student occupation at nyu!

After nearly two years of flyering, teach-ins, organizing meetings and attempts to dialogue with the NYU administration, students from the Take Back NYU! coalition occupied the Kimmel Center (NYU's monolithic, long-under-construction student center) for 40 hours February 18-20.

Chief among their greivances was the persistent lack of transparency about NYU's investments and operating budget in response to repeated calls to put a cap on tuition increases, allow collective bargaining for all NYU workers, including student workers, and promote socially responsible investing (SRI), including divestment of NYU's endowment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine (similar to the victory recently won at Hampshire College.)

The immediate demands of the occupation centered around disclosure of the university's budget and investments, tuition stabilization, and several concrete ways NYU could assist in Gaza relief effort, specifically at the Islamic University of Gaza, which was bombed by Israel during the recent war.

In making these demands, the students linked their occupation to the wave of university occupations in Britain in response to the crisis in Gaza, and also to the recent occupation of the New School, which also called for budget transparency, SRI, and the removal of the New School's war criminal president Bob Kerrey.

The NYU administration has taken a Bush-administration-worthy stance toward the protesters. After sealing the Kimmel Center shut and cutting off internet access in an effort to keep the students inside from communicating with their supporters, NYU administrators lied to student leaders about being willing to negotiate in order to get them out of the building, at which point they were promptly forcibly removed by NYU security. Students involved in the occupation were also immediately evicted from their student housing.

Letters and phone calls demanding amnesty for the students involved and an answer to their demands can be directed to the following people:

NYU President John Sexton: john.sexton@nyu.edu, (212) 998-2345
John Beckman, NYU Spokesperson: jhb5@nyu.edu
Office of the Provost: provost@nyu.edu
Office of the Vice President: evp@nyu.edu

If you're particularly enterprising, you can also call NYU spokesperson John Beckman on his cell phone: (917) 968-4942.

For more info, check the frequently-updated Take Back NYU! website.