emeritus and Professor of Economics Abraham Gitlow and the Bank Leumi USA board of directors (on whose board sits both Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinovich and the executive vice-chairman of the Conference of President of Major Jewish Organizations pro-Israeli War Machine lobbying organization), it’s morally legitimate for NYU students to act on NYU’s campus in solidarity with the victims of Israeli militarism in Gaza.
Antifa, I think you unintentionally symbolize exactly what is so ineffective about the current portrait that TBNYU has painted of itself.
I’m an alumnus and I don’t live in the area. A friend still in Manhattan sent me a link to some blogs following the event, so the only picture I have of this organization is from what I read from afar, and really only what has transpired since last week. I’m sure there are many more people just like me. We have no idea who you are, where you came from, no matter how extensive your two year letter-writing campaign was, we hadn’t the slightest idea you existed. You can’t fault us, we’re just people going about our lives, all of us with our own causes, our own passions, our own foibles.
But your own actions drew our attention. And this is what we saw: an hypocritical, unfocused, nightmarish parody of civil disobedience.
Now, I find out that students are protesting at NYU, I go to check what about. Having seen my fair share of protesters during my time at the school, I knew it could be any plethora of things, I just didn’t realize it would be EVERYthing.
I looked at your demands and saw a lot of things that had come up while I attended the school, pretty much all of which I agreed with. But there were some bizarre things that I questioned. Like many others I disagreed with the opening of Bobst to the public. I still have no idea why you would think that’s a good idea, or why you would put it on the same level as aid to Palestinians. Maybe you have a fantastic reason behind it, but I didn’t see an explanation of it on the page where these demands were posted.
I noticed the solidarity on display by the feminist ninjas, but at the same time I noticed that you specifically singled out the Islamic University of Gaza as a school that should be aided by tuition dollars and donated funds. Being that it’s a school that teaches exclusively shariah law, that seems at odds with feminist beliefs, to say the least. What’s with this contradiction? More importantly, with students in areas all over the world learning in substandard conditions, why single out this school, as it could obviously become polarizing to your detriment? I still don’t know the official TBNYU answer for this (although Alex Lortoro stated that it was a “strategic” move here: http://nattyadams.blogspot.com/2009/02/this-is-what-democracy-looks-like-shit.html).
And most glaring was the first demand: amnesty for those involved in the protest. Why was this placed above demands such as financial transparency, something that seemed to be one of your original unifying goals? After all, I can’t remember any stories of other famous struggles where the protesters exclaimed, “I really want racial equality, but number 1, please don’t get me in trouble.” Why was this demand first and foremost, and why was it included? I still don’t know.
Your actions were no less muddled. You set a laudable dedication to abstain from violence and property damage. Then, you break the door. Was this necessary? Not seemingly, as you had a live cast, phones, and even an embedded blogger with which to contact the outside world. Was the University acting tyrannically by locking you out? No, understandably when you have students (and non-students) in a university building with no university staff, you don’t want to allow a situation where someone gets a little too excited while reading off the performance poetry that they Googled and falls off a balcony to form. Then, in response to breaking one of their original tenets, TBNYU basically says that they reserve the right to change their positions at any time should they feel the need. Where is the principle behind this principled action? Where is the discipline? In what situations are you willing to renege on any of your goals? I have no idea.
The only picture most of the outside world got of this came from three sources: NYULocal, WSN, and TBNYU’s own site. I also have friends still in the school who let me know what they witnessed. NYULocal, most importantly, was the only third party media present, and he was seemingly shut out of documenting the process 99% of the time. Why was a group so bent on the administration’s transparency so lacking in that transparency itself? Meanwhile, TBNYU continually painted a picture that contradicted all other sources: noting such huge support in WSP when friends at the park mentioned the huge numbers of counter-protesters (indeed, they could even be heard in TBNYU’s live feed), mentioning that one of your own had been thrown to the ground by NYU guards (which Alex Lortoro’s video shows no evidence of), and various other misrepresentations of fact. What was the reasoning behind all of this? Those of us not involved in your group have absolutely no idea, and draw pretty understandable conclusions about you because of them.
And finally, we come to you, Antifa, and most of the other supporters who have been representing you online. The entirety of the response is “us and them.” Any post that does not praise or state complete solidarity with the group is the enemy, their opinions immediately disregarded as impure. Obviously anyone who disagrees with TBNYU and/or the manner in which they conduct themselves must just be some “corporate water”-swilling suit. You go one step further and state that liberals are worse than fascists. You realize that between a statement like that and the complete disregard for any kind of principle you seem to show, you do nothing but remind us of a certain former white house dweller. “You’re completely with us, or you’re a fascist. Or worse… a LIBERAL.” You do realize that NYU students, with their abundantly liberal population, don’t WANT to side with the school. College students don’t want to side with “the man” in these situations, yet a large amount of the community was against this action. And it’s not the university’s machinations that have caused this, and it’s not because those people who disagree with you are mindless zombies of the corporatocracy… It’s because you failed to reach them.
In my view, these are examples of the reasons why TBNYU has completely failed here: there was no education and there is seemingly very little real inclusion. How can you possibly hope to have anyone take you seriously if they have no idea what you stand for? If the only face you give to the public is a sneering, self-righteous, and often ill-informed (again, the live feed really showed some people quite ignorant of certain things, such as the fact that freedom to assemble doesn’t give them free reign to hold themselves up on private property), bunch of knee-jerk students just looking to have fun and play dress-up-revolution, how can you possibly hope to draw real support to your cause?
In historic struggles, such as the one Dr. King undertook, do you think he so quickly insulted those who weren’t one hundred percent behind him? Do you think the movement was formed from the get-go of people completely, 100% for equal rights? Of course not. Minds have to be changed. But instead, to you, everyone is the enemy. I see no way for you to enact any change with these methods. I think many of those who have rudely and not so rudely spoken against you probably share that sentiment, are possibly hostile for two understandable reasons:
1) As NYU students, you reflect on the entire community, and given the picture that most of us have of you, we believe you reflect poorly. It is up to you, if you wish to be successful, to change that.
2) The perception others have of you is that your actions which they view negatively have also negatively impacted every one of the causes you say you believe in. So even those that DO agree with some, if not all, of your points, are wary of connecting with you to achieve these aims. Again, if you wish to be successful, it is up to you to change that.
These opinions may or may not make me some corporate fat-cat status quo-loving, bigot/misogynist/tyrant/fascist/LIBERAL/man-pig, but it’s my opinion and I am assuming one that is shared by a good portion of the NYU community. Maybe we’re wrong about you, but again, it’s up to Take Back NYU to change that.
So by saying the majority of students aren’t for the cause… you’re saying that students are against more democracy, accountability, and transparency in higher education? That makes a lot of sense. I think people are just being critical of these activists because the idea of resistance frightens them and might impede on their time with their blackberries, laptops, and shopping bags?
@ Antifa: I don’t think your statement that liberals are worse than fascists is merely a stupid slip of the tongue. I think it more broadly represents the true nature of your beliefs, as well of many of the NYU “occupiers.” The extreme right (National Socialists or Nazis) meets very well with the neo-Marxist philosophy you guys ascribe to. Mainly, democracy, individual liberty, human rights, anti-violence - these are all things liberals (in the classic and even modern sense) represent and that far-leftists of your ilk fight against in the hopes of creating a utopian system that inevitably ends in the consolidation of power in the most brutal and oppressive of hands (the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin, Cuba under Fidel, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot). I would much rather be an “armchair” liberal than the follower of a failed Marxist ideology that has left so many broken individuals and institutions in its wake.
It’s all really a shame though. Transparency and accountability have now inextricably become entwined with Marxism, radicalism, and an ugly blend of anti-Semitism (interesting that you focus on Israel as the only oppressor and “apartheid state” - ever seriously examine the rights of minorities in most Muslim countries?). You have done the entire NYU community a deep disservice.
Why didn’t you focus on a clear, concise message that you had standing to protest upon? Protesting NYU’s involvement with the student loan company kickbacks that were recently investigated by the NY Attorney General, for example, would have been much more effective. The media would have taken you much more seriously, and wouldn’t have mocked you. Protesting against Israel and every other pet project issue spouted by your highly paid liberal professors painted you as being juvenile. You can’t fight every battle, or barricade yourself into a building for every cause. You are not Jesus Christ, or the new Messiah.
mark obviously if you read the comments under the “occupation” tab on this website you’ll see that people not just being critical because the “idea of resistance frightens them.” we are being critical because we disagreed with their demands, we disagreed with how it was executed, we disagreed with the property destruction, violence and lies that they committed, and we disagreed with the self-congratulatory attitude and the unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions.
Mark, their list of demands wasn’t all about transparency, they had to throw in stuff about Gaza and making the library public, that’s when you start getting into things that weren’t exactly backed by the whole student body. Also, what suboptimal is saying is that there are better ways to accomplish their goals, more effective ways in fact, but this group isn’t interested in actually accomplishing their goals as much as garnering a lot of attention for themselves (no, not the good kind of attention, the kind that actually accomplishes something)
I am a student from the department of Theater Studies at th University of Patras, in Greece.
We want to thank you for your solidarity and we realy want to have a communication with your occupation.
Our site is : http://thusu.blogspot.com/
our mail is : syllogosthusu@gmail.com
I fully support the actions of the students of TBNYU!, and I hope the struggle continues.
With regards to some other comments made, I would advise all those who support TBNYU! not to feed the Internet trolls. They aren’t worth the effort.
Your group symbolizes what is wrong with so many people our age in America. When the protesters of the late 1960’s took over and held rallies at Columbia and NYU among other institutions, their cause was clear and supported by many. Change was an actuality. What TBNYU did last week made a complete mockery of that. I don’t think this group understands how LUCKY they are for the fact they go to NYU, its the hardest school in the country to get in. Most students in this country would KILL for the chance to go there, and you morons decide to stroll around topless, ask that you not be held accountable for your actions, and make sure you have vegan alternative meals. ITS A PROTEST! WHICH ONE OF YOU BRAINIACS REALLY THOUGHT A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY WOULD REALLY SIT THERE AND LISTEN TO YOUR TWO-BIT CAUSE WHEN YOUR FIRST DEMAND IS BATHROOM RIGHTS AND A WAIVER OF ACCOUNTABILITY? You should all be expelled, and any remaining tuition should go toward paying back the NYPD for the amount of time they had to waste on you. I feel sorry for your parents, the fact their hard earned dollars were wasted on sending you there and you show nothing for it. Go join PETA or some other meaningless cause.
Let’s face it, TBNYU “activists” though I like to refrain from using that rather misleading term are fighting for what they perceive as justice and democracy. Equally, I presume there are many fellow students who disagree with their views, approaches and tactics, which is and should be their prerogative.
Nevertheless, TBNYU’s campaigners (notice the change in term) are not in any way in my personal opinion asking for anything unreasonable. They want transparency, accountability and democracy, the core fundamentals of a fair and functional society.
We as members of the public desire the same from our governments so why on earth should we not expect it from our universities?
I am a student in the UK and though I have personally never been involved in anything remotely close to what the student at NYU have created, I admire their bravery but to a certain extend agree with Nick, in order to succeed sometimes you have to re-priorities your tactics and accept that in order to win the game you must learn to play the game.
However, Antifa is also to correct when pointing out that for change to occur, we must unite and this surely requires the support of all students?
I
just happened to come across this page after my lecturer sent me the link to a rather biased article.
I certainly agree with your views, but perhaps a more socially accepted method should have been tried first?
I am very sorry if I have offended anyone, and I am very open indeed to any corrections to any assumption I may have made.
Mark,
I think the definition of democracy implies a majority, rather than a enlightened minority defining what the majority should be thinking.
FIGHT CORPORATE WATER, DAMMIT!!!
…unless you’re thirsty
I’d like to learn more about the ideas and philosophies behind Take Back NYU!
What should I read? Whose classes should I take?
Right on Mark!! Er… maybe not “impede on their time with their blackberries, laptops and shopping bags”, because really I’d be surprised if the protesters didn’t enjoy the very same things. But. “A lot of people are just being critical of these ideas because the idea of resistance frightens them.” Right on, I’d say. What terrifies me the most is the very fact that “the majority of the student body at NYU does not support the cause”. I very much doubt that they, like suboptimal, have “personal experience having been involved in direct action AND negotiation, as well as seeing how either method has fared in other cases”, or for that matter even second-hand experience. There’s a cultural stigma against rebellion and questioning authority; I think that’s what’s really going on here.
… And you can’t say that it’s an authority we took willingly upon ourselves, either: we didn’t “opt in” to NYU’s system with our tuition dollars. Well, we opted in to NYU as opposed to one of several other prestigious colleges and universities, I suppose; but the cultural pressure to attend *some* prestigious college for people who can beg, borrow or steal to afford it is absolutely enormous — these ridiculous hoops we have to jump through to get our individuality respected in society, or, at least, no one *else* is coming forward with any alternative. Does that mean we’re just, out of pretension and all, trying to prove that we’re *better* than someone sleeping on the street or, that favorite scare tactic, “flippin’ burgers at McDonald’s”? Maybe for some people it does; but I don’t think it has to be that way. I’d say “higher education” really does have the potential to be a project to improve society at large, by generating the widest diversity possible of opinions and personalities to match up against whatever problems we face. In the current setup, everyone and their grandmother is pressuring us to attend one of these prestigious universities as the only way to get our name *out* there into society so that it can be respected. Even the students who fully *support* NYU’s non-transparency (who are they anyway??) wouldn’t just pay six figures to the place on a lark if they could get just the same experience-plus-accreditation elsewhere!
To Justin — yes, “in a democracy, social change is passed by majority rule.” But unfortunately, NYU isn’t a democracy — yet. People always have the tendency to side themselves with the existing power structure: the democratic process if it’s a democracy, the authorities if it’s an authoritarian system that doesn’t actually rule in their best interests. Spreading democracy doesn’t mean pretending that the situation you’re in is *already* a democracy and doing exactly what you’d do if it were. Just like, you know, you don’t court someone by waking up and one day deciding to act towards them as if you’re already married. Instead you perform what Take Back NYU did — a whole series of rituals that, to people on the outside, probably seem kind of loopy.
To suboptimal: when you say, “TBNYU didn’t risk their lives, or their freedom, or their privilege in any real capacity,” why is that a criticism? Are you saying that they should have *either* gone for negotiation from the get-go, *or* upped the stakes beyond all bounds once they *did* decide to protest, and either one would be fine with you but not the middle ground? It seems to me that Take Back NYU is just trying to ramp the stakes up gradually higher and higher, starting from the initial attempts at negotiation over the past two years whose continued rebuff by the administration just wasn’t seen fit to make the headline news; and maybe the *real* risk they’d undertake is yet to come; or, alternatively, the students could decide that any more risk is just, well, too risky for them. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable, given the immense cultural pressure I’ve seen pervading this whole society, for these students to be, paradoxically, *begging* to be readmitted to the very institution they’re rebelling against; and, likewise, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for a university to, by its own decision, choose to operate differently from a corporation just looking after its own self-interest, which I think is what you’re saying the supporters of the occupation just don’t *get* (”Negotiation implies that each party has something the other wants, and is willing to concede something to get it. You have nothing the university could want”). But regardless — if you want to come up with ways in which the students *can* risk their freedom or privilege in some real capacity, I’d be all for the brainstorm.
To Antifa: I think your points are definitely spot-on, especially “Nick’s negative criticism of something that barely has any foothold but lots of potential is very stupid and indicative not of democracy, but of psychological silencing by the system that currently dominates” — but saying “You’re not a fascist, You’re worse: a liberal” — that’s just far too confusing. Here’s what I think you mean: someone who’s clearly a fascist can have their points of view safely ignored and mocked; but someone who’s actually somewhat liberal hides their implicit support for systemic authority behind a humanitarian veneer and is therefore much more dangerous, yes? I feel like we should either stop using the word “liberal” altogether, or specifically define it, because the damn thing’s just got far too many meanings right now (leftist / libertarian / some combination of the two / privileged hypocrite from a socially progressive family who doesn’t walk the walk). When *progressives* start using the word “liberal” as a slur, something’s rotten at state.
As someone who is on the way left I was really disappointed with the occupation. You made a mockery of those who identity outside of the “liberal democratic” stereotype. The antics with the girls outside were as bad as those PETA commercials that use naked women for the sake of animals. And the chants of “this is what democracy looks like” were so odd and ill thought. In fact, that is not what democracy looks like. I’d say your chanting from the balcony was much more akin in image and style to a coup than a student occupation. The balcony was a funny choice given it made you guys look more like dictators rather than those representing the students
I’ve attended your events before but always left feeling like your group was just an attempt at “radical politics” in a self-satisfied way. You guys needed a group just so you could call yourself radicals. It seemed to be all about the identity, with the vegan food and the other buzz words you throw around. This event was also another attempt at proving you were radical. To be radical does not be mean you simply declare yourself one, say you are “getting at the root” of matters and then tie a bandanna around you neck. This occupation was sadly a spectacle both in actuality and in content of your demands.
I think you all should read Zizeck’s On Violence, and if you have, read it again in lieu of your protest.
But hey, that said, I don’t think any of those involved should be suspended or expelled.
Is it a bit too obvious a question to ask that, if you have heartburn with the way NYU does business, why don’t you just pull up stakes and go somewhere else?
How are those trust funds holding up?
Just imagining what was going through the heads of those security guards…
Lol.
I don’t have a problem with the action so much, just the message. You can learn from these mistakes though. You need to tie your message to public opinion…which you didn’t do…even loosely. The whole world HATES Wall Street, albiet for tanking their 401ks when they should have defined benefits in the first place. Start there and work your way up refining your message on corporate greed. Hell, you could have gotten parents out there with you on the pension issue. The gaza stuff, making the library public…all the other “throw in the kitchen sink” demands makes concensus building impossible because you’ll end up on the wrong side of someone’s pet issue. Stay broad, keep a sound bite issue and keep coming around to it in your talking points and all your lit. The negotiation team can work on details, that’s why you have them. Go ahead, bring up Gaza and get some transparency concessions out of them if you can. And make sure your team doesn’t start leaking stuff out because they’ll cause division, stay with talking points even with your own people. The whole world doesn’t need to know about it on the list of demands. There is such a thing as too much democracy.
We the people in what is commonly called the ‘real world’, hereby occupy this comments thread, until our demands are met:
1. Get a life.
2. Grow up.
Sheesh, by what right do you claim to make these demands. Do I occupy your dorm rooms to make you do something I want?
You guys succeeded in making yourselves look foolish.
This flood of critical comments from the world at large should give you a clue as to how well your strategy works. In short, EPIC FAIL.
Remember, we’re not laughing with you, we’re laughing AT you.
Fact: you guys a bunch of wannabes. Point for heart though. Next time think things through. Do some research. Maybe read a book and get off the Gaza bandwagon. To be taken seriously you need to be able to understand all the issues. You guys are as obstinate as the entity you wish to open up. Learn to take constructive criticism instead of immediately getting defensive.
As someone mentioned above, many of us have never heard of TBNYU before this protest which means you guys never explored the channels of communication necessary for such an effort. You want to push for change but you have no idea what the voice of the people is. Show us some pie charts damnit. You think NYU will change it’s ways because 20 vegans decided to have a late night dance party in Kimmel? And flash some boobie? Get real guys. A joke is what you guys have made yourselves out to be. I find no shame in my inevitable embarrassment from association.
Worse than the epic failure of the event itself is your own failure to reflect. I hope you guys get off but honestly, you need the wakeup call because I don’t know what reality you guys live in. Stop perpetuating stereotypes. You can call me a troll but this is my opinion and its shared by a majority of the school. Wake up.
And what exactly does being vegan and Gaza have to do with budget transparency?
In summary: good intentions, laughable effort.
Honestly, if you guys are serious about this, if you guys actually care then you have a responsibility to be as effective as you can possibly be. I know its tough being attacked but thats life. Look at it constructively though because the points that people have brought up are completely valid yet your continual submissiveness of any sort of input that differs from your own perpetuates the hypocrisy that is TBNYU.
NYU is run undemocratically by a small group of trustees who represent external special corporate interests on NYU’s campus. Neither West Village and Lower East side community residents nor the majority of NYU workers and students ever democratic elected the members of NYU’s board of trustees. So, on democratic grounds, the TBNYU students who represented the class interests of the majority of neighborhood residents, NYU students and NYU workers when they demanded that tax-exempt NYU finally disclose to the people of New York City the names of the transnational corporations in which the NYU endowment is invested in were justified in engaging in non-violent direct action last week.
Instead of violating the due process rights of NYU students by suspending some of the participants in the TBNYU anti-war protest, why didn’t the NYU administration just agree to hold a binding referendum in which West Village and Lower East Side residents, NYU students and NYU workers could vote on whether NYU should continue to allowed to not disclose which corporations it invests, if the NYU administration is really in favor of participatory democracy?
What kind of democratic university doesn’t allow either community residents, students or university workers to elect the folks who sit on its governing board of trustees? And what kind of tax-exempt, “non-profit” institution still pays its president a salary of over $1.2 million per year during a period of U.S. economic depression?
@bobf
Could you cite examples of similar private institutions and how they approach things differently? How much does the president of Harvard or Columbia get paid? Do you even know? How much do you think the president of an elite university should be paid?
“You’re not a fascist, You’re worse: a liberal.”
This is the mindset of a fanatic and extremist. Wasn’t it Stalin who called liberals “social fascists”?
From UNITE HERE/SEIU’s university food service blog, Stir It Up (http://stiritupcampus.org/)
“…The uniting factor of the students’ list of demands [is] that students should have access to and have a say in the financial decisions made by the university that they attend. As a part of their demand for greater transparency, Take Back NYU demanded public release of university ‘contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services.’ This is a sentiment with which we wholeheartedly agree.”
When you have a protest, make sure all of your demands make some kind of social sense. Demanding support for students in the Gaza Strip in the same breath as demanding that the school changes over from Coke to Pepsi makes you sound moronic –but then again, you are college students who think you have the world all figured out and everyone else who has any authority is an idiot. Yeah, that does make you morons.
What broke the protest, the fact that you couldn’t get decent vegan food, or that the university cut off the electricity and you couldn’t recharge your iPods?
One of the weakest points of this protest was that the group’s demand for “amnesty for all parties involved”. Aren’t enlightened agents for social change supposed to have bigger balls than everyone else? That demand is basically asking, “Can our civil disobedience please actually be considered obedient so we don’t get in trouble?” The protesters in the 60’s got hosed down, shot, beaten, arrested and had dogs sicced on them. You guys cracked when they killed your Internet access and denied you a veggie burger. Bunch of ignorant hippie-wannabe pansies.
By the way, NYU is not a democracy. NYU is a private- PRIVATE- university, so it really doesn’t have to answer to your demands. Don’t like that? Then, as the US is a democracy, you’re free to go elsewhere with your precious tuition money.
Plato’s philosophy stated that democracies were the weakest and most undesireable form of government. This is probably because he was aware there were silly people in the world like the protesters of TBNYU who would muck things up for everyone else.
Since when are Universities democratic?
A few observations…
Far from convincing anyone of the validity of your cause you have succeeded quite thoroughly in making yourselves into laughingstocks…There are plenty of people both on the left and the right that are quite literally falling off their chairs in hysterical laughter. For a protest group you just earned the platinum P&I award for 2009 that is as the most Pathetic & Incompetent protest group of the year.
Let me also make the observation Universities are not a democracies they never have been, never will be. I’m afraid as a group of students you have quite literally earned an F in common sense.
As for your list of demands..
Your first demand quite literally & effectively cut the ground out of the rest of your demands. The transparency and openess demands are quite laudable but then the fist demand as well as the others quite literally sank the entire package before it even left the dock.
As for the Gaza related demands…why Gaza? I have all the sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people but their choice of leadership particularly in the case of Gaza with Hamas has proven over the years to be a classic example of sheer self destructive. I do suggest you take the ime to do some actual research rather than regurgitating as holy truth whatever propaganda you’ve read.
Wow… finally there is a good conversation going here!
I want to admit and declare: I am a Liberal. If TB-NYU wants to start a Liberal Affinity Group, I am happy to join. Some thoughts on the comments above, from an appreciative, rather than critical perspective:
1) A successful movement is a coalition movement.
***open the umbrella as wide as it will stretch. Do not alienate people who are naturally inclined to be your supporters. If you can live with liberals (and we all do!), then invite us in, and try to avoid calling us Nazis. We do mean well, and we are educable. We also tend to be practical and highly connected: useful attributes.***
2) I am a Liberal in part because you do not make friends going on about being a Maoist. (In Liberal circles I call myself a conservative; I don’t change my views).
****The point is to advance our specific aims, not to advance Marxism, or to rattle on about “late capitalism.” Make enough scruffy revolutionary friends that you can also make it with the uptight suits on the right too. (We liberals seem to piss both off though.. aesthetically, I think) We’re all NYU student after all… it’s not like we are facing each other across entrenched battle lines. Everyone should want to make this school a better place. You’d be surprised how much everyone wants a little change.
Rome wasn’t dismantled in a day. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t end racial discrimination; it persists; and senators, we are no Martin Luther Kings…. gradual, liberal change is not the end goal, but we have to contend with inertia, power, and time.****
3) “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
***Fellow Liberals, whether you like it or not, this bare-chested, door-busting, bunch is who started this conversation (and unlike the above poster, I think this was at a substantial risk: the grad students suspended have no salaries. Undergraduate students are taking a huge risk with their families, with their school, with their futures) However, it is not their war alone. This conversation, now in motion, has created space in which to talk. Anyone who has something to say should accept this as a gift, open their mouths, and TALK! We hope that the students are re-instated, because we are be grateful for their sacrifice. However, it is not OUR goal.
4) The Big Picture Is Not a Self Portrait
****What does democracy look like? It looks like a disappointment, inevitably. The Kimmel students may get suspended; we might lose them from our community– but they knew that when they took this action, and they were willing to risk. This movement born of their sacrifice should not morph into one to pressure for reinstatement at any cost. That would be a questionable victory. Instead, we Liberals should thank them for their sacrifices, but move on to press for substantive discussions to influence university procedure.****
5) Practice the Democracy You Preach
****Make procedures that allow all voices. Train in appreciative and open communication. Take criticism. Love thy classmate. Let us all talk as equals, regardless of our past participation or political labels. The point is to take this opportunity to advance, expand, and evangelize– not to advance the individual interests the small group that got the ball rolling. Put in the hands of students, democracy means taking this momentum wherever we want it to go. ****
6) Be tactical and tactful
****No one is going to want to love everyone; no one is going to want to include every voice, but if we are seen as spiteful and untrustworthy, we will lose everyone’s confidence. Most people base their politics on aesthetics and rhetoric, not substance. That is true of the left and the right. Let’s add some more facets that others find aesthetically and poetically appealing. It does not hurt the collective cause to have people like me in it.****
Take Back NYU!,
I wanted to congratulate you on the act of civil disobedience you recently orchestrated; I seriously hope that it becomes the model of other acts of civil disobedience, not just in the United States, but around the world. If more resistance groups organized and executed their movements the way your group did in the Kimmel Building, I have little doubt that the world would truly be a more peaceful place.
Best of luck in the future and with your studies as well.
also, have fun censoring my comments. democracy? freedom of speech? you’ll deny me the same rights you so hilariously were “denied.”
@NYU alum
Elected officials already select the board of trustees at many large state universities that receive public funds in the USA. And, at some U.S. universities, members of the board of trustees are elected by alumni. But to begin to democratize the decision-making process at private universities like NYU that receive public funds so that the people who are most affected by NYU’s institutional policies are allowed to govern NYU, the proposal for democratization of U.S. universities that former Village Voice writer James Ridgeway suggested in his book The Closed Corporation: American Universities In Crisis should finally be implemented. In Ridgeway’ss view:
“The principle that should govern higher education , and all education in America, surely is simple enough: Since educational institutions are generally regarded as serving a public function, and financed to a large extent by the general citizenry, they ought to be reponsible to the public…
“…No college or university whose members of its governing board are self-perpetuating should be eligible for public funding. Because of the present method of governing institutions of higher learning, there is an opportunity for a small group of men to use a university for their own ends. Since these institutions bear public responsibilities and receive much of their money from government they should be made responsible to the public and trustees should be elected–for terms of perhaps four to six years–by the students, alumni, faculty and other members of the immediate university community.
“Trustees should not be selected because their private business interests may be useful to the college, but rather because of their views toward education. One way to move in this direction would be to prohibit members of the board of trustees from transacting any business with the university…
“Meetings of the governing boards of a university should be public. ..Disclosure is one way to protect the public’s interests…
“…The federal government should require all universities to issue publicly each quarter a detailed financial report, including an investment portfolio, showing any and all changes in holdings of securities, real estate and other types of investments. Each year the trustees and officers of universities should be required to furnish additional public statements that show their business affiliations, stock and property holdings…
“In the case of the large city universities, it may well prove useful for the residents of the neighborhoods in which they exist to view these institutions for what they are, sort of de facto governments; and in exchange for suffering their presence, wring some concessions…It may make good sense for the residents of Hyde Park in Chicago or Morningside Heights in New York, to insist on electing the presidents, respectively, of the University of Chicago and Columbia…”
Harvard University’s president apparently gets paid less than NYU’s president, according to a recent NY Times article by Tamar Lewin which indicated that NYU President John Sexton was being paid $1,324,874 during the 2007-2008 academic year and Columbia University President was being paid $1,411,894. The Times article also noted that Senator Charles Grassley of the U.S. Senate Finance Commitee observed that “In these hard economic times, apparently belt-tightening is for families and students, not university presidents.”
The president of a “non-profit” tax-exempt university like NYU or Columbia should not now be making more than the recently-proposed $500,000 per year salary limits for the CEOs of the publicly-funded, bailed-out Wall Street big banks.
And even NYU students are legally entitled to their constitutional rights of due process and a day in court before they can just be “summarily suspended” or evicted from a dormitory by the NYU board of trustees’ administration which receives millions of dollars in public funds (if you check out some previous court case rulings in some education/student rights law textbook.
Brilliant words above.
Waaaait a minute. McLaughlin? Isn’t that the guy that is like the 10th highest paid academic dude in the country? WSN just reported about it. His salary’s $531,815 (!!!)
[...] there are fighting against what they describe as ‘rumor mongering and character attacks’ from the Provost David [...]
@bobf
So basically our president makes a salarly in line with other comparable private universities. If that is the case how could you possibly expect NYU to do otherwise? For the school to stay competitive and attract top talent and potential candidates, it will have to pay accordingly. This is the USA, people aren’t going to work for free.
Your comparison to corporations that receive government support is also frivolous. These companies need money because they are not profitable so in turn, how can they justify paying executives. NYU on the other hand has enjoyed consistent growth and success over the years and its employees should be paid accordingly.
Again in your first paragraph you allude only to public universities which is pointless because NYU is not one. You provide some nice quotes but how can you put them in the context of other top private universities such as Penn in Philly, MIT in Boston, etc. Your support is pretty weak.
@NYU Alum
Other “private universities” (that receive millions of dollars in government research funds) like Stanford University spend a lot of money on their football teams. Does that mean NYU should try to become a “football factory” university just because Stanford University has a football team? Paying inflated salaries to ex-politicians like Brademas & Kerrey or lawyers/husbands of foundation executives like Sexton to serve as unelected NYU or New School presidents (rather than electing NYU or New School students or professors who have some deeper knowledge of what NYU or New School education should be about) won’t necessarily provide a private uniiversity with anything more than an inexperienced, incompetent university president.
As a tax-exempt institution that receives public federal government research funds, NYU is actually not supposed to be run as if it were a for-profit corporation serving the external off-campus special corporate interests of its trustees and paying administrators inflated salaries, despite characterizing itself legally as a “non-profit” “educational” institution.
If NYU were not receiving public funds derived from the taxes that the U.S. public pays each year, then the notion that NYU should still be run undemocratically as if it were a private country club might have some validity. But such is not the case. And neither MIT nor UPenn apparently sold a Bronx campus to CUNY as did NYU, so people in New York City who want to democratize NYU in 2009 should realize that comparing MIT and UPenn to NYU is analogous to comparing apples and oranges. New York City’s “NYU/`Wall Street University’Problem” represents a different specific type of situation than the anti-democratic problems that other universities in other cities pose.
Speaking of NYU salaries, here’s some financial info from NYU’s form 990 for 2006-2007 that might interest you:
The tax-exempt New York University [NYU] in Manhattan claims to be a “non-profit” institution. Yet according to its Form 990 filing for the year beginning September 1, 2006 and ending August 31, 2007, NYU earned over $31 million in dividends and interest from the over $998 million in stocks and bonds which NYU then owned. And the “non-profit” NYU board of trustees paid NYU’s current president—a Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member named John Sexton–an annual salary of $1,291,525 in 2007. In addition, NYU’s board of trustees apparently also paid former NYU President L. Jay Oliva an annual salary of $375,000 and former NYU President John Brademas an annual salary of $250,000 in 2007.
In 2007, “non-profit” NYU also paid its then-Chair for Academic Priorities, Richard Foley, an annual salary of $553,587. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Executive Vice-President Michael Alfano, then- NYU Provost David McLaughlin and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Health Robert Berne each annual salaries of $499,550.
NYU’s then-Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Cheryl Mills, was also paid an annual salary of $478,866 by NYU in 2007, while NYU’s then-Senior Vice-President for Development, Debra Lamorte, was paid an annual salary of $450,000. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University International Strategies Jeanne Marie Smith an annual salary of $408,084 and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Finance & Budget Martin Dorph an annual salary of $342,935 in 2007. And then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University Relations Lynne Brown was paid an annual salary of $316,975 in that same year by ‘non-profit’ NYU.
At least five NYU professors also apparently were paid annual salaries that exceeded $1.4 million in 2007 by the tax-exempt, “non-profit” university. NYU Professor James Grifo was paid an annual salary of $2,362,270, while NYU Professor Stephen Colvin was paid an annual salary of $2,200,090 in 2007. That same year, NYU Professor Alan Berkeley was paid an annual salary of $1,599,507, while NYU Professor Joseph Zuckerman was paid an annual salary of $1,528,477. And NYU Associate Professor Nichole Noye was also paid an annual salary of $1,448,515 by NYU in 2007.
Although NYU claims to be a “non-profit” institution, between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2007 NYU’s annual revenues of $2,912,112,322 exceeded NYU’s annual expenses of $2,693,188,158 by over $218 million.
TBNYU, shame on you for undermining Bipartisan American Unity. At this perilous juncture in America’s history we need to Unite, not divide. To become a successful movement, you need to focus on becoming an expressive platform for creating and delivering rich real-world experiences across all screens of life.
My advice is that you needed a shorter list of demands and you that you need to do more educating of your fellow students. In short, you need to organize more effectively, so that when you take an action like occupying a building, you will have the support of the students behind you instead of being angry that they couldn’t get to their piano lesson or whatever.
As for Gaza, you’re in America, not the U.K. In the U.K. there is far more fact and reality based understanding of the Palestinian people–their history, the fact that they’re under occupation, etc. The fact that Gaza has been under seige for years, etc.
That kind of reality-based understanding doesn’t really exist in the U.S. at the level of political commonsense. You’re in New York city, which has a street named after a former Israeli Prime Minster. That should tell you something about the local context in which you’re making demands. Before you can add support for Palestinian students in Gaza, you have to do much more education on campus. And it’s not just you, it’s all campuses, because the fact is even a lot of faculty, people with Ph.D.s view the Palestinians through the lens of the so-called war on terror. With a new US administration, there is a subtle shift in official political discourse that you should be able to capitalize on, if you want to add support for Palestinian universities in Gaza that were targeted.
It’s too bad that the U.S. is behind the curve on the Palestinians, but that’s a product of history. And you have to do the hard work of educating people, so that they can understand why you make the demands that you do. And so that you have more students backing you.
I’ll give ‘em this much: They’ve left the critical responses stay.