The headlines of the two major articles on Tuesday’s public meeting at the New School each spin the story the same way…

The Chronicle of Higher Education: “New School Faculty Members Renew Standoff With President Bob Kerrey.”

The New York Times: “New School Faculty and President Still at Odds.” 

But as followers of this blog know, and as each of the above articles make clear, the New School breakdown is as much a result of student-administration disputes as of faculty-admin conflicts. And the big news out of the meeting, a student group’s ultimatum to Kerrey: Quit by April 1, or we’ll shut the New School down, was downplayed in both pieces.

Take a look at how the Times framed the dispute. They say “faculty members acknowledge that they have limited power to force out Mr. Kerrey,” and note that Kerrey still has broad support among the New School trustees. But when they introduce the student ultimatum, in the fourteenth paragraph of an eighteen-paragraph story, they describe it as a request from “Geeti Das, a doctoral student,” not as what it was — a demand from The New School in Exile, the activist group that Das represented at the meeting.

Does the New School in Exile have the power to shut the university down? I don’t know. But I’m going to be watching this story closely, and I have a hunch that April 1 may turn out to be a pretty big day in the history of this crisis.