Thoughts on the NYU Student Protest
NYU isn’t a public institution. They don’t have to open their books and share you the details of their endowment, and they have every right to kick you out. They’ll just as easily find some other sucker willing to pay 200Gs for an NYU diploma.
Besides, if you can afford to go to NYU already, then a little increase in tuition is probably not going to kill you.
You’re not paying for it, anyway! Your rich parents are. Why aren’t they protesting with you? Oh, right. They’re out in the real world, trying to support your $50,000-a-year habit called “living in New York City without any income.”
You know, you could be like most logical people and move to New York after college. I know that comes with the burden of responsibility, but with a college diploma, there are people who will actually PAY YOU to live here! IMAGINE THAT!
Some of the causes you’re fighting for are quite noble, but complaining about how expensive NYU is when you chose to go there isn’t going to get you any sympathy from me.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Life in NYC. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Amalapropos says:I’m going to spell out the library issue from a typical NYU student’s point of view. It is hard enough finding space in our 12-floor, suicide-inducing library. It’s always a struggle to find rooms and tables, and if you’re trying to get books from course reserves, you can expect a long waiting list and extremely limited time with your textbook. We don’t want more people in our library—if anything, we want them to get out. It’s one of the few places left where we can study (we don’t have a campus, remember?) and just because YOU (0.14%!) think that people should have public access, doesn’t mean WE (99.86%) will. You can’t argue for stabilized tuition and then open up our library to the public, because our tuition is what keeps the library running at its current rate, so bringing MORE people into our buildings will only increase the cost of maintaining our library. People in New York City pay taxes; let them use what their taxes pay for (yes, the New York Public Library, emphasis on the PUBLIC!) We pay tuition, so let us peacefully use what we are paying for. I think it’s a fair statement.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Chris says:Amalapropos: I agree with you. I don’t think people should have public access to a privately-owned and operated library. But whining about tuition and budget transparency isn’t going to change that, nor is making a list of several other unrelated demands.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:09 am
NYU Student says:“You’re not paying for it, anyway! Your rich parents are. ”
I think that line epitomizes your narrow view. I don’t agree with their decision to barricade a dining hall, but this isn’t a typical private school. NYU isn’t Harvard, Yale, Vassar, Colgate, or any other private school associated with wealth. The population ranges greatly among the 50,000 students enrolled in the different NYU schools. Yes, we have kids running around with daddy’s credit card, but I know more people who struggled to pay this semester’s tuition fee with their own money, credit cards, and loans. I can’t comment the protest as a witness because I was at work, earning my paycheck.
February 20th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Chris says:NYU Student: You’re right. NYU isn’t Harvard, Yale, Vassar, or Colgate - those schools are less expensive than NYU. There are plenty of other schools, public and private, that are just as competitive and less expensive than NYU. While it’s respectable - even admirable - that some students take responsibility and pay their own way, they chose to go to NYU for the “experience” of living in New York.
Nobody forced you to go to a school that costs $50,000 a year.
February 20th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Hinano says:great read. those faggots need to be arrested and expelled for their faggotry and not allowing paying students to buy their god damn lunch. god when I see them on the news I just want to kick them in the face.
February 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
View from Here says:There is evidence that seedy academic corruption runs quite deep at NYU. Take, for example, the allegations of plagiarism that have surfaced against the Judaica department chairman; they were initially made in an Israeli newspaper years ago, but the matter appears to have been hushed up and never investigated, in violation of the university’s own regulations. For details, see
http://my.nowpublic.com/world/plagiarism-and-dead-sea-scrolls-did-nyu-department-chairman-pilfer-chicago-historian-s-work
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
NYU Grad Student says:Yes, NYU is expensive, the facilities suck, and the professors (at least the majority of the morons I’ve been faced with) aren’t up to snuff. As an NYU graduate student paying her own way through school via a full time job, the protest at Kimmel just made me roll my eyes.
NYU is not a public institution. It is a bureaucratic machine that overcharges tuition to work on risky projects (Abu Dhabi) instead of fixing issues on the home campus. This isn’t a secret. It doesn’t have to be one because NYU doesn’t owe any explanation. We may not like it, but that’s what we get for attending a private institution.
The Take Back NYU! students protest was not heard because it didn’t have to be…. and also because the demands that were made read as a disjointed, cobbled together wish list from rich kids looking to stick it to The Man before heading off to Cancun to drink heavily with the rest of their BFFs for Spring Break.
It’s amazing how easy it is to forget about the unfair amount of tuition money that your parents are paying when you’re drunk on a foreign beach on their dime.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Desperately Seeking anything says:Just a little note- now adays a kid with a degree from a decent public university already (ie, me) can’t even get a simple assistant job to hire me. maybe the NYU experience allows you to at least make a connection that will get you a job in the city
March 25th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Vern M. says:The best protest, and really the only one that has any effect, is the boycott. The only way to get an institution to pay attention to demands is to disrupt their flow of money, plain and simple. The problem is that it takes many people all deciding to leave school for reasons of principle. Bottom line: That’s not going to happen, and nothing else will make a dent in school policy, so go to an NYU-esque school if you desire, but definitely don’t complain about it.