Event: Rally to Save the Village; Save Our Parks; Stop Wasting Our Tuition on Bad Labor Practices, Unwanted Development and Reckless Real Estate Expansion
Date/Time: Rally/March on Tuesday, September 1st from 4pm – 6pm
Place: Meet @ <http://washingtonsquareparkconservancy.org/visit-us/>Garibaldi Plaza in Washington Square Park (enter @ Washington Place and Washington Square East)
Endorsers (list in formation): <http://nyufasp.com/>NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan (NYUFASP); <https://nyuslam.wordpress.com/>NYU's Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM); the <http://savecooperunion.org/>Committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCU); NYU's <https://www.facebook.com/gsocuaw2110>Graduate Student Organizing Committee(GSOC); <http://nyu-divest.squarespace.com/>NYU Divest; <http://www.law.nyu.edu/studentorganizations/lawsej>Law Students for Economic Justice (LawSEJ), <https://www.facebook.com/whosenyu>Whose NYU?; <https://fairlabornyu.wordpress.com/>Coalition for Fair Labor, <https://orgsync.com/61910/chapter>Roosevelt Institute; <http://www.aaup.org/import-tags/new-york-university>NYU-American Association of University Professors (NYU-AAUP) <http://www.sensuaw.org/>Student Employees at the New School (SENS); <http://cusos.org/>Free Cooper Union; <http://ucats3882.org/>Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at NYUÂ (UCATS); <http://www.actuaw.org/wp/>NYU Adjuncts and The New School Part-Time Faculty Union (ACT-UAW Local 7902); <http://www.opeiu-tristate.org/>Office & Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU Local 153); Washington Square South Citizens Action Committee; <http://caan2031.org/>Community Action Alliance on NYU 2031(CAAN 2031); <http://www.sohoalliance.org/>SoHo Alliance; and more.
Event will include speakers and a special performance by members of the internationally acclaimed show <http://www.stomponline.com/index.html>STOMP.
<https://www.facebook.com/events/105894319763826/>Find this event on Facebook. Twitter: #SavetheVillage #WhoseNYU #HamiltonGetReady
Contact: Linda Cronin-Gross, Sonya Landau, LCG Communications – <tel:718.853.5568>718.853.5568; <mailto:linda at lcgcommunications.com>linda at lcgcommunications.com <mailto:sonya at lcgcommunications.com>sonya at lcgcommunications.com;
On Sept. 1, in Washington Square Park, an unprecedented coalition will stage a rally/march against the ruinous financial policies and practices at NYU, Cooper Union and the New School. Students, faculty and staff at those three famous downtown schools will join the people of the Village, and representatives of several labor unions, to protest the elite financial schemes now threatening the survival of those schools and their historic neighborhoods.
The rally will begin at 4:00 p.m., on Tuesday, Sept. 1, in <http://washingtonsquareparkconservancy.org/visit-us/>Washington Square Park's Garibaldi Plaza and will climax in a march to <https://www.google.com/maps/place/181+Mercer+St,+New+York,+NY+10012/@40.7264514,-73.9975354,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c2598fca304f6b:0xac5c26dfedb6eb8>Coles Sports Center — now slated to be closed this fall, and torn down soon thereaafter. Speakers will address a range of issues, including the destruction of our city's open spaces (4 Greenwich Village parks are slated to be crushed to make way for NYU's massive, unwanted, multi-billion dollar expansion), student debt, and the overall corruption of this and countless other universities. Members of the internationally acclaimed show <http://www.stomponline.com/>STOMP will lend their support by performing at the rally.
Speakers will expose the many ill effects of Wall Street's stranglehold on US higher education: cash-strapped students who go hungry, sleep on benches, and/or even have to sell their bodies for the funds for their tuition and expenses (a problem more widespread at NYU than any other US university); destruction of our city parks, and other public spaces, to make way for the huge unwanted multi-billion dollar Sexton Plan; faculty increasingly exploited and despised, paid ever less to do more work, and without any voice in governance; partnerships with foreign regimes that routinely violate essential human rights, including academic freedom.
"NYU is now an institution driven not by a concern for education, but by an elite financial calculus that ends up hurting all of us in many ways: the students, faculty and staff within the school itself, as well as its long-suffering neighbors. What's happening at NYU is indicative of a nation-wide trend that has turned institutions of higher learning into profit-driven corporations," said Mark Crispin Miller, NYU Professor of Media, Culture & Communication.
Your coverage is welcome.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some sobering facts about today's NYU:
* At over $70,000 a year, NYU is now the nation's most expensive university.
* Princeton Review has rated NYU's financial aid "the worst in the United States."
* NYU's graduates carry a debt burden 40% above the national average.
* NYU's administration is exceptionally bloated, with its top bureaucrats making six- and seven-figure salaries, with raises averaging 18%, while faculty raises average 2.5%.
* NYU is notorious for student suicides (as reported in HuffPost and elsewhere).
* NYU has more female students—well over 1,000—using the "dating" website Seeking Arrangement, which introduces them to wealthy older men (as reported in New York magazine and The Atlantic).
* In 2013, the New York Times revealed that NYU's Board had been approving six- and seven-figure "loans" to purchase lavish summer homes for NYU own top administrators (while scores of student sleep on benches).
* The only US university to partner with the government of Abu Dhabi (over strenuous faculty objections), NYU's name was tarnished further when, last year, the Times reported that the migrant laborers building NYU's glittering campus there had been routinely jailed and beaten, their passports seized, their pay withheld, and otherwise abused.
* Just months after making a big show of offering asylum to blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, NYU quietly cut off his stipend, withdrew his security detail, and then evicted him, despite a (verbal) promise to house him for at least three years—an ouster dictated by the Chinese government, which calls the shots because of NYU's branch in Shanghai. (See his statement of support.)
* NYU Prof. Andrew Ross, a vocal critic of Abu Dhabi's labor policies, was recently denied entry to Abu Dhabi, where he had planned to go for research purposes.