Theater Special Section, pp. 13 - 20
Volume 81, Number 23 $1.00
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933
November 10 - 16, 2011
Triangle park talk sinks to new level: Use of basement BY ALBERT AMATEAU The focus of attention shifted beneath the surface last week at a hearing on the proposed new triangle park on the west side of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus. The existing triangle, bounded by Seventh and Greenwich Aves. and W. 12th St., includes an inaccessible green space several feet above sidewalk level, with a 10,000-square-foot basement beneath it that
Photo by Milo Hess
‘It’s getting to the point...’ Tuesday, rock legends David Crosby, above, and Graham Nash performed at Zuccotti Park. They did two songs, including “Teach Your Children,” at Occupy Wall Street, which some have dubbed a “political Woodstock.”
Huge deficit puts Cooper Union in existential crisis BY AIDAN GARDINER In a meeting Monday night with the broader Cooper Union community, Mark Epstein, the chairperson of the school’s board of trustees, said that although no final decision has been made, lackluster fundraising and the economic downturn that began in 2008 may push the school to reverse its century-old practice and start charging students tuition. Then a young man in the back of the Cooper Union Great Hall stood up. “The entire student body is going to walk out if that happens,” he said. The hall erupted in applause. At several other points throughout the
meeting, students booed and hissed the trustee chairperson. But the young man’s remark was the most direct reference that night to the internal conflict that may lie ahead for the college. Cooper Union is in the middle of an existential crisis. School officials are weighing a financial decision that could dramatically transform the college’s culture. Alumni, faculty and students are still struggling to understand the recent deficit revelations while fighting to preserve what they love about their school. On Oct. 31, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both reported that Cooper Union was run-
ning a $16.5 million budget deficit and that officials were now seriously considering charging tuition as a way to generate enough revenue to cover increasing costs. Up till then, most in the Cooper community believed the school to be on solid ground, and were shocked to hear otherwise. It remains unclear why this information wasn’t known for so long. When asked at the Monday meeting, Epstein did little to explain this and simply said that the information had been publicly available through the tax forms filed with the state’s attorney
formerly served the nowshuttered hospital. Several neighborhood advocates at the Nov. 2 joint meeting of Community Board 2’s St. Vincent’s Omnibus and Parks Committees urged that the basement space be saved as part of the proposed park. The board, however, has been calling for an accessible public park at sidewalk level on the triangle for 30
Continued on page 4
Mic check! Real mic being used at new meetings of O.W.S. BY ALINE REYNOLDS As Occupy Wall Street enters its eighth week, members of the movement who continue to camp out in Zuccotti Park are testing out a new way to come together and make decisions. O.W.S.’s new, consensus-based model, dubbed “Operational Spokes Council,” is meant to address the logistical needs of the park’s inhabitants that members say are being neglected by their nightly
General Assembly meetings. The Spokes Council, intended to be “nonhierarchical” and “directly democratic,” is supposed to facilitate discussions solely among “operational” working groups, or groups directly involved with the occupation at Zuccotti Park, according to a written proposal of the model posted on O.W.S.’s G.A. Web site. A talking point of several
Continued on page 5
FIGHTING CRIME AND SKEPTICS PAGE 8
EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 22
Continued on page 10
515 CANAL STREET • NYC 10 013 • COPYRIGHT © 2011 COMMUNITY M E D I A , L L C