“The parents could have been allies [with the University] had we been welcomed,” Molly Maher, parent of a Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts student, told The New School Free Press. 

Without a physical presence on campus, nearly 2,000 distressed parents, including Maher, turned to the “New School Parents/Guardians/Emancipated Students” Facebook group to post concerns and find information during the 25-day part-time faculty strike. 

The Facebook page, which initially started in 2020 as a way to find doctors near campus and clarify tuition costs, quickly turned into a forum for shared frustration toward the administration’s weak communication as their children went four weeks without classes. 

Parents’ comments flooded the Facebook page, pushing for parental involvement and better communication on the administrative side. Under one post from Nov. 15, the day the strike officially began, a dozen parents commented that they had not yet received communication from The New School. 

“At the very beginning, it was like silence,” Beth Greene, a parent of a Lang student, said. 

Another parent expressed that the strike was not the first time the University had communication barriers with parents. “One of [The New School’s] hallmarks of dysfunction is poor communication,” a mother of a Mannes School of Music graduate student said. 

As the strike continued, the university’s communication took a turn from lacking to jarring, parents said. “The emails that we got [from New School administrators] sought to blame the union and the teachers rather than speak in a conciliatory manner. It was divisive,” Maher said.

Even as negotiations dragged on, parents on the page were not satisfied. “The administration’s aloof, inept and irresponsible handling of the current strike is appalling,” one parent said in a post to the group on Nov. 27. “I’m hearing great things about the fashion program at Marist College,” another parent commented in response to this post. 

Even toward the end of the strike, parents continued to feel in the dark. “The radio silence is deafening,” Randy Simon, another New School parent, shared with the Facebook group on Dec. 8, two days before the strike came to an end. 

One platform available to parents and run by TNS, The New School Parent & Family Hub, creates a centralized source of information for parents and families of current and prospective students. Run by The Enrollment Management & Strategic Partnerships team at The New School, the platform provides parents and families access to updates on deadlines, campus news, and student success opportunities. Parents can also join specific communities or identity groups when creating their accounts. 

However, members did not receive news regarding the strike on this platform, and parents on the Facebook page made no mention of the hub. 

According to Merrie Snead, the Senior Manager of Communications at TNS, during Family Orientation and Family Weekend, parents are urged to join both the Facebook page and The New School Parent & Family Hub.

“Members of the Facebook page are encouraged to send questions, concerns, and feedback via private/direct messages,” Snead said in an email to the Free Press. “We are continually seeking ways to improve communication with all members of our community and welcome feedback from our students’ families.”

In addition, parents referred to the ACT-UAW 7902 Instagram page for information and updates. “The first post I saw from them, I was like, wow, this is blowing me out of the water. This is so organized and I’m getting a lot of information,” Allison Barlow Saviano, the mother of a Parsons student, said. But ultimately, many parents, including Saviano, recognized that the union page only offers one perspective and found the Facebook page useful to hear other parent perspectives.

The page acts as a communal space for parents to engage in dialogue, find information, and openly express their grievances. Nevertheless, many seeked to express their frustrations to The New School directly. 

As an outlet, parents responded to administrative emails, but many found it difficult to contact The New School directly. With the help of Facebook posts that provided email templates and administrator’s email addresses, parents filled administrative inboxes with messages – according to dozens of posts on the page. 

“The university regularly receives feedback from families. In all cases, these communications reflect their hopes and expectations for their student’s experience. We greatly appreciate and value the feedback from our students’ families,” Snead wrote. 

Beth Greene, a New School mother of a first-year Lang student, emailed President Dwight A. McBride and Provost Renée T. White on Nov. 16 regarding concerns about the strike. Greene described the Director of Operations at TNS, Elizabeth K. Brasher’s response as “very generic, kind of cold, not personal, not taking enough accountability for their part in it. It was all like a blame game.” 

Other parents on the Facebook page received similar messaging from administrators or no response at all.

In another email sent to 13 administrators, Greene detailed her concerns about how the strike had negatively affected her daughter’s mental health. Greene received one response to her email from Yvonne Watson, the Interim Executive Dean of Parsons, in which she attempted to connect Greene’s daughter to New School mental health resources. 

“I know there were a lot of parents reaching out, and it was chaos. But, I don’t know, I just felt like that was shitty,” Greene said after receiving one response to her email. She hoped that by sharing her daughter’s situation, the negotiations could move forward faster.

Greene was not the only parent worried about their children’s mental health during the strike. Pam Ferrari, the mother of two New School students, posted an “Ode of grief to TNS Strike” detailing her children’s experiences graduating and attending college during the pandemic and now dealing with a strike that shut-down classes. Nearly 30 comments said their children had the same interrupted experience. 

Parents like Greene and Ferrari gave their kids additional support through these tough times, but felt they did not have a proper line of communication during the strike. “We certainly have been silenced in this process, and that is the biggest PR cluster that you can imagine,” Maher said. 

After a month of confusion and voicing their opinions on the Facebook page, parents have gone back to using it as a place to ask for policy information and graduation details. While communication issues between parents and The New School might not be fully resolved yet, parents on the page want to move forward. “We don’t want to come away from our time here with a negative feeling towards their years at the school,” Ferrari said. “Onward, with positive energy and focus on our goals from now on.”

Additional reporting by: Bianca Rodriguez

Editing by: Pia Mulleady