Cooper Union Alum Climbs Famed Statue in Tuition Protest April 25, 2012 8:03Pm
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Cooper Union Alum Climbs Famed Statue in Tuition Protest April 25, 2012 8:03pm A man climbed the Peter Union statue, triggering a standoff with cops on April 25, 2012. (DNAinfo/Alan Neuhauser) By Alan Neuhauser and Wil Cruz EAST VILLAGE — A one-man protest against Cooper Union's decision to start charging graduate students tuition turned into a hour-long standoff with cops Wednesday when the dissenter scaled the Peter Cooper statue. The protester — whom friends identified as Jesse Kreuzer, a recent graduate of Cooper Union — climbed the famed statue on East 7th Street and Cooper Square in defiance of the school's decision to charge students for its graduate programs next year. "I'm doing this because I appreciate the education I got and what I got it for," said the protester, who moonwalked and made phone calls atop the statue. Some 200 gawkers cheered on the man, who was carrying a sign that read: "No tuition, it's our mission!" Kreuzer began climbing the statue around 5:30 p.m. but "his sign kept falling," said Santiago Gomez, a junior at Baruch College who was walking by at the time. "It takes a lot of b---s to get up there," Gomez added. "But they're going to raise tuition anyway." "Students can't afford loans. We can protest, but the big guys already decided." Cops initially tried to extend a ladder up to the protester, but it didn't reach. So they called for a bucket truck and eventually talked the man down from the statue at 6:45 p.m. He was taken into custody, though it was not immediately clear if he had been charged. The elite school announced Tuesday that it will begin charging graduate students tuition. It will not, however, charge undergraduate students to go to school. "Weighing all the alternatives, I am convinced that some fee-based programs are necessary for Cooper Union's solvency, and that this framework gives us the most optimistic way forward," said Jamshed Bharucha, the university's president on the school's web site. "Because we have a short runway to get these programs going, failing to act now will put the institution in peril." Still, the so-called hybrid model still hurts students, protesters said. "Cooper Union is free, but they're threatening to change that...It makes a huge difference in terms of debt," said Kanchan Richardson, a Cooper Union art major. "It affects people's lives. Education is invaluable and beyond a business model." Cops tried to convince the protester to get down from the statue on April 25, 2012. Students watched a man climb the statue at Cooper Union in protest of the student's decision to charge tuition for graduate students. Students looked on as cops took the protester into custody on April 25, 2012. Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20120425/lower-east-side-east-village/cooper-union-alum-climbs- famed-statue-tuition-protest#ixzz1t9u0pBrk HUFFINGTON POST Posted: 04/13/12 07:35 AM ET | Updated: 04/13/12 07:38 AM ET Commencement 2012: More Of The Coolest Names Giving Speeches This Year We gave you round one, now here's round two of some of the 2012 commencement speakers we're excited about. Being journalists and admitted nerds, HuffPost College cannot wait to hear what Ira Glass has to say in his speech to Goucher College graduates. But there's also the possibility of Steve Carell actually saying a favorite quote from The Office to a graduating class at Princeton; "May your hats fly as high as your dreams." Take a look at our new list. Which speeches would you most want to hear? Walter Isaacson 1 of 16 March 29, 2012 A Virtual Community Helping to Power the Effort in Syria By CHRIS PALMER and DANIEL A. MEDINA *Karam Nachar wants to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Every day, he wakes before dawn and begins working with other activists – planning opposition strategies, honing their message to the world media, and coordinating the smuggling of goods into the country to aid the revolution. They chat online or in the back rooms of cafes. “I want to build a new country,” Mr. Nachar, 29, said. “There’s no going back – we need to get rid of this regime.” But Mr. Nachar is not acting from Homs or Damascus or any other Syrian city that has been besieged by Mr. Assad’s forces over the past year. He conducts his operations out of an apartment on the Upper West Side and Karam Nachar, who teaches at Cooper Union, has been any place with Wi-Fi. helping the uprising in Syria as part of a Facebook group that has arranged for goods to be smuggled into Syria to those opposing the government. The power of the Internet has allowed Mr. Nachar to connect with Syrian activists from around the world as he finishes his Ph.D in history at Princeton University and teaches at Cooper Union. And he’s become embedded in digital communities trying to make an impact on the ground in Syria despite living thousands of miles away. “I remember I wrote my very first Facebook status on the 17th of March, which was two days after the very first demonstration took place,” he said, referring to last year. “And I realized that there were these people who were as vocal as I am, so why don’t we come together and form our own groups, where people can come together to help the revolution tangibly?” The center of this virtual community is a private Facebook group started last year by a graduate student at Columbia University who allowed herself to be identified only as Fatima because she feared reprisals against relatives in Syria. Prospective members were vetted by administrators who examined their Facebook profiles and past social media use. A year later, the result is a sprawling network with nodes in Syria, Beirut, London, New York and elsewhere. “I never imagined how many projects people would take on,” said Fatima, who grew up in Damascus. Their group works hand in hand with Local Coordination Committees, collections of activists sprinkled throughout towns across Syria. A committee member will ask the group for certain materials, Mr. Nachar said, and volunteers will raise money by holding events – a concert in New York, a lecture in California – or by simply asking friends or family members to contribute. The money is funneled into a bank account that the expatriate activists have created. Other volunteers withdraw money and buy the materials, usually in Gulf countries like Dubai or Saudi Arabia, to avoid long-distance shipping. Finally, the goods are transported into Syria by hired smugglers and delivered to activists on the ground. Materials delivered have included satellite phones, which can cost up to $2,000, and boxes of Quick Clot, a gauze product that helps to stop bleeding. A pack of 10 two-inch squares costs $105. Mr. Nachar said it was difficult to say how much his group had raised because funds were managed on a project-by-project basis. In recent weeks, though, the group’s efforts have often been stymied as the government has cracked down. Fixers on the ground who receive supplies at the Turkish border and transport them to opposition strongholds have been arrested or killed en route. *Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty “We depend on these fixers, and now many of them fear for their lives every time they go out on a mission,” Fatima said. The group has also paid nominal “salaries” to activists on the ground who have lost their regular jobs, and given money to families who have lost their homes or had a family member killed. At a meeting last month in the back of a Midtown cafe, Fatima, Mr. Nachar and others sat with delegates of the Syrian National Council, a main exile opposition group, hashing out the pros and cons of training citizen militias. “Groups like these here and around the world are really what is helping continue our the revolution,” said Mohammad Alabdallah, a council delegate. As the situation in Syria continues to deteriorate and Mr. Nachar, Fatima and the others fear for the safety of their relatives and friends at home, the tensions and contradictions in the life of a Facebook revolutionary can be overwhelming. “We feel guilty that we are here,” Mr. Nachar said of expatriate activists. “Even though we’re pouring everything we have into this revolution, we’re still kind of safe. And so yeah, we think maybe we should all go back. Maybe we should be smuggled into the country and be doing all of this there.” April 4, 2012 Lebbeus Woods, "Early Drawings" Friedman Benda 515 W 26th St, New York Art, Exhibitions (Art & Museums) The remarkable drawings of visionary architect *Lebbeus Woods delineate an array of retrofuturistic urban structures so complex, they make the High Line and the Second Avenue subway look like kid stuff. Some of his projects, such as the “Centricity” and “A-City” schemes, are wholly speculative; others, like “Aerial Paris” and “Underground Berlin,” propose the transformative remodeling of real city centers. But in all cases, Woods, cofounder of the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, brings immediately apparent technical understanding to bear on his wild flights of fancy. Inspired by the Romantic and Surrealist traditions, he conjures an aesthetic tightly interwoven with architectural theory and practice, and with echoes across many other mediums and disciplines in addition to art, from illustration to film, literature to radical politics. *Arch Faculty April 25, 2012 Pull Up a Broken Chair By TIM McKEOUGH The objects and installations created by *Alex Mustonen and **Daniel Arsham of Snarkitecture, a Brooklyn art and design studio, are almost always perplexing, purposely challenging people’s expectations.