NYU Admins Arrest Negotiators, Police Assault and Arrest Students

This will probably go down as the most incompetent and cretinous negotiation team a University administration has ever fielded. I just got this press release:

NYU Students Shut Down Building In Protest;
Administration shuts off internet, power, restroom access, refuses to negotiate and initiates police raid.

New York – A student occupation of an NYU building stretched into its third day as the demonstration shut down the entirety of the Kimmel Center on Washington Square. Police clashed with supporters outside overnight and the NYU administration refused to negotiate with protesters, instead turning off internet and power, cutting off restroom access and sending police to raid the space, arresting and assaulting students.

Seventy students from campus group Take Back NYU! continued to barricade themselves inside a third-floor cafeteria of the Kimmel Center in a protest that began Wednesday evening. Demanding affordable education, student power in university operations, protections for campus workers, including unions for graduate students and adjuncts, as well as amnesty for their actions, students sought to meet with administration but have so far been rebuffed. After the administration asked to meet and discuss with students in good faith, a student negotiation team of five people was seized and suspended and police began a raid of the space.

Students report that internet and power was cut off this morning, making communications with press difficult. Students began defecating in buckets of kitty litter after losing access to restrooms. Outside, supporters, who came from all over the East Coast, swelled into the hundreds overnight, with crowds chanting "Whose School? Our School!" into the early morning. Police briefly clashed with protesters, pepper spraying the crowd and arresting one youth grabbed at the edge of the rally. The occupation was identified by participants and supporters as part of a growing student power movement that was sweeping the United States and Europe, with university occupations at the New School in the Fall semester and the University of Rochester two weeks ago.

"We're still reaching out to the administration to negotiate, but they've responded with force, attempts to stop press from speaking with us, making us pee in buckets, and even arresting us," said Farah Khimji, a second year student. "This isn't how you educate youth to build a better world, so we plan on doing it ourselves."

The group has asked for press and supporters to rally outside the building.

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