Students at Cooper Union NYC have locked themselves into the top floor of the uni's main bldg.
— Elizabeth Coss (@ChangeThruArt) December 3, 2012
Occupy Cooper Union! - 12 students have seized the eighth floor to oppose tuition/fee hikes. fb.me/1MF23khHW
— OccupyColleges (@OccupyColleges) December 3, 2012
This letter explains the students' demands...
And via the EVG inbox...
One year ago, our current administration put tuition on the table for the first time in over 110 years. Students, alumni, and community members came together to organize, protest, and offer creative, viable, sustainable, solutions that avoided the implementation of tuition at our school.
One year later, undergraduate tuition is still on the table and the voting date is fast approaching. In response we are making a call to action! At 12 pm on Dec 3, 2012 join us at Cooper Union to let our administration know education is a right! We believe and are committed to the idea of free and sustainable education, not just for our institution but for all institutions!
12pm-6 pm: Join us outside the foundation building for a day of outdoors classes. Occupy Peter Cooper Park! ... We'll be picketing, handing out literature about student movements (including our own), making art, and making noise!
6-10 pm: Free and Open to the Public! Join us in Cooper's historic Great Hall for a public Community Summit on the state of higher education in NYC! Presentation on the current debt/tuition crisis, international student movements, and sustainable solutions. After presentations, speakers will sit on a panel for open question/answer segment.
Updated 3:54 p.m.:
The New York Times has more on the story here. Per Victoria Sobel, one of the students taking part in the lock-in, which started at noon in the Clocktower:
Soon afterward, she said, maintenance workers arrived and tried to force their way into the room.
“They were drilling and ramming the door,” she said. “It was very scary.”
The students pushed back, Ms. Sobel said, and yelled to the workers that their bodies were against the doors. After about 20 minutes, she said, the entry attempts ended.
Ms. Sobel said that the students had brought with them sleeping bags, blankets and food, including oatmeal and ramen noodles, and were planning to stay “as long as necessary” to get their message across to the administration.
Cooper Union officials said they were still formulating a response to the occupation of the Clocktower.
