NEW YORK—Starting off the new school year on a defiant note, student activist group, Take Back NYU, delivered a list of demands to New York University’s president on Tuesday, Aug. 2.
It makes three demands of the administration: disclose the NYU’s operating budget, disclose its endowment investment, and include a student on the Board of Trustees, which currently consists of 46 top financial contributors to the university and includes the president, John Sexton.
The campaign is an effort to get the university’s top officials to open up about where students’ tuition dollars and financial contributions are going.
“I want to make sure that as a proud member of the NYU alumni, what I give is going to the people and the causes in which I believe,” said Amanda White, an ’08 alumna at a press conference. “I have faith in NYU, the place that has taught me so much. But I don’t want to go on faith alone. I want to give in a transparent, in an accountable, and in a democratic way.”
This year, as the cost of attending NYU surpasses the $50,000 mark, students are more concerned than ever about what exactly their dollars are funding. Though university administration says that financial aid is also increasing, the Princeton Review found that NYU ranked first in students dissatisfied with financial aid. An NYU student’s debt upon graduation averages $33, 637 compared to $9,290 at Harvard and $23,936 at Cornell, according to collegeboard.com.
Caitlin Boehne, student senator from the College of Arts and Science, Students Creating Radical Change, says each year she receives a letter announcing a five or six percent tuition hike with little explanation for the reason
It’s not just money issues that have gotten students riled up. Students aren’t sufficiently represented in the decision-making process, said Boehne.
Last August, NYU’s administration announced that the university will open a liberal arts branch in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Though the school will be operated by NYU, it will be funded entirely by the Abu Dhabi government, an arrangement that concerns students of Take Back NYU.
Other items of concern include the $1 million that NYU gave the city park district toward the reconstruction of adjacent Washington Square Park and an estimated $700,000 spent on lobbying city, state, and federal governments.
Members of Take Back NYU delivered their demands to the president’s office in the NYU library. The president was not in the office, according to his secretary.
