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In response to drastic cuts at The New School, university students, faculty and staff marched down West 12th Street on March 4 to hand deliver a gigantic letter and petition addressed to university president Joel Towers.
“While the President’s Office characterizes this as a ‘transparent’ process of ‘restructuring,’ the reality for workers and students has been much different: vague promises, few details, closed-door meetings, and unannounced changes—including course cancellations, planned cuts to student medical services, and other austerity measures," states the letter, signed by over 1,650 people. "None of these changes serve the needs of any part of our community, but instead harm students and place Management’s financial burden on vulnerable members of the university’s workforce."
The cuts include goals to slashing student medical services, firing health workers, merging and cancelling several courses, majors and programs. They also include the elimination of 20 percent of full-time faculty and both union and non-union staff by the end of the academic year.
As part of those reductions, last November, university leadership sent 169 full-time faculty and non-unionized staff a voluntary separation and early retirement package offer, demanding a response in less than two weeks. The accepted offers didn’t match the school’s target, so workers are now waiting for further layoffs along with other austerity measures to meet the school’s budget hole of $48 million, according to Local 7902 of the United Auto Workers, which represents hundreds of workers at The New School.
“Show us what you're up to. Because we keep getting surprises,” Raha Rafii, a part-time faculty member at The New School said during the rally. “We want true transparency. Why should we believe that the only way to manage this budget deficit is to get rid of the most vulnerable members in the university?”
One solution to the deficit proposed by the union is a salary cap of $200,000, which has been dismissed by leadership in the past. Top leadership positions at The New School make well over $200,000, with president Towers making close to a million per year.
“We're not accepting these austerity measures. We're not accepting that our lives have to be made worse, more insecure, more unstable because Joel Towers wants to live in a nice apartment in Manhattan and in a nice house in Brooklyn,” Danielle Twiss, a representative of the student employees at The New School (SENS), told the crowd. “So SENS is going to keep on bargaining and The New School is going to keep fighting to be recognized as a union.”
The gathering of university workers on March 4 began mid-day on The New School’s main building on 5th avenue. Faculty, staff and students gathered in a circle with noise makers, drums and chants before marching down to President Towers' office.
The march was also attended in solidarity by unionized contract faculty at NYU who have a strike deadline set for the morning of March 23, following two bargaining sessions scheduled to address demands with their administration.
“Their fight is our fight,” said Brendan Hogan, a contract faculty union member at NYU. “The union's struggle is seen as a broader fight against the corporate ethos and austerity measures affecting higher education.”
A group of demonstrators rolled up the giant letter before entering the building to deliver their bargaining demands to President Towers.
“They keep us so isolated and divided so that we don't know what's happening with each other,” Carrie Hawks, a member of the full-time faculty union at The New School, told The Chief at the rally. “We can all agree that the priorities of The New School should be great and excellent education for our students. That's the reason the school exists. We can prioritize that over bad real estate decisions and high compensation for provosts. Bringing all the workers together makes us a united front.”
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