We, the Students for a Free Cooper Union, who reclaimed The Peter Cooper Suite from the current Cooper Union administration yesterday at noon, have established base overnight. We will continue holding this space until our demands are met or we are otherwise removed: we will not negotiate.
To this point we have publicly presented our terms and principles and reached out to the broader community and press, but we have yet to be contacted in any capacity by the president. Faced with ideological opposition to the expansionist model, Jamshed Bharucha has withdrawn from public view and shirked his responsibilities overseeing the college.
We denounce our president’s repeated absence in the face of community organizing. Last year, while the New York City Police Department arrested our students, our administration was nowhere to be seen; and chants of “Where is our president?” still echo today. We need transparency, not invisibility. In contrast, the public has come together in support of our principles and demands. Displays of solidarity — from tweets all around the world to a candlelit vigil eight floors below — resonate our rejection of the global system of student debt and articulate aggravations that are felt worldwide.
Yesterday, an anonymous source shared a report with us detailing the results of a committee convened to analyze the feasibility of implementing undergraduate tuition in the School of Engineering. The research concluded that within 10 years, students could face between $40,000 and $80,000 in tuition fees.
Since we received and shared this document, other members of the community have stepped forward to clarify the nature of the report. It is our understanding now that this committee was one of many tasked to research revenue generation for the school. We struggle with the fact that all of this information has come to light solely from a leaked document, and not the from our expectations of transparency and candor.
In response to the undervaluing of student voices and the continuous dismissal of community organizing, Students for a Free Cooper Union are holding a press conference on Tuesday, December 4, 2012 to address the aforementioned points. We are organizing our fellow students as public intermediaries to speak on our behalf while we retain the Peter Cooper Suite.
We invite everyone to this press conference in front of Cooper Union at 7 East 7th Street at 2:30 PM
3:00 Chain-cutting ceremony and proclamation by Rosie Mendez
3:45 Slideshow by Seth Tobocman with Eric Bliss, Ben Barson and Joe Merolla
4:30 Talk and slideshow by Adam Purple
4:45 Reading by Maggie Wrigley
4:55 Reading by Felix
5:05 Slideshow by Mac McGill
5:35 Talk by Ben Shepard
5:50 Slideshow by Fly
6:30 Talk by Frank Morales
6:40 Spoken word by Pete Missing
7:00 Sermon and songs by Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping
8:00 March by Rude Mechanical Orchestra
8:30 Performance by Rude Mechanical Orchestra
Deejaying by DJ Dirtyfinger
What could be better than living downtown in a 2800' full floor corner loft steps away from Whole Foods, great shopping, fine restaurants and superior transportation? Imagine getting off the elevator and stepping directly into your dramatic new home with its sweeping New York City vistas including a view of Union Square Park, high ceilings and beautiful details throughout. Best of all, there is an updated modern kitchen for you to cook the wonderful fresh produce you've scored from the nearby Union Square farmers market ... You have the option of renting this special home with the owner's tasteful furnishings ... or you can bring your own.
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
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.
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.
You can hear things moving around inside a few of these trash bags in Tompkins Square Park. twitter.com/evgrieve/statu…
— evgrieve (@evgrieve) December 2, 2012
An East Village 11-year-old was handcuffed and taken into custody last month after strolling into MS 345 on the Lower East Side with a play pistol — a black plastic prop given to him by an after-school theater company.
Violeta Hernandez, 68, said her grandson, whose name is being withheld by The Post, was supposed to be a cowboy in a play at the Theater for the New City in the East Village.
Instead, the pint-size actor was suspended and shipped off to an “alternative-learning facility” in Harlem for two weeks and is still traumatized by the ordeal, she said.
