Cecily McMillan was an ever-present facilitator at the student occupation of The New School’s 90 Fifth Ave. study center this past fall. As she told the Free Press in December, McMillan believed it was “a true possibility that the occupation would incite a series of student occupations across the country and launch a student movement.”
The 23-year-old graduate student is currently in her first year at The New School for Social Research. Her grandfather, Harlon Joye, is an NSSR alumnus who McMillan proudly claims drafted the constitution of the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. A student activist herself, McMillan’s involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement predates the September occupation of Zuccotti Park, and *Rolling Stone* even featured her in a November article examining the movement.
But at 90 Fifth Ave., McMillan’s credibility came under fire from several of the student occupiers. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, her political views and methods were directly at odds with those of more fervently radical participants. At the occupation’s penultimate general assembly on the night of November 22, the GA labeled her a “provocateur bureaucrat” to rapturous applause and essentially ousted her from the building. So it is ironic that an alleged act of violence against the state, by McMillan, is what has reignited the conversation surrounding OWS in the past two weeks and attracted global media attention.
On the evening of March 17, the six-month anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, McMillan joined a gathering of several hundred people at “Liberty Square.” The NYPD has been a constant presence at the park since evicting OWS demonstrators on November 15, and it would not be long before they made their presence felt. McMillan was one of at least 73 protesters arrested that night, but it was the nature of her arrest, and the events that followed, which would see her name and likeness featured in publications around the world.
The NYPD arrested McMillan for allegedly assaulting a police officer — “intentionally walking up to [him] and elbowing him in the face,” according to the prosecutor at McMillan’s March 19 arraignment, which ended with a judge denying the prosecutor’s request for bail to be set at $20,000 and immediately releasing McMillan from custody. A grainy, handheld video of the incident shows a woman, reportedly McMillan, appearing to thrust her right arm in the air and striking an officer in the head. Immediately, several officers tackle her to the ground and arrest her.
Multiple news outlets reported that McMillan was beaten and brutalized by the NYPD before suffering a seizure while in police custody. One viral video of the incident shows her sprawled out on the ground and seemingly incapacitated, before later sitting up and appearing to struggle for air. McMillan sustained several physical injuries following her arrest, including extensive bruising across her body, and was denied the right to speak with a lawyer while in custody.
In a interview with the Free Press on March 21, McMillan maintained her innocence of all charges being brought against her, as well as a commitment to nonviolent protest. Some in the media, particularly within the conservative blogosphere, have pointed to the video evidence as proof that McMillan violently provoked the NYPD and warranted the police action taken against her. Such claims, however, seemingly turn a blind eye to the very notion of due process; New York state law mandates that the assault of a police officer is a felony punishable by arrest and prosecution, as opposed to the treatment that McMillan allegedly received at the hands of the NYPD.
McMillan would be by no means the only protester who has experienced police violence and brutality in the six months since OWS launched an international movement. From the case of Scott Olsen in Oakland to the infamous pepper spray incident at UC Davis, the conversation surrounding the Occupy movement has mostly shifted from its ambitious yet vague platform to the punishment doled out to demonstrators in the streets and on campuses. As OWS makes its push to re-emerge from a largely inactive winter, McMillan is now at the center of that conversation — publications and media outlets around the world devoted coverage to her story, scrutinizing the NYPD’s tactics and providing the movement with renewed interest.
DVZ and Marshall Host Third University Town Hall
President David Van Zandt and Provost Tim Marshall hosted their third university-wide town hall on March 20, a semesterly occasion intended to provide The New School community with an opportunity to gather and discuss the state of the institution. The event, held in its regular location at the Lang building’s Wollman Hall, was packed — roughly 50 attendees were forced to stand and observe the proceedings from the back of the room.
For those who subscribe to the long-standing notion that The New School is unable to foster a homogeneous institutional community across its myriad divisions, Van Zandt’s town halls offer a glimmer of hope. Faculty, staff, and even students turned out for the discussion, which once again opened with the president and provost speaking briefly about issues and initiatives pertinent to The New School. The majority of the time was devoted to a question-and-answer session, with audience members seizing the chance to express their inquiries and concerns to Van Zandt, Marshall, and virtually every other senior administrator at the university.
Van Zandt has committed to holding such events regularly, with a view toward facilitating a more open dialogue within the community and increased transparency within the administration. It is undoubtedly a change from the approach seen under Van Zandt’s predecessor, Bob Kerrey, who hosted only a handful of like-minded forums over the course of his 10 years at The New School. Van Zandt’s latest town hall, meanwhile, arrived only one month after he took part in a similar — albeit much smaller — event with The New School for Social Research’s dean, Michael Schober, which was geared toward the NSSR community.
At Wollman Hall on March 20, the president spent much of his time addressing the university’s financial situation. He discussed the administration’s “strategic” cost-cutting approach to balancing the The New School’s budget deficit, as well as the university’s revamped expectations for institutional growth — “The New School is not in a crisis,” Van Zandt assured the audience. Marshall, meanwhile, touched on the work of the University Social Justice Committee and various “diversity” initiatives at The New School.
But as usual, the Q & A session proved itself the most interesting aspect of the whole affair. For 45 minutes, students and faculty passed a microphone around the room, quizzing Van Zandt and Marshall on concerns ranging from the lack of transparency in faculty salary brackets to violent police action taken against New School students.
Most of the time, the president and provost’s responses left more to be desired; Van Zandt has a tendency to work his way around tough question with nuance and inexactitude, while Marshall often speaks in broad generalities that distract from the point at hand. Regardless, one anecdote from the meeting perhaps explains why, after 10 years of doing things much differently, the university community seems content just to be holding a conversation with their administrative leaders.
Speaking about The New School’s need to focus on its strengths as an institution, Van Zand said, “I know before I got here that various provosts — going back a number of provosts — were thinking about this.” The line received a hearty round of laughter those in attendance. “We have one of our longest-serving provosts right here,” Van Zandt added, pointing to Marshall.
He was, of course, referencing his predecessor’s record of working with six different provosts in 10 years. At the NSSR town hall in February, students questioned Van Zandt’s commitment to institutional transparency, demanding more access to information regarding The New School’s finances and expenditures. But that is not to say that some things haven’t changed at the top of university hierarchy.
USS Looks Forward
As The New School’s most senior body of student government, the University Student Senate manages a budget of roughly $100,000 annually and has a mandate from the administration to represent student issues and initiatives at the university. That has not exempted the USS from falling into numerous organizational and bureaucratic pitfalls in the past; last year’s senate had difficulty getting all of its members in the same room, while the USS operated for much of this year with three representative vacancies.
On March 19, the senate announced the election results for the 2012-13 senate, revealing the 17 student representatives charged with ensuring that such problems do not remain a hindrance in the future. This year’s election took place two months earlier than usual, from March 5-9, as a means of ensuring that the senators-elect are well-prepared for the roles they will be assuming.
“We have worked so hard to lay a solid foundation,” said USS co-chair Melissa Holmes at the university town hall on March 20. Holmes mentioned how “when you have a lot of money and you don’t have structure, it’s really a problem.”
“With that foundation, we can actually have a student senate that is political and active,” Holmes added.
Problems encountered this year included a “Dinner and Discussion” series that was meant to increase dialogue between the USS and its constituents. Holmes mentioned how scheduling issues forced the senate to cancel several of the discussions, something that she said “we got heat for” from many students.
The USS remains optimistic about future endeavors, however. At the town hall, Lang Senator Katherine Towell announced plans to transform the Student Study Center at 90 Fifth Ave. into a student union. The hope is that the building will provide a notoriously disparate institution with a place to foster a more cohesive student community.
“We all knew that we needed a [student] space; that was really clear,” Towell told the Free Press. The project, however, will not be undertaken until the new University Center at 65 Fifth Ave. is completed — in other words, the 2013-14 academic year.