For two weeks, New School faculty and students have been picketing outside the university in support of the striking part-time faculty as they collectively bargain with the university for a fairer contract.

During this time, students and faculty alike have expressed their thoughts about the union, the strike, the New School administration, and more to The New School Free Press. As the second week of the strike came to a close for the Thanksgiving break, and members of the community headed home to rest and toil over an uncertain future, the Free Press compiled a selection of quotes to highlight the thoughts, opinions, hopes, and fears of those demonstrating.

“We’re here to demand better wages, better benefits, better compensation, and better respect for part-time faculty. So listen to us. We are everything you have. 87% of the university.”

• Em Joseph (she/her), ACT-UAW Local 7902 union member, part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design

“I’ve been teaching here since 2021. I feel like the amount of gaslighting that’s been going on is unbelievable. The School is constantly touting its decolonized curriculum and its progressiveness, but then I see that its actions do not sit in line at all with its supposed values. The faculty on the ground, for the most part, are fantastic, but it’s constantly the battle with admin, whether it’s for pay or resources. I teach making courses, and we have no resources. We have to pay out of pocket for any kind of materials that we use throughout the class. We are offered zero support for the most part … We’re also freelance for the most part. We don’t actually get health insurance through other jobs, which is why a lot of people take teaching jobs. To have that stability through healthcare, but I didn’t even get on it because it is so expensive that my take home after paying for the health insurance would be minuscule … I could never afford it … Through the strike I’ve met so many other part-time faculty and have realized that I’m not crazy, it’s just the gaslighting. The sense of solidarity across different schools at The New School has been honestly astounding and very, very moving. Seeing students [on the picket line], current and former, has been amazing.”

• Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak (she/her), union member, part-time lecturer at Parsons

“I don’t think they’re asking for anything unreasonable, you know? They’re asking for fair pay and working conditions. And I mean, frankly, I think it’s just incredibly hypocritical that this progressive administration at our school is not willing to negotiate … They have a lot of the power in this situation, so a lot of it rests on what the administration is willing to do.”

• Jack Van Lent (he/him), fourth-year student at Parsons

“Anything we as a senate do, we try and do as much in collaboration with the union as we can … as well as the Student Faculty Solidarity group. As we were planning Strike School, or writing out our statement of support and the email drafts, we’ve worked with them to make sure that what we are putting out is what’s most beneficial for them … From a student standpoint, I hope the strike ends as soon as possible and we’re able to get back to classes, and our part-time faculty are able to have a fair contract. But I think that, just from today, it seems like everyone’s willing to be here, even in the cold, as long as it takes … Seeing what’s been happening down here and then seeing everyone who’s been posting on social media, it seems like everyone has a lot of energy.”

• Lolo Kaase (she/her), fourth-year student at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, director of operations for the Student Senate

“Pre-strike, you could definitely feel a kind of tension in the air. This was definitely a long time coming. As a Jazz student [on the picket line], I’ve been playing drums, I’ve been playing saxophone. I have these flutes from the Philippines that I play. I’ve been doing that a lot. Basically, all the strike is, is a big long practice session, you know? That’s what I like about it so much; it’s just such a community-building exercise. It’s all to make some noise and that’s how the mentality is at The New School anyway, so it’s wonderful … I will say that I think the amount of CoPA [College of Performing Arts] people in the strike is proportional to how sort of rhythmically in-time it is.”

• TJ Milan (he/him), second-year student at the College of Performing Arts

“The union has been trying us. I am the union. I keep saying they, but it’s I, we. We’ve been trying to negotiate with The New School for months and months and months. And so we have no choice but to go on strike … The New School spends only 4 to 5% of its entire budget on part-time faculty’s pay and the part-time faculty makes up 87% of the faculty … We need a living wage. We love our students. I love my students. This is why we do it.”

• Christen Clifford (she/her), part-time assistant professor at Lang

“This isn’t what The New School that we applied to stands for … All but two of the School of Drama undergraduate faculty are part-time, so it is truly an impossibility for any of our classes to run while this strike occurs. Teachers have tried to get us to cross digital picket lines by having a Zoom — full-time faculty have been trying to get us to do that. But we’re holding rehearsals in people’s apartments. We are standing in solidarity with our faculty. We’re not crossing the picket line, entering any of those buildings, or using the spaces, because they do so much for us and they love us so much, and they get treated like shit. So we don’t want to do anything that could harm this process for them.”

• Clay Baker Lerner (they/them), third-year student at CoPA

“I actually just started teaching here in September. Before this, I kind of just came in, taught one lesson, and left. I didn’t really have any connection to the rest of the school community, and now I’m meeting other teachers and feeling much more connected to the school. And I feel so much more committed to this.”

• Kathryn Sloat (she/her), lesson instructor at Mannes Prep, CoPA

“What if The New School actually did something, and you stood for your faculty, for your students, and did more than the bare minimum? What if social justice was more than just a brand?”

• Rain (they/them), fourth-year student at CoPA

“Hopefully, the university can shift and meet certain ideals, but I don’t know. The New School’s a for-profit [The New School is a non-profit — not-for-profit — university] university that’s trying to masquerade itself as a longstanding institution of equitability. A progressive institution, while still fucking over the faculty, can’t really inherently be progressive. There’s a long-standing history at The New School of being pushed into action. Progressiveness is determined by your willingness to comply with the demands of the people who engage with you.” 

• Damien Fox (he/him), second-year student at Lang

“I’ve worked for The New School for 20 years. It’s been a long time and I love teaching. Love my students. It’s actually what fires me up every time to keep going. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to teach because my husband also makes a real salary. I feel like that’s heartbreaking that you need a partner. You need some other income to be able to teach … They [the administrators] gotta remember what it is to be in the classroom and to actually just join us. They’re so sequestered off in their little Connecticut homes. I think they have no clue about what we do every day in such a joyful way. And I think they’ve really lost touch with what the university is.”

• Erika Doering (she/her), union member, part-time assistant professor at Parsons

“Obviously I hope that the strike doesn’t take that long, but I think we’re all willing to strike for however long it takes … We have a great many professors that are part-time and they deserve to be paid fairly for their labor. I hope that they’ll see that the community in general, we’re not playing around with this.” 

• Chris Erdman (he/him), fourth-year student at CoPA

For more information regarding the part-time faculty strike, check our strike page for updates and follow the Free Press on Instagram @nsfreepress.