Take Back NYU!: Change We Can Believe In?

WASHINGTON SQUARE, NYC - - Late on Wednesday evening, a small group of
students in the student activist organization Take Back NYU began a sit-in inside the Kimmel Marketplace. The Kimmel Marketplace is the dining hall inside the Kimmel student center and is probably the most popular and best dining hall at NYU. The location for the sit-in was well chosen. Take Back NYU originally issued a statement pledging non-violence and no destruction of private property. This the students revised at 1:00am to exclude the pledge not to destroy private property so that they could break open the door to the 3rd floor balcony of the Kimmel Center. So after my classes had finished for the day I went to watch the sit-in and to see what student activism really looked like in the 21st century. I sat in silence on a bench on Washington Square South, ate my lunch with gusto, and watched with intense disenchantment.

The sit-in is centrally located indeed. But, considering that of the 400-500 students who took to the streets in support of the protest, many of them weren't NYU students, and that the total undergraduate student population of NYU is approximately 20,000, the group is marginal. The students inside the Kimmel Center have been at pains to declare with their loudspeakers that they are part of a larger movement; that they are in solidarity with students engaged in similar activities in Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom, and across New York State. To their credit, a student organization at the University of Helsinki and another at Cambridge University did issue statements of support. On Washington Square, however, Take Back NYU's relatively minuscule number belies their claim to speak for NYU's student body. It is unclear, in fact quite unlikely, that they have anything even approaching a majority of support among NYU students.

One very good reason for the marginal nature of this protest is that Take Back NYU's true goals are ambiguous. This problem exists primarily because Take Back NYU's list of actual demands is utterly incoherent. Several specific demands, such as that NYU's administration should resume dialogue with the GSOC/UAW graduate student union and that NYU employees whose jobs were disrupted by the sit-in should be compensated for lost work-hours, are thoroughly valid. On the other hand, along with some old unrequited ultimatums such as disclosure of the budget and tuition stabilization, Take Back NYU calls for an "in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories" and "that annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students." Finally, they request that "the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the Islamic University of Gaza." Aside from alienating large portions of the entire NYU community through their myopic, unfocused, and immature political platform and by implying without a shred of evidence that they suspect the NYU administration is investing in war and genocide profiteers, they have demonstrated and therefore deepened a saddening intellectual and strategic failure of our generation.

When Senator Obama gave a speech in Washington Square last year, the crowd that turned out was huge. An energy that this NYU student had never before observed among his peers spread around the campus like wildfire. The speech wasn't Obama's best, but seeing so many members of my stereotypically disaffected generation, particularly the slice of that generation which attends NYU, chanting "Fired Up?! Ready To Go?!" definitely meant something. The numbers of young volunteers on the Obama campaign and of newly registered voters whom Obama has inspired suggest that, after all, my generation is deeply engaged, but in a way very different from that of our parents. Rather than staging demonstrations like as our parents did, rather than working from outside the political system to affect changes, the Obama campaign illustrated a promising new paradigm: my generation's form of activism, unlike our parents', is to work within the political process for a candidate who inspires us.

My intention is not to imply that we should be an entirely establishmentarian generation. We owe it to ourselves to promote rational critique and effective social action from all perspectives and standpoints. And, of course, the Take Back NYUers are quick to point out that the "established channels have been insufficient to make our voices heard by the administration." The real meaning of this statement, of course, is that "we haven't had any success working through established channels so we're going to try something a little different and a lot more exciting." But the reason that the established channels have failed goes to the heart of my generation's collective failure. That failure is quite simply that we demand and expect far too much and we want everything NOW. Take Back NYU's demand for a student body with executive administrative power and seats on the board of trustees is but one very small, and frankly petty, demonstration of this problem. But it will continue to be a problem even once our generation fills the ranks of the established channels. Obama's campaign and his first weeks in office offer a case-in-point. Though, to be fair, Obama undoubtedly promised more than he could hope to deliver, what our generation expects of him is miles beyond anything he ever promised on the campaign trail. Because of our expectations, we are on course for a crushing hangover full of disillusionment and frustration at the midterm elections. If we discover that there really is only one way to motivate our generation and that is through over-heightened expectations, then the problem is even more severe. Hopefully, that won't come to pass.

Even now that our generation has created normative changes through the established channels, we nevertheless have set ourselves up for extreme disappointment. We haven't made the collective discovery that many generations of wise leaders before us knew so well: Changes are made by asking for a little bit at a time, over a very long duration. The end of that duration, will, if we can stay the course, constitute that immortal and increasingly ironic phrase "change we can believe in." Take Back NYU, on the other hand, will fail. When that happens, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Take Back NYU is a small organization, without a broad base of support or a coherent platform. But when our president, who so very very many of us toiled to elect, fails to live up to our copious expectations, perhaps even fails to win re-election, then we will have paid an all-too-dear price for a lesson we could easily have learned from our parents.

Comments

[littlemisssaturnine]

Disregarding any personal conviction I may have in reference to the whole TBNYU thing...this post reminded me largely of DFW's "Up, Simba" from Consider the Lobster. If you haven't read it, you should.

(This applies to you, too, general constituent of disillusio­ned-with-p­olitics-Hu­ffpo-reade­rs.)

Briana

[DavidGoodner]

i disagree with the argument in this post. Last night there were 100 people inside and 500 people outside, indicating broad support. Some NYU faculty members have endorsed the protest and so have dozens of graduate students.

Different sectors of the progressive movement should support each other in solidarity even if they have tactical disagreements. These students were doing what they thought was right and trying to call attention to social injustice. In my opinion this column reeks of latte liberal elitism, factionalism, and sectarianism. The author's smug, self-righteous tone takes his argument well outside the boundaries of legitimate debate. I would recommend the author unplug from the internet and go out and try geting his hands dirty.

David Goodner
University of Iowa
david-good­ner@uiowa.­edu

[peterw536]

As an NYU student I am ashamed that the supposedly liberal Huffington post would publish this. Dozens of fellow students just got suspended and thrown out of their housing because they had the guts to try to get us lower tuition and a more democratic say in our university. To nit-pick the demands or tactics is to completely miss the point. The administration has been taking our money without any accountability or openness. During the occupation they refused to negotiate at all. Finally they offered a negotiation, but detained the negotiators (who thought they were going to bargain in good faith) instead, and suspended them.
This is not what an open university does. Nothing proves Take Back NYU’s critique better than how NYU responded to the occupation. They refused to actually talk to us, they lied to us, they hid behind the security guards, and they completely rejected legitimate critiques of out of control tuition or lack of democracy.
A word about our base of support. There were 300-400 people in the streets last night supporting TBNYU. There were 3 people counter-protesting TBNYU. In the absence of other evidence, it is completely dishonest to claim they lack support.
It says much about the writer that he immediately devoted all of his critical abilities at the students. He let the administration completely off the hook with his paean to conservative incrementalism.
Change is never made by people who want to compromise before the fight has even begun.

[max08]

Hooray for you, peterw536! Good comment. The NYU demonstration was the first breath of fresh air after the long night of Bush.

[K-Dog76]

Outstanding post.

It is very unfortunate that Take Back NYU will tarnish future activism that is much more legitimate. It would seem that with the twitter and blogs by these particular "activists" coupled with incoherent goals seems more like a bad (or should I say worse) form of reality television. Its almost as if they spent more time figuring out how to get in front of a camera than they did in formulating their goals.

In my personal opinion, this is more disruption than protest. If these students are to learn a lesson, they should be expelled at the very least, includ fined and prosecuted at best. They are throwing a tantrum, not a rally, not a protest. And they seemed to have disregarded real activisim in favor of 15 minutes of fame.

[max08]

DIsruption is protest, however disorganized.

[malachhamovess]

A small group of coddled upper middle class suburban brats take over a school cafeteria. The revolution won't spread very far if it can be accessed on Facebook and its shock troops spend their time "on the barricades" twittering with their MacBooks and trying to decide why they're sitting in a cafeteria when they could be in their dorm rooms hooking up.

What they're really protesting is their own irrelevance.