Washington Square News | Opinion
MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2019
9
UNIVERSITY LIFE
NYU Puts Its Reputation Before Student Wellness
By ABBY HOFSTETTER Opinion Editor NYU has something of a reputation for being secretive with information — its f iscal 2020 budget, which was supposed to be released in June, has not yet been published; it has hidden health hazards from students; it has kept students in the dark on vital resources. In a 2018 investigation, WSN found that NYU follows this pattern to a fault: the university doesn’t track suicides. But what does it mean for NYU to not track suicides? What does it mean for the university to selectively release crucial information about students’ wellbeing? By now, we all know that two students died of suicide over the course of the last academic year. But these are only the conf irmed cases — because NYU does not track suicides, students are left to discover the information on their own. The two students who died last academic year could just be the tip of the iceberg. Maybe the number is signif icantly higher. When I ask other students, the number always changes — one student says that three students have died this semester, another says it’s four and yet another says there’s been one death each month. We have no way of getting reliable information unless the university decides to disclose it or a news outlet decides to report on it. No one knows for sure; no one will ever know for sure. NYU not tracking suicides also means that students also f ind out about their peers’ deaths from sources that are a lot less considerate than an email from the Wellness Exchange. Students found out about an October 2018 student suicide largely via a graphic New York Post article, which featured a photo of the student in a body bag. Students are then left to cope with these deaths on their own. NYU does contact and offer counseling to the families and roommates of all students who die by suicide, but these stu-
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dents’ friends have no way to f ind out, let alone have a direct pathway to the SHC’s counseling resources, which are hard to gain access to in the f irst place. After the October suicide, students turned to “NYU Memes for Slightly Bankrupt Teens” for comfort, and the page rebranded to “NYU Memes for Wholesome Teens” for a day. But more than this, selectively releasing information on student suicides means that NYU can create its own reputation — one that isn’t tarnished by student deaths. That’s not to say that nominally tracking deaths would be a seamless solution. When schools begin to track suicides, an unsettling pattern often emerges: in an attempt to preserve its reputation, a school will begin to send any and all students with signs of suicidal ideation or potential self harm to psychiatric facilities so that if they die, they don’t die on school grounds. NYU has consistently shown that it prioritizes its reputation. It didn’t tell students about health hazards at Palladium Food Court and Upstein, and instead bragged about the dining halls that had passed their health inspections. President Andrew Hamilton loudly supported DACA recipients in the NYU community, but the university has yet to meet the concrete demands of UnDoc NYU, which has maintained that NYU’s support is “a facade.” After the October 2018 suicide, university spokesperson John Beckman denied that NYU could possibly be responsible. Based solely on this track record, I can’t conf idently say that NYU wouldn’t put its reputation f irst if it began tracking suicides. The solution to this is obvious: NYU needs to stop putting its reputation before its students’ wellbeing. But this is easier said than done. How can we change an entire institution’s priorities? What does NYU have to gain from reprioritizing its initiatives? The future seems bleak, and the past doesn’t inspire much optimism. I don’t know what to do but hope for a solution — or, more accurately, hope for NYU to stop putting its reputation before its students.
STAFF EDITORIAL
A Semester in Review: NYU Continues to Prioritize Itself Over Students Throughout the semester, we’ve been trying to understand NYU’s treatment of its students — more specifically, whether NYU is implicitly pro- or anti-student. A pro-student university acts in its students’ best interests as often as possible; an anti-student university puts its own interests ahead of all else. NYU’s problematic actions have continued to unfold since this semester’s outset. The university has protected sexual predators, hid dining hall health hazards and mistreated faculty members. These are just a few examples. Taking the semester’s controversies into consideration, one thing is clear: NYU is not pro-student. Perhaps the most blatant example of NYU putting its own interests before those of its students — or rather, before its students’ safety — is the presence and protection of sexual predators on campus. The semester began with the return of professor Avital Ronell, who’d been suspended for one year after an NYU investigation found her guilty of sexually harassing her graduate advisee. Her return was met with intense backlash — most prominently from NYUToo, a graduate student coalition formed in response to her return, but additionally from a large portion of the student body. But the university still brought her back to campus, and the only possible reason for doing so is Ronell’s prominent status in her field — a letter in her defense by fellow academics cited that she’s the chair of the European Graduate School’s department of philosophy and has received the Chevalier of Arts and Letters award from the French government. Shortly after the semester began, university trustee Michael Steinhardt was found to have made sexually inappropriate comments to several members of the NYU com-
munity. After Steinhardt was found guilty by a university investigation, NYU decided not only to keep his name on the school but to also keep Steinhardt himself on the Board of Trustees. University bylaws state that any board member is able to be removed “with or without cause at any time,” yet Steinhardt still holds his seat — despite being found guilty of sexual misconduct toward members of the NYU community. In October and November, respectively, WSN found that Palladium Food Court and Upstein had both failed health inspections. Both dining halls had violations concerning contamination of food — Upstein’s investigation reported that food was “not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service”; Palladium kept its food at too high a temperature, which could have caused a norovirus outbreak. However, NYU did not tell its students about the health hazards on campus. In one instance, the university sent a press release noting that many dining halls had passed inspection, but under further investigation, WSN found that Upstein — which was not mentioned in the press release — had failed. NYU’s 2017 tax returns were released at the beginning of October. This gave students insight on how the university spends its money — and how it could do a better job. While most of the university’s financial practices remain unclear, its lack of affordability persists and the financial burden weighs on many students. As we continue to look for ways to make NYU more affordable, transparency is key to gaining a clearer understanding of how NYU spends our money. In late October, WSN found that Liberal Studies professors are look-
ing to unionize due to unfair treatment by NYU. The professors cited a lack of job security, unequal pay to their Faculty of Arts and Science counterparts, inability to receive tenure and generally poor treatment by administrators, which made them seem “regarded as second class faculty.” LS is the second-largest undergraduate program; there is no valid reason for NYU not to treat LS professors equally to all other faculty. However, by treating LS faculty worse than their counterparts, NYU has indicated that the school and its faculty are somehow less important than all others. In November, students reported having their financial aid packages changed after using NYU’s Courtesy Meals Program. Although the situation was resolved and all aid was returned, this recent development hurt the reputation of the program and left students less likely to use it. This led many to question why this even happened in the first place — after all, the program was established to help students who couldn’t afford meals. After NYU began promoting the program, the number of participants rose from around 40 users to 1,933 users over the last two academic years. This speaks to NYU’s widespread problem of food insecurity, a problem which nearly half of all U.S. college students face. As the university continues to navigate this difficult issue, its focus should be on the needs of its most vulnerable students. Ultimately, all of these issues and many others are rooted in the lack of student participation in the affairs of our university. As students, it’s important to remember that we are the only ones who will look after our interests and advocate for ourselves. If a university fails to be pro-student, it is up to the students themselves to hold its feet to the fire.
Email the Editorial Board at editboard@nyunews.com. COLE STALLONE Chair ABBY HOFSTETTER Chair JUN SUNG Co-Chair
Email Abby Hofstetter at ahofsetter@nyunews.com.
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