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The student occupation of the eighth floor of the Cooper Union Foundation Building entered its second day this morning, as activists pressing for reaffirmation of the college’s tuition-free structure, governance reforms, and the resignation of the Cooper Union president remained barricaded in a space at the top of the college’s iconic signature structure.
As discussed here yesterday, the occupation was launched in conjunction with a day of action around the college’s decision to consider charging tuition for its undergrads for the first time in more than a century. (Cooper Union, founded as an institution committed to radical accessibility in 1859, is today one of only a handful of American colleges to provide full tuition scholarships to all admitted undergraduate students.)
The Cooper Union occupiers released a second statement this morning. In it, they reiterated their intention to remain in occupation “until our demands are met or we are otherwise removed.” The group also announced plans for a press conference outside the Foundation Building at 2:30 this afternoon. Additionally, a livestream of the occupation has been set up, and is broadcasting as of the time of this writing.
The New School Free Press has been covering the occupation since it began. Their liveblog now reports that a group of students who occupied a space on the fourth floor of the Foundation Building overnight in solidarity with the eighth floor demonstrators were removed by campus security this morning.
Noon Update | I mentioned this on Twitter yesterday, but it’s worth repeating here. All current Cooper Union undergraduates, and all new admits for Fall 2013, are guaranteed free tuition until graduation. The college has pledged not to charge any student currently enrolled or applying any tuition fees whatsoever.
That means that all the folks who are accusing the CU occupiers of acting in their own narrow self-interest are wrong. From a financial perspective, the occupiers have nothing to gain — and, given the possibility of legal charges or academic sanctions, quite a bit to lose — from their protest. They’re not doing this because they don’t want to pay tuition. They’re doing it because they believe in what Cooper Union stands for, and has stood for over the last century and a half. They’re doing it to preserve the character of the institution for those who come after them.
4:45 pm | Students are still occupying. Supporters outside recently rigged up a pulley system with an Up-style balloon bouquet to deliver a pizza up the building’s facade. The New School Free Press has the text of an afternoon statement from Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha in which he declares that the college’s priority is “the safety of our students and to insure that the actions of a few do not disrupt classes for all.” The statement goes on to say that the administration’s “approach in the coming day(s) will continue to be one of discourse —engaging in a dialog with the students.”
Doesn’t seem like a police raid is imminent.
A federal judge has ruled that three supporters of “ex-gay” therapy may not be sanctioned by the state of California under a new law against the use of so-called conversion therapy on gays, lesbians, and bisexuals under the age of 18.
The law, SB 1172, passed earlier this year and is set to go into effect on January 1. Declaring that “being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming,” and that “sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people,” the law bars mental health professionals from attempting to change the sexual orientation of gay minors.
Judge William B. Shubb, a George HW Bush appointee, ruled that three men challenging the law — psychiatrist Anthony Duk, therapist Donald Welch, and prospective counseling student Aaron Bitzer — may not be sanctioned under its provisions until the resolution of a pending court case on their claim that it violates their free speech rights.
In his ruling Judge Shubb declared that SB 1172 is “unlikely” to survive constitutional scrutiny because its underlying premise — that conversion therapy is harmful to minors — is based on “questionable and scientifically incomplete studies.”
Judge Shubb’s ruling currently applies only to the three named plaintiffs, but their lawyer says that they would be willing to add any other mental health practitioner facing sanctions under the law to their suit.
As I mentioned this morning, today is a day of action at Cooper Union, one of New York City’s oldest and most esteemed colleges. Cooper Union has been tuition-free for 110 years, but this fall the administration started charging for Masters programs, and students fear undergrads are likely next.
Today’s announced activities included a teach-in, demonstrations, and an evening colloquium, but late this morning activists launched another tactic — barricading themselves inside the top floor of the college’s Foundation Building. As of this writing (2:40 pm Eastern Time), that’s where they are.
The occupiers released a statement at midday, in which they declared that their action was a “response to the lack of transparency and accountability that has plagued this institution for decades and now threatens the college’s mission of free education.” They issued three demands: That the college restore and preserve free tuition, that it initiate governance changes including student and faculty representation on the board of trustees, and that the college’s president, psychologist Jamshed Bharucha — who took office just seventeen months ago — resign.
Cooper Union activists are tweeting about the day’s events at @FreeCooperUnion, and #FreeCooperUnion has been adopted as the go-to hashtag for coverage. New School Free Press reporter Kali Hays, tweeting as @HaysKali, appears to be the only person regularly updating from inside the occupation.
Hays tweeted from inside the occupation for the first time shortly after noon, and reported half an hour later that maintenance workers were “attempting to drill/saw” through the door to the space the students had taken over. Hays later reported that the drilling had been called off, and that administrators had given assurances that they would not for the moment attempt to gain entry to the space. At about 2pm Hays tweeted that the occupiers would “not negotiate with administration,” quoting one occupier 40 minutes later as saying “We feel confident about our demands. We’ve put a lot of work into them.”
3:30 Update | The occupation is front-page news on the website of the arts magazine Art in America, and has made the City Room blog of the New York Times as well. The City Room story includes an interview with occupier Victoria Sobel, who says the students were inspired by past occupations at The New School and NYU, as well as this spring’s Quebec student uprising. Sobel says that the occupiers have food and bedding and are prepared to stay “as long as necessary.”
3:40 Update | Sobel confirms to the Gothamist website that the group’s demands are non-negotiable, saying that they will not leave until those demands are met.
4:40 Update | Heading out to dinner with my kids. Will update when I return if there’s news. In the interim I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I snuck a look at Twitter over fries, and RTed a thing or two.
Morning Update | They lasted the night with no disruptions. More in a new post shortly.
New York City’s Cooper Union is one of the nation’s great private universities. Founded in 1859, it was from the start an experiment in radical accessibility — open to women and people of color and students of any religion, free to the working class. And since 1902 it has accepted students on a need-blind basis, charging none of them a penny in tuition. Today the college is among the most selective in the country, and though more than two thirds of its students come from public high schools, the average graduate leaves Cooper Union with just $10,000 in debt.
But that may be about to change.
Last year the college announced that it was considering charging tuition for the first time since 1902, citing the economic downturn, poor investments, and a series of expensive capital projects. This year Cooper Union began charging tuition in its graduate programs, and though undergraduate enrollees for the fall of 2013 have been promised a tuition-free education, no similar pledge has been made for the following year.
Students have been mobilizing against the tuition plan since it was first proposed, and today marks their biggest day of action and outreach yet. Starting at noon, the activists of Free Cooper Union will be holding a day of free classes and demonstrations at the campus’s Peter Cooper Park, followed by a three-hour Summit on Debt and Education at the college’s Great Hall at six pm.
Afternoon Update | Students have barricaded themselves inside the top floor of the college’s Foundation Building, demanding a return of free tuition, governance reforms, and the resignation of the college president. Ongoing coverage here.
This academic year has been a slow one for campus building occupations in the US so far, but it looks like something’s going down at Berkeley this evening. Reports from multiple sources on Twitter suggest that a smallish group of students have occupied Eshleman Hall.
Still getting up to speed on this story. Will update as I gather data, and livetweet at @studentactivism.
Eshleman Hall was previously the home of a number of student organizations. It’s been slated for demolition as part of a renovation project in Berkeley’s Lower Sproul area, and has been vacant since the start of the fall semester. Student groups previously housed in Eshleman include the student government and student newspaper.
The website Occupy California reports that there are about six occupiers on the sixth floor of Eshleman, and that the occupiers’ demands are
amnesty to demonstrators, the restoration of the Multicultural Student Development (MSD) to its former structure, increase the MSD budget, increase funding for recruitment and retention services.
It’s been reported on Twitter that Berkeley’s dean of students and provost entered Eshleman Hall in an attempt to negotiate with occupiers, but that the negotiations produced no positive results.
At least some of the Eshleman occupiers have reportedly chained themselves by their necks to inside doors in Eshleman, risking serious injury if the police force the doors open.
6:30 pm Pacific Time update | Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Cal has a story up on the occupation. They say there are a hundred students outside the building, and “at least two” chained by the neck inside. They say the administration “has secured the building,” but have no immediate plans to retake it. Also, “The protesters inside are purportedly from Raza Recruitment and Retention Center, a campus group that aims to increase Hispanic enrollment in higher education, and REACH!, which aims to serve Asians and Pacific Islanders on campus.”
6:40 pm | There’s a livestream of a stairwell in Eshleman Hall going on here.
6:45 pm | Hallway livestream seems to have concluded. The reclaimuc website has the occupation’s demands:
We Demand that the Multicultural Student Development Offices be restored to their former structure by Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri. Countless students and the ASUC as an entity have voiced this opinion and received no changes.
We demand that the budget allocation of the multicultural student development offices be increased to meet the needs of their work.
We demand that none of the peaceful protesters in this occupation receive any punishment or repercussions for this activity.
We demand an increase in funding for the Recruitment and Retention Center to assist in their mission of increasing the enrollment of underrepresented minorities on campus.
6:55 pm | Reports from the scene that first round of negotiations over, reps of occupiers caucusing on admin offer.
7:20 pm | There are reportedly about a hundred students outside Eshleman Hall right now, and perhaps half a dozen inside. Some reports say that two students have chained themselves to stairwell doors on the sixth floor of the building, blocking access from the outside and risking injury to do so.
Wednesday | The occupiers left voluntarily at about 9:40 on Tuesday night after receiving assurances that they would not be brought up on criminal or disciplinary charges. Administrators further agreed to establish a “transitional review team” to address the future of the multicultural student center.
studentactivism.net 
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