This article sent to me from Dave Shukla really represent how a group of students can take the momentum behind a national campaign, localize it, and make it their own. Great work
Another occupation at the New School? Over the past weekend, I have received a lot of questions, requests for more information, and just general concern from people all around the country regarding the latest student action at the New School.
Make no mistake, the local and national media has been suffuse this past weekend with things that I want no part in. I will spare you a long and lengthy assessment of what New School activism has been like since December. Some background information can be found here (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21066), but I want to here focus on what has been relevant to Power Vote and Power Shift.
In September, New School SEAC’ers ran the Power Vote campaign. We added three local planks to the general PV platform (http://www.powervote.org/platform). They were:
- academic sustainability through fair and equitable Teaching Assistant/Research Assistant/Teaching Fellow compensation. TA/RA/TF compensation has not been raised in over ten years, and is amongst the lowest .
- financial sustainability through the creation of a socially responsible investment policy and standing committee for the university’s endowment.
- physical sustainability through having any new building to be constructed at 65 Fifth Avenue be both LEED certified (gold or platinum), and conceived and designed by the students and faculty and staff who will use the building.
These reflected both low-hanging fruit – the first point, that which was within reach but not yet grasped – the second point, and a much larger issue – the third and last point..Within a year of sustained involvement, from the vantage point of environmental justice and campus sustainability activism, these seemed ambitious, but not impractical, goals. Given the structure of our organizing for Power Vote – which was less focused on numbers and more on relationships and programs that would build social power in the university and with the community.
The story of Power Shift at the New School is still very much unfolding, but our local Power Vote platform was designed to reflect the most prescient concerns for students at the university that were, or could be, moved on in the academic year. Each of these issues has benefited from the occupation of 65 Fifth Avenue in December: the administration rushed through a wage increase to stave off the possibility of unifying the entire graduate student body against them; the administration was forced to take a student proposal for the creation of an SRI policy and committee that the Trustees have since taken action; and last, the Faculty Senate and various student groups have called for the redesign of the new building, though the administration has remained recalcitrant on this point – pushing forward with secret building plans with athe involvement of outside consultants, and without any transparency despite the current precarious financial environment. For instance, one learns not from a campus-wide email, but from stories in local and community media, that President Kerrey and Executive Vice-President Jim Murtha met with community members to address their concerns about the new building plans for 65 Fifth Avenue, though neither they nor anyone else in their administration has yet to do so with anyone else in the university community (see: http://www.nypress.com/blog-3651-new-school-building-scrapped-new-one-in-the-works.html and http://curbed.com/archives/2009/03/12/new_school_caught_ditching_glass_on_fifth_avenue.php)
The fact is, since December, there have been a number of reforms on key student concerns that provide an entering wedge into shifting the structure of power in the university. Along with changes in the Faculty Senate, Deans’ Council, and especially the Provost’s Office, there is momentum that belies the argument that “nothing can fundamentally change until Kerrey is gone”.
Let’s be clear. It is a mistake to fixate solely on Kerrey. Among the pressures on the New School over the past eight years, he is simply a vector. He has position, mass, velocity, and direction. The question is, which?
his latest student action on Good Friday forces some difficult further questions: How much closer are we to Kerrey’s resignation or removal? How much closer are we to rewriting his job description, or that of Murtha, Millard, Moskowitz, Gartner, Adams, Reimer or any of the rest of the administration that actually design and run the current business model of the university? How much closer is the New School to replacing these people, and repairing the damage they have done to the New School over the past eight years? How effective has student organizing and activism been over the past four months? Are we living our values, and is doing so yielding tangible results? What are we learning from?
Imagine that Kerrey is on his way out. Imagine that Murtha, Millard, all the rest are on their way out too. With them, the intense corporatization of the New School over the past eight years is at an end, and socially responsible financial practices provide us with long-term stability. Imagine what we could do. Imagine the kinds of questions we could be redirecting back to:
Do you want a say in what student space is created in the new building at 65 Fifth Ave, or do you want another mess like the 16th St. building? Do you want a Starbucks on campus, or do you want work-study jobs to run a food co-op that serves healthy low-priced food? Do you want some of the most expensive dorms in the city, or do you want the costs cut in half by creating cooperative student housing? Do you want dirty energy sourcing from the Marcellus Shale upstate, or do you want clean solar and wind sourced from triple-bottom-line [sustainable, just, profitable] sourcing from New England? Do you want more tuition relief and financial aid? Do you want student representatives on the Board of Trustees? Do you want them to have the voting power that forces them to be taken seriously when fighting for student concerns? Is all of this news to you? If so, would you want a newspaper funded and staffed sufficiently to come out every week and cover every division?
In short, we all know what you are against. But what are you for?
bio info: Dave Shukla is a member of the Economics Student Union, the Graduate Faculty Student Senate, and the Student Environmental Action Coalition chapter at the New School. He is a graduate student in economics whose research is currently focused on long-term economic planning for mitigation and adaptation, green workforce and infrastructure development, public investment, and local and national climate policy and legislation.
