sigh

NYU's student newspaper continues its now apparently protracted polemics against a single student activist group targeted last week by President Sexton by informing all of us that real activism involves a little studying and then asking the "proper people" in the administration nicely. How tragic for the 25 GSOCers whom the administration fired and blacklisted that we were not privy to such brilliant advice three years ago when we most needed it. How helpful it is to have a campus newspaper that blithely echoes administration talking points in poorly orchestrated, poorly articulated, and poorly informed attacks on student activists. The Washington Square News is well aware - or should be - that SCRC, for instance, has been attempting to "productively engage" the administration for much of the last two semesters. The administration's silence on budget disclosure has more to do with their refusal to afford undergraduates (much less graduate employees now repeatedly branded "financial aid recipients") a seat at the table. (A table, by the way, which i would like to see thrown out entirely in favor of more just, more radical, if you will, overhaul of what it means to be a university, a student, a teacher. This, of course, is a concept the WSN refuses to even entertain, for it is surely too impractical for John Sexton and thus for them, too steeped in the "outdated" activism of, like, Cesar Chavez. And Gandhi. Fuck those guys. Sustainable tacos are so much more worthwhile.)

Ok, that last bit came off as kind of obnoxious. The speed with which administrators adopt green capitalism as the epitome of 'responsible' activism has always horrified me, but I don't mean to disparage the very commendable efforts of student activists to institutionalize environmentalist practices even in the most neoliberal of institutional spaces.

In other NYU news, Sexton has lured the sitting president of Swarthmore College to be the head of the NYU Abu Dhabi adventure, and the endowment, flush with donations from rich alumni and the labor of thousands of contingent academics has reached 2.5 billion dollars. Clearly, it's time to buy a new luxury condominium building, because who needs financial aid, anyway?