Dave is…
Not occupying school property.
Alright Tommy this is for you and the Pone and everyone else who smiles when I say “pretentious”. It in one 48 hour period encapsulates everything I loathe about hippies, hipsters, protestors, post-modern people, NYU and pretentiousness.
So I mentioned in the last post, but it deserves a post of its own, shoot perhaps a couple depending on how long I rant. Really I should have written this up last week but the story just kept developing. So here it is, belated but no less, to paraphrase Jackie Chiles, “Pretentious, outrageous, preposterous” story of NYU’s occupation.
Background: The last couple years have seen some strong argument between administration and students and grad student TA’s over issues ranging from transparency for the school budget and unionizing of the grad assistants. The NYU Kimmel Center is the student center which in NYU’s world includes no game room or bar but a food court, some meeting rooms and a lounge or two. Take Back NYU is an ostensibly guerilla student group that to date hasn’t done anything more impressive that organize the occasional flash mob style dance in the library during finals. Finally, The New School, another university just a dozen blocks up the street from NYU, saw students occupy its cafeteria last semester right before Christmas in an attempt to demand the removal of its president former Senator Bob Kerrey. Keep that back-story in mind.
Carpe de Kimmel (Seize the Kimmel): So last night at around 9:15pm Take Back NYU (TBNYU) pretended to stage another flash mob dance party in the third floor food court/lounge in Kimmel. But apparently that was a cover and they actually intended to occupy “indefinitely until NYU complies with a series of demands to make our school more democratic, accountable and socially just.” I quote their own statement. They apparently were tired of not getting anywhere with through channels protesting. Keep in mind when we get to their list of demands that their initial statement suggests a focus on the issues of the school.
Now and this is indicative of what else is to come, by occupy I mean they piled up a whole bunch of tables and chairs in front of the doors, WHICH OPEN OUT. I don’t know if you’ve seen that scene in the Big Lebowski, or any Warner Brothers cartoon ever created but stacking stuff up on the inside of a door when it opens out doesn’t block shit. But NYU operating cautiously, presumably desperate to avoid bad publicity, handles this gently, doesn’t kick them out and instead brings in security (and notifies NYPD) to watch over them and lets them stay overnight while recalling NYU’s public spokesman to return from his vacation and deal with them. (Look in the upper left hand corner of the above picture to see what I’m talking about. I mean, there is a NYU guard standing in the open door way for Christsakes.)
So what do young revolutionaries, these children of the 60s this brave warriors of freedom do on the first night of a university changing occupation? I now quote from the New York Times as nothing I can say could possibly express in text my level of scorn, horror and disgust:
The students passed their first night chatting, reading and playing cards. They ate food they had brought, including apples, oranges, hummus and peanut butter. Some joined in an exercise session they called the “callisthenic dialectic workout,” stretching and jumping in place before adjourning for a discussion of Hegel’s philosophy that lasted nearly until daybreak.
HEGEL TILL DAYBREAK??? WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE TRYING TO BE? My skin crawls every time I read that.
Accounts are mixed about how many kids actually occupied the floor at this point. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50. At least one of whom felt the need to remove his shirt, though not his hipster approved skinny jeans or approved by no one green bandana around his neck. (See above. That photo, and any others from inside the occupation, was taken by NYULocal.com’s embedded journalist Charlie Eisenhood who live blogged the first day and change. I link to his live blog later.)
Personally my favorite story from the early occupation was from some kid who claimed to be in the school communist group who said he would have stayed with the occupiers overnight but he hadn’t brought a pillow.
…
Somewhere Che Gueverra is writhing in his grave. This is what happens when you let your revolution devalue into a popular series of hipster approved t-shirts.
Apples, oranges, hummus and peanut butter? That’s a rather bourgeoisie diet for a group of wannabe revolutionaries.
And Hegel…till day break. I’d rather get a root canal from my blind dentist, Dr. Kervorkian. Spare me.
Why can I not see anything but the heading for Pretentiousness II & III & IV? I can read before & after………..