Kyle Major's World of Wonder
Photo credit: NOAA.
email: kjm340@nyu.edu
current location (updated every 47 minutes): Earth
office: tba.
status: fifth year student.
interests: language and mathematics, mathematics and evolution, evolution and religion, religion and mathematics, evolution and language.
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Kyle Major's World of Censorship?
The Washington Square News published an editorial entitled Take Back NYU! is Vocal but Doesn’t Speak for All Students on Friday, February 20. The editorial cites a resolution which I, as senator for the Graduate School of Arts & Science, originally introduced to the University Committee for Student Life. The resolution urges the university administration to adopt a set of acceptable standards and working conditions for people involved in the construction and maintenance of NYU's non-US sites of instruction.
While this is certainly a laudable gesture for the Committee to take, the WSN is nevertheless wrong to cite this as an example of “exactly the sort of student engagement that TBNYU claims our university lacks.” I believe that the WSN is furthermore wrong in hitherto denying me the opportunity to respond, although I’ll let you decide for yourself. (To contact the WSN, go here).
The following letter was sent to the WSN on Sunday, February 22 and added here on Wednesday, February 25:
WSN Fails to Understand Role of Senate and Need for Activism
The WSN, in its editorial on February 20, closely parallels a dangerous line of rhetoric long disseminated by NYU’s administration: activist groups are NOT democratic, NOT legitimate, and in fact DISRUPT the job of the University Senate, which is THE legitimate, democratic body on campus. This claim is false and reflects the divide and conquer strategy of the administration in regard to its students. I am serving my second year as a student senator, and I am also an activist who participated in the occupation of Kimmel. These two roles are complementary, since the Student Senators Council and groups like Take Back NYU! share the overarching goal of providing students with a voice in how NYU is run.
So why do we need groups like TBNYU when we already have bodies like the Student Senators Council? The WSN cites the resolution passed last week by the University Committee for Student Life (the principal committee of the SSC) as an example of “exactly the sort of student engagement that TBNYU claims our university lacks.” As the senator who originally introduced the resolution to the UCSL, I argue that, in actuality, the resolution serves as an example of that very lack of student engagement in NYU’s decision-making process. To see why this statement is not self-denigrating (nor denigrating to my colleagues on the UCSL, to whom I am indebted for their efforts in seeing it to completion), one must understand why the resolution was drafted in the first place.
First, NYU’s administration entered into an partnership with its affiliates in the UAE to create a campus in Abu Dhabi, choosing to do so without any written agreement that reasonable efforts would be taken to protect the workers hired to build the campus from the severe human rights abuses routinely inflicted upon construction workers there. This undemocratically made decision was a mistake, although members of the NYU community realized this and urged the administration to make right on the matter. The administration, however, refused to address the issues in any meaningful way (similarly, TBNYU did not even receive a reply to the letter they sent the administration on September 2, 2008).
The UCSL resolution, therefore, is not an act of genuine participation in NYU’s decision-making, but rather a reaction to a set of decisions made by the administration which threaten not only the lives of workers, but also threaten NYU’s reputation, which affects all members of the NYU community, regardless of their ethical stance. In what amounts to a further strike against democracy, the NYU administration bears no obligation whatsoever to even respond to the unanimously passed resolution, let alone act upon it. In sum, for the WSN to characterize this process as “exactly the sort of student engagement that TBNYU claims our university lacks,” reflects either a failure to understand how the Senate operates, or a failure to understand the mission of TBNYU, or both.
The action taken by TBNYU, finally, is less about specific demands (I myself do not agree with all of them) than it is about exposing the failures of the administration to listen to the voices of its community and to take democracy seriously. While the WSN argues that “legitimate causes have been undermined” by TBNYU, the editorial itself suggests the opposite to be true by highlighting points raised by TBNYU that deserve further attention. To be sure, anyone who believes that established bodies such as the University Senate by themselves will lead the administration to adequately address these issues, and the many other concerns of the NYU community, is simply blind to reality. While one is free to disagree with the specific tactics of TBNYU, it ought to be clear that something is gravely wrong with the way the NYU administration conducts business, and that it is time for members from across the NYU community to join together in denouncing its oppressive leadership.
- Kyle Major
- Senator, Graduate School of Arts & Science
- Fourth-year PhD student and TA in Linguistics
- linguistica@gmail.com