Student Week of Action Ends with Arrests at Baruch

Sephany Chung

Harrison Golden

Over a dozen college students and faculty members from the City University of New York were arrested Monday as the Student Week of Action, marked by police standoffs and university building occupations, came to a tumultuous close.Hundreds of student protesters took to the streets in rallies held across the city. CUNY students staged a walkout at Baruch College in protest of the CUNY board of trustees’ plans to raise tuition and cut spending, while others headed to Zuccotti Park in support of a student debt refusal pledge held at the former Liberty Square.

The demonstrations began at 1:30 p.m. without much tension. Members and supporters of the CUNY community gathered inside Zuccotti Park for the debt refusal rally, featuring student and faculty speakers from both public and private universities.

“[Students] are forced to either forgo a university degree or face a contemporary form of debt bondage to banks and government agencies,” Ashley Dawson, College of Staten Island English professor and CUNY faculty spokesman, told demonstrators.

Andrew Ross, professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and a member of the New York City General Assembly’s Empowerment and Education working group, also spoke at the rally. Despite being a member of a private university, he insisted that the CUNY Board of Trustees’ current plans to raise tuition $300 per year for each of the next five years is a concern for all students and educators.

“College is not like buying a flatscreen TV,” said Ross. “There is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders.”

Following the student debt refusal rally, protesters made their way through Madison Square Park to Baruch College, located at 24th Street and Lexington Avenue, arriving at around 5 p.m. There, they met up with members of Students United for a Free CUNY, who had just held a cafeteria march inside City College, also in protest of the tuition hikes. Together, they stood — some outside the building, some in the lobby — waiting for the board of trustees’ public hearing to begin.

But as the meeting began and demonstrators made their way farther into the lobby, police began denying students entrance into the the 14th floor auditorium. Officers surrounded the entrances, hitting students with batons, and pushing them to the ground.

As word of the clashes carried upward to the higher floors of the building, students began dropping books from windows. Those outside and on the lower levels beat on windows, shouting “Shame,” and “Who do you serve?”

Jeffrey, who declined to give his last name, was one of the students attacked by police in the lobby and escorted from the building. On his way out, with officers holding batons on either side of him, he said, “Chaos. Chaos, man. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

Dominique Nisperos, a second-year graduate student at CUNY, was also pushed out of the building. Although she had filled out all the required forms to speak at the Board of Trustees meeting and represent her fellow students across the city, police action prevented her from getting into the auditorium.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, holding back tears as she ran from the lobby doors. “The police just shoved us out. They have no right to do that.”

Nisperos also added that, while two students were allowed access into the public hearing, hundreds were left with their voices unheard.

“We have every right to take a stand for this university as they do,” she said. “Probably even more so.”

As officers continued to push students out of the building, roughly a dozen police vehicles arrivied at the scene, surrounding the entire block. With rumors spreading that officers would begin conducting mass arrests, protesters began to flee.

“We just need to get out,” said one Baruch student, who asked to remain anonymous. “Don’t know where. Don’t care where. But they’re gonna start kettling soon.”

With night approaching and protesters’ voices getting hoarse, those located near the front of the demonstration struggled to compete with the approaching army of sirens. Still, they continued their screams, encouraging students to link arms and keep moving in order to avoid arrest.

Protesters marched their way down to 90 Fifth Ave., the site of The New School Student Study Center, where students from the New York City General Assembly have been conducting a citywide occupation since Thursday, holding teach-ins and meetings with little to no police interference. While many were unable to get into the building due to fears of overcrowding, roughly one hundred CUNY students were given permission to enter the building, thereby capping the week of demonstrations.

Savannah Gordon, a junior at Brooklyn College, was not surprised by Monday night’s police actions. At a general assembly forum last week, officers marched in and brought the meeting to a halt.