Letter to the editor

Take Back NYU

The Santa Clara's editorial comment regarding the Take Back NYU sit-in, titled "Playing the part of a protester" in the Feb. 26 issue was alarming.

As indicated by its focus on the clearly secondary demands of TBNYU -- those concerned with Israel -- the article missed the crux of the dispute.

The primary concern of TBNYU was budget transparency, which an article published in the very same TSC issue illuminated quite clearly.

For this alone, TSC's claim that the students' demands were "originally unclear" is not only unreasonable, but quite simply misinformation.

TBNYU has been quite clear in their demands for budget transparency since 2007, when the group began their campaign -- which was covered several times by NYU's student newspaper.

TSC's opinion piece made it seem as if the sit-in was unreasonable. However, what is unreasonable is the fact that the administration continually refuses to create a dialogue with their students, who have made several civilly-obedient attempts to make their campus more democratic.

Among these attempts was a simple letter to the president calling for budget disclosure and a student position on the Board of Trustees. Such transparency would help combat discrimination in employee pay, unfair tuition increases and support of genocide and war profiteering.

Transparency would also support sustainability and a living wage for all employees -- things our own university is committed to. Their letter that expressed these issues was delivered on Sept. 2, 2008.

The administration had a month to respond, and did nothing. From there town hall meetings were held and more press coverage ensued. The escalation to the sit-in was entirely justified, and did quite a lot more for their campaign than a blog or social networking site ever could alone.

Nick Sanchez '10

SCCAP Labor Action Committee