The University Student Senate (USS) hosted their second meeting with Joel Towers, The New School’s president, last Friday. Despite USS members stating that these discussions can be helpful, many want to see more from Towers once the discussion ends.
Linfei Yang, vice chair of USS, said hosting these meetings increases accessibility between senators and the president. According to Yang, accessibility was lacking with the last president. Chief of USS Staff Camellia Schinner stated that these meetings are meant to represent students’ voices, so they must be held to communicate these needs.
USS Director of Advocacy Jovanna Liuzzo stated that most communications go directly through the chair of USS. The presidential office and other administrative offices give little to no response when other senate members attempt to get further clarification on their projects within the senate, according to Liuzzo. She would like to see further communication between Towers and other divisions of the USS.
“Specifically on cops off campus bill, we’ve sent emails to [the presidential] office, but also on the same email chain with the heads of security in those offices, with the dean of students, with the provost, etc., and consistently, no office or body has gotten back to us,” Liuzzo said.
Similarly, Schinner said, “Some things seem to take a lot more time with him … a lot of times we have these lengthy back and forth conversations, or maybe we’ll send a document. Sometimes [Towers] refers us to another department lead or another administrator, and other times it seems that we’re able to actually see material changes.”
In their recent meeting, Towers was asked a series of questions about possible concerns brought about since the recent election, as well as discussing the reinstatement of the university observing Jewish holidays.
USS senators voted to reinstate Jewish holidays, which were previously observed but removed from the TNS academic calendar during the 2021-2022 school year. Jewish students felt that they were forced to fall behind because the university did not observe them.
Towers responded that many other holidays, not just Jewish ones, were taken off the New School academic calendar.
All USS senators favored reinstating the observation of Jewish holidays, and now the matter is being voted on virtually. When the voting ends, the results will be sent to Towers, who said he would recommend the proposal to the registrar’s office.
Other topics in the meeting discussion included increased security and police presence during protests, with many senate members expressing discomfort. Towers stated that the increased security was in response to “a number of people who were not university-related in our buildings last year.” Towers also said that the increased security is “the least worst option that we’ve been able to come up with.”
USS also discussed student workers’ issues at Student Health Services (SHS), stating that many have approached USS senators with grievances. Towers seemed surprised upon learning this. He said that he had recently asked about how things were going at SHS and that he “got a much more positive report from SHS,” he said.
“I think that when Joel comes into this space, specifically a student space. He’s picking and choosing what aspects of information are relevant to the conversation … there were a lot of non-answers or vague responses to our questions,” Liuzzo said.
“We submitted [to] him a long, long document about ways to increase institutional support for the senate so that they can better advocate for students,” Yang said.
“[Towers] keeps thinking that the only time that he can talk about [the document] is during meetings, in person. Meanwhile, he could definitely start a conversation with us whether through email or whatever, or at least some kind of agreement that they are going to consider that in principle,” Yang said.