April 10 update: If you’re looking for news on this morning’s New School building occupation, you can find it here.

Dozens of New York City police swarmed into Washington Square Park late last night in response to rumors of a planned midnight protest at NYU’s Bobst library.

An NYU spokesperson said the university had received word that student activists at the New School had been discussing an upcoming Bobst action, and requested the police presence — fifty cops, thirty police cars, and at least one paddy wagon — as a “precaution.”

The cops set up barricades on Washington Square South, but stood down by 2 am when it became clear that no protest was taking place.

NYU student activists Take Back NYU! mounted a 40-hour occupation of the university’s Kimmel Center last month, and New School students sat in at a campus dining hall for 30 hours in December. The New School activists, who call themselves The New School In Exile, have pledged to shut down that campus on April 1 if the university’s widely-reviled president and vice president do not resign before then.

April first is twenty-one days from today. This is shaping up to be a jittery three weeks for NYU and New School administrators.

Evening update: There was an anonymous flyer drop into the atrium of the Bobst library this afternoon. Text: “The time has come to begin our refusal. We cannot allow ourselves to stand idly by while NYU profits by our intelligence, lining other people’s pockets while our future slips away. The crises we face are too great for self-interest-as-usual. This is the beginning of their end, and our beginning. Out of their fall, we will rise. Will you rise with us?”

Morning update: NYU Local has a video from the flyer-droppers.