Photo: Stacy Lanyon
I’m now a graduating senior at Cooper Union. I took off what
would have been my senior year to be a part of Occupy. My boyfriend had been
talking about Occupy all summer. We went to one of the Tompkins Square Park meetings.
I had a lot of reservations about it due to different political experiences
that I had had. He really wanted to be part of the food, helping set up food
and keeping people who were going to be staying there fed. I went down on
September 17th. It was just so entirely different than anything that
I had ever experienced. Something just clicked in my head. I had a moment of
clarity about things that can be done and how things should be done and how
this occupation could be sustained. From there, I never looked back. I
ended up taking the whole year off of school. I lived at the park the whole
time. I went home once after I got arrested. I was really, very drawn to it.
I think a lot of it stems from my family's personal, financial situation. We’re
a lower middle class family. My mom is a first generation immigrant. My dad is
a second generation immigrant. They both have worked so hard to provide for me
and my sister. I just see the way that our capitalist society marginalizes
their work as well as provides lesser opportunities to them. Having been accepted to
Cooper Union was an escape from that scenario, and so was Occupy.
When I got there on September 17th, I saw a lot
of people that I knew from Food not Bombs and other activist circles. The first
general assembly was not super formal. It was just a question about what we
wanted to see in that open space. I thought it was so beautiful. Right after
that, we did go to plug into the food working group. They had gotten about
$1000 for peanut butter and bread. My boyfriend and I immediately were like,
“This is not going to be enough food.” They didn’t have a plan for getting more
food. We had a dumpster diving map for the city from Union Square down, so we
brought it back the next day and made a bunch of copies of it. It gave people
who weren’t from the city something to do. We did that for about two weeks
before there were enough donations to sustain the park. Then, I ended up
getting involved very heavily with initiating the finances of the park.
One of the members of the Food Working group had started an
online collection of money that was to be specifically for food. We forgot
about it the first week because we were so engrossed with what was going on
with the park. Given the main stream media blackout, it didn’t seem like people
would be donating. I was also involved with the media and the livestreaming
pretty heavily, and that was a way that the public was able to get a look into
the park. Their questions were always, “How are you?” “How many people are in
the park?” “How many people have been arrested?” “What do you need?” “How can
we help?” We completely underestimated how people were going to be donating. In
the course of a week, there was about 10,000 in the account. It became really
clear that the tax money from that would have to be paid by the guy who opened
the account if we took in anymore, so that was when I ended up going to the
general assembly and seeking to be incorporated. We got the money and put it
through a non-profit in DC that was setting up the DC occupation, and that’s
how we ended up having our tax deductible donation status.
I believe Occupy ended up taking in upwards of three quarters of a million, and that didn’t include the in-kind donations or the things that people brought to the park, so it was probably well over a million. That speaks a great deal to how invested people were. People were really giving from their hearts. From my involvement in the finances, I also ended up being the one who opened up our mail box. Again, we completely underestimated the capacity for people’s giving. We thought it would just be some letters or a check or two. Within about five days of opening it, the UPS store was flooded and had to make extra arrangements to store our deliveries, which ranged from food to clothes to books to media equipment, batteries, and sanitary items for comfort and the medics. That is also why we needed a storage space.
I believe Occupy ended up taking in upwards of three quarters of a million, and that didn’t include the in-kind donations or the things that people brought to the park, so it was probably well over a million. That speaks a great deal to how invested people were. People were really giving from their hearts. From my involvement in the finances, I also ended up being the one who opened up our mail box. Again, we completely underestimated the capacity for people’s giving. We thought it would just be some letters or a check or two. Within about five days of opening it, the UPS store was flooded and had to make extra arrangements to store our deliveries, which ranged from food to clothes to books to media equipment, batteries, and sanitary items for comfort and the medics. That is also why we needed a storage space.
I was and still am invested in media.
I’m a part of Global Revolution. It was just such a central way to get the
message out. It just completely sidestepped the main stream media. As much as I
spoke to media as well, it was really much more crucial to be working through
these alternate conduits to reach the people. I’m very grateful to have been
there to watch my peers pioneer the way that people stream things. We started off
with web cams and hotspots, and then we ended up with cell phones. We ended up working with companies that had the stream applications, and most of
them were not intended for activist’s use, but because of the high volume and
high traffic of the use of them during the Occupy movement, a lot of them
changed their apps to cater to the needs of activists, which was really incredible,
I thought. Even with the occupation at Cooper Union, we still engage with those
tactics as far as streaming and social media.
The year that I took off to do Occupy was the year that the
presidents at Cooper Union changed seats, so it went from George Campbell, who
had been president for the last ten years and was paid very handsomely and who
continues to be paid as part of his arrangement with Cooper Union, to our new
president, who is Jamshed Bharucha. It was in October that he announced to the
Cooper community that despite what people thought about our endowment being
fine and having sidestepped the reception that actually we are in a very large
deficit. It still is not clear or transparent as to how we got into that. There
are very few board members or administrative members who take any culpability
as to how that debt was acquired, even though it has very much to do with the
construction of the new academic building. Students, alumni and faculty have been
trying to find other options. They had put tuition on the table, but it wasn’t
anywhere near an affirmative decision. When I came back this year, it was very
apparent that tuition had become a much more intentional goal that the board is
trying to reach because it has intentions to rebrand and expand the school out
of the deficit. It tends to want to be adopting a more corporate model, the way
other schools are run, more as businesses that can bring in profit. That’s
really unlike the charter that Cooper Union was founded under, which is to
sustain itself and not make any money outside of that.
In December, after the students and faculty had tirelessly tried to engage the administration, it became really apparent that
we needed to upscale our message to reach the public and let them know about how the school was in
crisis and make them aware that the way that the administration was characterizing the crisis was
not accurate, so a group of thirty of us worked for two months planning this
lock-in, which was a physical lock-in with barricades of the Peter Cooper
suite, which is the eighth floor clock tower right above the administrative
offices and the president’s office. In that way, we wanted to symbolically hold
a space and show that students as stewards of the school were above the
administration, and that falls in line very much with what Peter Cooper, the
founder of the school, wrote about. He wrote about how the community is meant
to be the stewards, not the administration. The administration and the board
are meant to have minimal roles. What we stand to lose by allowing the
administration to charge tuition is something that actually the entire higher
education community stands to lose because they are trying to convey that full
tuition scholarships are not a sustainable way to hold the school, and in
reality, it is the bloated administration and their complete lack of fiscal transparency
that’s not sustainable.
Given the first occupation we had in December and the response we got, which was largely positive, the chairman of the board announced in April that starting in 2014, the school would begin to charge 50% tuition, which right now is valued at 20,000 a year. They can’t confirm that it won’t go higher, so they don’t intend to go back to a full tuition scholarship model. It’s really entering into a space that’s unchartered for us and is not working for other institutions. That’s ultimately why we decided to engage in this fluid occupation, which is not with barricades this time. We took the president’s office, and I’m able to sit here and talk to you because other students are holding the space and making sure the guards don’t close the doors. We can come in and out. Last time, we had eleven students, and we barricaded ourselves into a space. The president’s office doesn’t have a bathroom or any way to get water, where the other space had a bathroom and a sink, so it was really necessary for us, if we didn’t want it to be a short sit-in, to make sure that it was fluid. It’s a new form of occupation, but it seems like one that might be viable in the future.
Faculty from all three schools within Cooper Union have been visiting us in the president’s office. The full-time faculty in the School of Art passed a vote of no confidence. Also, the student body of the School of Art and many faculty of the School of Architecture and Engineering have signed as well. The adjuncts have been threatened that if they sign this vote of no confidence, they may not be invited back, and that’s a part of the precarious nature of being an adjunct, and our school is made up of nearly 80% adjunct faculty. That’s really a problem because they don’t have a way to voice how they feel. This is a problem that occurs at other schools as well. The adjuncts are also there with us, but less visibly. It’s not safe for them to sign the document.
The first time we took a space in December, we had three demands. The first demand was that the administration reaffirm the mission statement as it stands, including the full tuition scholarship. The second demand was that drastic changes be made to the schools governance, which would include putting students and faculty from each of the schools as voting members of the board, with the board making their meetings public and their minutes public. The third was that Jamshed Bharucha step down, which was the most contested demand at the time because people still had a lot of reservations. For me at the time, it wasn’t a question. It was very clear that he had been hired by the board to make these things happen, to make tuition happen, to make expansion happen, to wait many of us students out. Many of us are upperclassman. What he didn’t realize was the way he handled these student campaigns has really radicalized and galvanized the student body, including the underclassman and the incoming students, as well as the parents. What he’s really done is awaken a whole community that was previously unaware that we had financial difficulty. The demand we have this time with this fluid occupation is that he step down. We’ve also said that if he is able to reaffirm the mission and change the governance that we would be able to retract the vote of no confidence, but it seems increasingly unlikely that he is able to do those things because those are not the things he is contractually obligated to do. While there does exist an ultimatum, it doesn’t seem like he will be able to see those changes out.
Given the first occupation we had in December and the response we got, which was largely positive, the chairman of the board announced in April that starting in 2014, the school would begin to charge 50% tuition, which right now is valued at 20,000 a year. They can’t confirm that it won’t go higher, so they don’t intend to go back to a full tuition scholarship model. It’s really entering into a space that’s unchartered for us and is not working for other institutions. That’s ultimately why we decided to engage in this fluid occupation, which is not with barricades this time. We took the president’s office, and I’m able to sit here and talk to you because other students are holding the space and making sure the guards don’t close the doors. We can come in and out. Last time, we had eleven students, and we barricaded ourselves into a space. The president’s office doesn’t have a bathroom or any way to get water, where the other space had a bathroom and a sink, so it was really necessary for us, if we didn’t want it to be a short sit-in, to make sure that it was fluid. It’s a new form of occupation, but it seems like one that might be viable in the future.
Faculty from all three schools within Cooper Union have been visiting us in the president’s office. The full-time faculty in the School of Art passed a vote of no confidence. Also, the student body of the School of Art and many faculty of the School of Architecture and Engineering have signed as well. The adjuncts have been threatened that if they sign this vote of no confidence, they may not be invited back, and that’s a part of the precarious nature of being an adjunct, and our school is made up of nearly 80% adjunct faculty. That’s really a problem because they don’t have a way to voice how they feel. This is a problem that occurs at other schools as well. The adjuncts are also there with us, but less visibly. It’s not safe for them to sign the document.
The first time we took a space in December, we had three demands. The first demand was that the administration reaffirm the mission statement as it stands, including the full tuition scholarship. The second demand was that drastic changes be made to the schools governance, which would include putting students and faculty from each of the schools as voting members of the board, with the board making their meetings public and their minutes public. The third was that Jamshed Bharucha step down, which was the most contested demand at the time because people still had a lot of reservations. For me at the time, it wasn’t a question. It was very clear that he had been hired by the board to make these things happen, to make tuition happen, to make expansion happen, to wait many of us students out. Many of us are upperclassman. What he didn’t realize was the way he handled these student campaigns has really radicalized and galvanized the student body, including the underclassman and the incoming students, as well as the parents. What he’s really done is awaken a whole community that was previously unaware that we had financial difficulty. The demand we have this time with this fluid occupation is that he step down. We’ve also said that if he is able to reaffirm the mission and change the governance that we would be able to retract the vote of no confidence, but it seems increasingly unlikely that he is able to do those things because those are not the things he is contractually obligated to do. While there does exist an ultimatum, it doesn’t seem like he will be able to see those changes out.
I took part in Occupy because of my financial situation and
because even though on a smaller community level I surround myself with people
who are engaged in the social practices and lifestyles I would like to see. I
know it’s not part of the mass culture. That’s hard to deal with on a day to
day, to be so surrounded by mass consumerism, neoliberalism, capitalism, and
not see any real direct way to circumvent that. I do go to Cooper Union,
which is free, but I have almost 60,000 in debt from living in the city and
having to live in a dorm as a freshman. The way that we
so quickly indebt our students with student debt and push them into a really
meek job market is really scary to me. I’ve always had to work two or three
jobs and an internship while at Cooper. While It’s fulfilling to work a lot, it’s
also very daunting to think that as much as I make doing those things and having
my work practice as an artist, in six months, I’ll have to be paying two types
of loans off to the government, and they’re going to be about equal to my rent.
I know people who have much more. It seems like there really is a better
way to do this.
I envision a future for education where we’re not at the hands of these unaccountable administrations and boards. Across the city, every school that I’ve spoken to shares these same issues and same grievances, whether they manifest in terms of tuition or expansion or fees or cuts is specific to each school, but the problem always stems from the administration and the lack of understanding between the community, made up of students, faculty, staff and alumni, and the administration. It seems arbitrary the way we choose to empower hierarchies to exist in these institutions. At Cooper, I envision a more cooperative form of administration where the power is vested in a group of students or a board of deans or something that allows for more participation. That was what Peter Cooper envisioned. I think it’s not too late. I think there are people that think this is a system, a culture, a society that’s stuck in its ways, but I think we forget how easy it is to change things.
I envision a future for education where we’re not at the hands of these unaccountable administrations and boards. Across the city, every school that I’ve spoken to shares these same issues and same grievances, whether they manifest in terms of tuition or expansion or fees or cuts is specific to each school, but the problem always stems from the administration and the lack of understanding between the community, made up of students, faculty, staff and alumni, and the administration. It seems arbitrary the way we choose to empower hierarchies to exist in these institutions. At Cooper, I envision a more cooperative form of administration where the power is vested in a group of students or a board of deans or something that allows for more participation. That was what Peter Cooper envisioned. I think it’s not too late. I think there are people that think this is a system, a culture, a society that’s stuck in its ways, but I think we forget how easy it is to change things.
I hope it brings about a world where people have agency over
their lives and aren’t born into debt or enslaved by burdens they are born into
whether it’s race, class, gender or financial situations. Those are
things that I deal with. They are things that my friends deal with. They are
things that potentially my children might deal with. It doesn’t have to be like
this. You look at how these micro cultures and groups are beginning to explore
these different ways of organizing and coordinating and engaging in mutual aid.
I think the New York Times and many people were quick to call what was happening the end of an era of free education, that first started with CUNY and is now plaguing Cooper and other institutions, which are free or largely free. Part of that response is that it really galvanized a lot of students who already had plans to go out and create their own institutions that are based on the Cooper Union principles, and I think that’s really poignant because regardless of what happens to Cooper, I know that a lot of my peers are going to be really steadfast and committed to creating these institutions that in some way will be able to avoid the struggles that Cooper is going through right now because they won’t be burdened with the formal structures of boards and administrations. In that way, our president always talks about crisis and opportunity. It’s funny because he’s the one that’s least able to see the two of them when the rest of the community sees it so clearly, that this is really an opportunity to bring Cooper back into a very forward thinking, progressive, radical space. If we can do it, other places can do it. I think regardless of what happens to Cooper, I do see a world where more schools like Cooper will exist, where more collaborative and mutual aid ideas do exist.
As far as the ecology of the world is concerned, I am very worried. I think many people are very worried. That’s a different type of reality. The fight we’re fighting at Cooper is winnable in my mind because it’s just based on social relations, but the one that we’re working on with the world is one that’s based on science and things that have already happened. I think we’ll be able to achieve a lot of the social recourse that needs to happen in a more timely fashion than we’ll be able to achieve some of the environmental imperatives that need to happen or needed to have happened. I think that that’s worth noting because I really think we can reclaim Cooper for what is was, but that might not be enough. We have to be thinking about the way we are exploiting the world and what that means because it means something now that it didn’t mean ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago. I think that’s probably the next frontier.
We don’t have to destroy the world to enjoy it. I’m very interested in ecology and sustainability, and I feel the next forefront in education will be vital in cultivating citizens that are engaged in that. I look at the curriculums in other schools, and I look at high schools and see what they are taught, and I see how deficient it is in preparing the students for the realities of the real world. We have become so addicted to standardized tests and ways of figuring out how much your family can contribute to a school, and they are such inadequate markers of where we are as people. I envision a world that is not shackled to the systems, and I think that social movements like Occupy and occupations of student spaces help bring about the windows of opportunity for people to see past what we assume is the way we have to live.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
I think the New York Times and many people were quick to call what was happening the end of an era of free education, that first started with CUNY and is now plaguing Cooper and other institutions, which are free or largely free. Part of that response is that it really galvanized a lot of students who already had plans to go out and create their own institutions that are based on the Cooper Union principles, and I think that’s really poignant because regardless of what happens to Cooper, I know that a lot of my peers are going to be really steadfast and committed to creating these institutions that in some way will be able to avoid the struggles that Cooper is going through right now because they won’t be burdened with the formal structures of boards and administrations. In that way, our president always talks about crisis and opportunity. It’s funny because he’s the one that’s least able to see the two of them when the rest of the community sees it so clearly, that this is really an opportunity to bring Cooper back into a very forward thinking, progressive, radical space. If we can do it, other places can do it. I think regardless of what happens to Cooper, I do see a world where more schools like Cooper will exist, where more collaborative and mutual aid ideas do exist.
As far as the ecology of the world is concerned, I am very worried. I think many people are very worried. That’s a different type of reality. The fight we’re fighting at Cooper is winnable in my mind because it’s just based on social relations, but the one that we’re working on with the world is one that’s based on science and things that have already happened. I think we’ll be able to achieve a lot of the social recourse that needs to happen in a more timely fashion than we’ll be able to achieve some of the environmental imperatives that need to happen or needed to have happened. I think that that’s worth noting because I really think we can reclaim Cooper for what is was, but that might not be enough. We have to be thinking about the way we are exploiting the world and what that means because it means something now that it didn’t mean ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago. I think that’s probably the next frontier.
We don’t have to destroy the world to enjoy it. I’m very interested in ecology and sustainability, and I feel the next forefront in education will be vital in cultivating citizens that are engaged in that. I look at the curriculums in other schools, and I look at high schools and see what they are taught, and I see how deficient it is in preparing the students for the realities of the real world. We have become so addicted to standardized tests and ways of figuring out how much your family can contribute to a school, and they are such inadequate markers of where we are as people. I envision a world that is not shackled to the systems, and I think that social movements like Occupy and occupations of student spaces help bring about the windows of opportunity for people to see past what we assume is the way we have to live.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/