Why? Because every second at NYU, living in the heart of Manhattan, is an education. Perhaps this is true outside the classroom more so than in. Let me give you three examples.
1. This past Fall, our graduate student TAs went on strike demanding that the University recognize their union. What outsiders might not realize, is that everyone in the NYU community got to experience first hand the power of the First Amendment and the right of the worker. We chose whether or not to cross picket lines, opting for pissing off professors or pissing off protestors. We chose to walk off campus to go to class, we heard brilliant people talking about how the unions saved their ancestors, their parents, themselves, and heard up-and-coming Ph.D.s and Masters students screaming at the top of their lungs and drumming beneath an inflatable rat. Going to NYU in the Fall was in a way reliving a history that most people can only read and dream about. We watched as rights were upheld and knocked down, and maybe we took a little something away from that.
2. Today Washington Square Park was crawling with immigrants and their supporters, police barracades, ACLU watchdogs and journalists. The air was alive with a language that lots of people didn't understand, chants that meant nothing to probably the majority of the NYU community. But our sidewalks were blocked off, and our streets were covered with silent police lights and we watched the protest of our government as we ate lunch in our "quad." It was almost as if we had thousands of visitors that had come to our campus to show us just what it means to exercise our right to protest our government and not be stopped: it was an interactive lecture, a celebration of Americanism that had fallen into our laps to show us possibility.
3. Tomorrow is the tuition reform rally, which will probably prove to be much smaller than the teeming immigration protest of today. Still, it seems so fitting that it comes at such a moment at our university. We have spent the last two semesters on the sidelines or in the masses of these two great examples of the way that rights can be exercised, and here we are at a cross-roads when we can begin to take change into our own hands. I don't believe that tomorrow's rally is about the outcome, I believe it's about the act itself. It is about students, faculty, a community demonstrating for a common good, the way we have learned by just being present for the past year. Perhaps we have no other choice than to rally together, or perhaps we do it because we've been inspired.
My point is not to put NYU on a pedestal. Hardly. My point is that our education, especially here, is all the time. It happens accidentally on the street corner or while we're picniking by the fountain. It happens when we're walking between classes or getting a cup of coffee in the morning. And with it, with this knowledge and understanding, comes an immense responsibility. No longer will we be able to justifiably sit on the sidelines and watch people practice the rights they were born with, but we will have to jump into the fray, scream in any language, thump on any drum, just because we've seen it and we know how it's done. If I can wish one thing for the community at NYU, that is what I wish. I wish that they will jump in, I wish that they will prove their rights everyday. I fear that they won't, but I hope that they will.
posted by iliza @ 12:50 AM
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