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Earlier reports on this morning’s New School occupation can be found here.
The New School has released a statement to the media on what it calls this morning’s “break in at 65 Fifth Avenue.” The action was not “a simple political protest,” according to the statement, since the protesters’ “entry into this building was forced, they removed a man who was cleaning the building, took his phone, injured a security officer, and did physical damage to the building.”
In the statement, the New School confirms that it asked the NYPD “to remove and arrest those who were trespassing on our property,” and declares that all New School students involved have been suspended effective immediately.
The New School Free Press, a student newspaper, reports that in addition to the nineteen people arrested inside the building, at least one New School student and one NYU student were “maced and arrested” at about 11:30 this morning. There is no confirmation of the charge that police used tear gas and pepper spray inside 65 Fifth Avenue as they retook the building.
Click “Read the rest of this entry” for afternoon updates.
Ongoing reports on the New School occupation can be found here.
So I was supposed to be posting the final installment of my series on the New School In Exile this week, but with another building occupation underway at the New School, that post is going on the back burner. I will, though, share a few thoughts along the lines of what I was going to post there.
As of this writing, at 10:00 am, there’s been no formal statement from the students occupying 65 Fifth Avenue. No statement of demands, no statement of principles. If New School In Exile is behind the occupation, they’re not taking credit.
Other voices are, however, rushing in to fill the void. The New School Free Press is liveblogging the event, and they’ve got several strong quotes up from New School president Bob Kerrey. The story is all over Twitter, and it’s beginning to hit the blogs.
New School In Exile lost momentum in March in large part because it failed to use social media to keep its supporters informed and engaged. Take Back NYU suffered during its February occupation because others provided a more compelling ongoing narrative of their action than they did.
Today’s New School occupiers have an opportunity to create a new dynamic.
I have no idea what kind of internet access the Fifth Avenue occupiers have, but if they have any at all, someone in the building should be broadcasting — on Twitter, on a blog, even by commenting at news sites.
And if you don’t have internet access inside, or you’re too busy with moment-to-moment issues to be blogging, get on the phone to a supporter with a computer, and have them do it for you.
Tell us who you are. Tell us what you’re doing. Tell us why you’re doing it. Tell us what you’re looking for. Start talking, and keep talking.
Get your story out.
11 am update: One of the occupiers is blogging.
A new study of teen eating habits found that young vegetarians tend to eat healthier than meat-eaters, consuming fewer calories from fat. It found that young vegetarians are less likely to be overweight than their peers who eat meat, and that the vast majority of young vegetarians have ho history of binging, purging, or other forms of disordered eating.
But here’s how Time magazine framed their story on the report:
“Is Vegetarianism a Teen Eating Disorder?”
Yup. Despite the evidence that most teen vegetarians make healthy choices in eating from both a nutritional and a behavioral perspective, Time chose to raise alarms that vegetarianism is itself an eating disorder.
What’s the basis for this claim? Well, it turns out that teen vegetarians aged 15-18, particularly those who don’t stick with vegetarianism over the long term, report higher incidences of certain eating disorders than those who have never tried a vegetarian diet. In one study of Minnesota teens, for instance, 25% of vegetarians said they’d taken weight pills or diuretics or vomited to lose weight in the past, as opposed to 10% of meat eaters.
This is an interesting finding, and if it’s backed up by other research it may suggest that a small — but significant — minority of teen vegetarians are at higher risk for eating disorders than their non-vegetarian peers.
But some or all of the effect may be explained by other factors. For instance, Time itself notes that vegetarians may be more sensitive to unhealthy eating habits, and thus more likely to report them to researchers. Perhaps some teens choose vegetarianism as a result of having become more conscious of their food choices after overcoming an eating disorder.
And since girls are more likely to (1) be vegetarians and (2) have eating disorders than boys, one would expect to find higher rates of eating disorders among vegetarians just because of gender, whether there was any correlation between the two issues or not. (One article suggests that in Britain girls are ten times as likely to be vegetarian as boys.)
Time‘s conclusions, in other words, are mostly without basis — even if one accepts the findings of the studies it relies on.
And the article doesn’t just mangle the science on vegetarianism, either. It takes gratuitous shots at non-vegetarian young people as well. It refers to vegetarianism as a “common teen fad,” for instance, and likens it to “experimenting with foolish things like dyeing your hair purple.”
Another “foolish thing” teens do, according to Time? “Going door-to-door for a political party.”
Sheesh.
The University of Maryland, College Park says it “must allow” the campus Student Power Party to stage a free speech forum tonight, even though that forum will include a viewing of excerpts from Pirates II, the film that the university refused to allow students to screen on campus last week.
Meanwhile, the state legislator who over the weekend threatened to eliminate UMD’s funding if the film was shown is now saying he may seek to cut the university’s capital budget.
Here’s the Facebook page for tonight’s screening, which was scheduled to start at 7 pm, and Gawker’s take on the whole thing.
Tuesday update: The forum and screening went off without a hitch, and the state senator who was threatening to cut UMD’s funds backed down — sort of. He now says that he won’t seek to cut funding over last night’s event, but will press universities to implement policies that say “you can’t have university-sponsored XXX entertainment on campus” going forward.
About two hundred students showed up last night, watching the first half hour of the movie after a discussion of campus speech issues. When asked why they hadn’t shown the whole thing Student Power Party spokesperson Malcolm Harris said “you’d be hard-pressed to find a lot of students who want to sit around for a two-and-a-half-hour viewing of pornography on a Monday night.”
Student government elections are taking place today and tomorrow at UMD, with the Student Power Party running as one of four slates.
The University of Maryland Diamondback has a strong editorial up this morning on the college’s porn film controversy. Excerpts:
This isn’t just about state legislators and free speech. University administrators’ decision-making process last week demonstrates how little regard they have for student input. […] Administrators might persuasively argue they won’t support hate-speech events that discriminate against a religious group or an ethnic group. In the same vein, they might have argued the canceled event would have degraded women.
But such a decision must be made in a public forum, with as wide a segment of stakeholders as can possibly be assembled. Deeming material inappropriate behind closed doors is the fast road toward truly unjust distributions of resources, and frankly, to discrimination. […]
It’s easy to devalue the precedent administrators have set in the context of a bunch of hormonal college students in a tizzy to see some skin. But what happens when federal funding for stem-cell research comes up? What happens when administrators decide whether a speaker on Israel or Palestine is engaging in hate speech? So grab your swords and muskets, mateys, because a decision this egregious can’t be quietly tolerated. It’s time to rock the boat.
The Student Power Party is still planning to hold a screening of the film and a free speech forum on campus tonight. No word yet on whether the administration will allow that event to take place.
studentactivism.net 
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