Category: Uncategorized

NYU STATEMENT ON EVENTS AT UNIVERSITY’S KIMMEL CENTER

New York University is pleased to report that the students who sat in the Kimmel Center’s cafeteria and disrupted services have peacefully exited the building.

Robust dialogue is a customary, normal, and expected part of the interaction between students, faculty, and administration at NYU. But it is not appropriate for it to take place while there is an ongoing violation of university rules.

Despite the protesters’ stated principles that the protest was to be non-destructive and non-violent, the protesters, despite specific warnings to stay off the Kimmel Center balcony, broke the lock to gain access to the balcony. The protesters also injured an NYU security officer during a scuffle.

These actions dishonor NYU’s commitment to free exchange of ideas, reasoned debate, and legitimate forms of protest. From the outset, the University made clear to the protesters that they were violating the University rules and engaging in improper activity.

Nonetheless, the University offered to sit down and have a dialogue with the students if they left the cafeteria early the night of February 19. The 18 students who stayed through the night of February 19—after rejecting the University’s offer to leave the building—have been suspended pending the outcome of the university’s disciplinary process.

No students who were participating in the demonstration in the Kimmel Center cafeteria were arrested by the New York Police Department. None of the students’ demands were met.

(via soupsoup: mknell🙂

NYU student occupation has video

as my own work has firmly entrenched the idea of creating your own media (ie my work during the Beijing Olympics), especially when it comes to under serviced/reported political actions, i’ve now discovered that Take Back NYU! has been live streaming vis-a-vis Ustream. sadly, at this very moment, they are off the air.

in this age of techo-political theater, if you want to control the message, you MUST control the media. in my two cent, arm-chair activist review, i think they should have gotten a mogulus stream and pre-packaged their asks into an endless number of videos clearly illustrating their demands while splicing in live feeds from their occupation. at a minimum, these kids should be twittering updates and taking their message directly to the public. BUT don’t get me wrong, this is one step up from the New School occupation…

btw, if anyone has access to these kids, someone should slip them a cell phone with qik and teach them to twitter. if the cops/authorities do decide to use force, there’s nothing more dramatic than a jostling moving image with people screaming/chanting “don’t tase me bro!”

good luck comrads!

Streaming live video by Ustream

NYU under student occupation

“Last night, 64 students barricaded themselves inside the third floor dining room of the Kimmel Center. The occupation was organized by Take Back NYU, an on-campus coalition founded around goals of increasing university transparency and accountability. By bullhorn, the group read a list of 13 demands that must be met by the university before TBNYU leaves the building. Demands include full disclosure of the university’s endowment, investment strategy and operating budget, a reconsideration of the recent lift of the Coca-Cola ban, and tuition stabilization for all students beginning with the class of 2012. “We’re planning on occupying the space till our demands are met,” event spokesperson and CAS sophomore Farah Khimji told WSN last night.”

Washington Square News – Barricaded at Kimmel

YESTERDAY morning, Virginia politicos caught wind of a rumour that one of the Democrats in the state Senate was about to switch parties. Because the Democrats had a 21-19 majority, that shift would have flipped control over to the Republicans. Then Jeff Frederick, the chairman of the state Republicans picked up his smartphone and sent out a tweet.

“Big news out of Senate: Apparently one dem is either switching or leaving the dem caucus. Negotiations for power sharing underway.”

And that’s how the Democrats found about about the plot. They adjourned business, cornered the rogue senator, and browbeat him out of his big plan.“Be authentic on Twitter,” texted Patrick Ruffini, a Republican web guru. “But still keep a frickin’ secret when you need to.”

How Twitter stopped a coup | Democracy in America | Economist.com via maddiegrant

NY State Senate is looking for geeks!

The NY State Senate is looking to hiring one drupal ninja, a systems engineer / integrator and graphics designer.

From Andrew Hoppin, the NY State Senate’s new CTO… “The New York State Senate is back in Democratic hands for the first time in 43 years, and there is an immense amount of new technology-driven government transparency & efficiency work underway.  I’ve taken on a newly created position as CTO, and we’re hiring asap in Manhattan, Albany, and around the State.”

Specifically on the geek side of things, they are looking for three or four full time people in New York City.

  1. A Drupal Ninja – this developer knows the LAMP stack backward and forward.
  2. A systems engineer / integrator – who knows the in’s / out’s of the latest technology and can whip up software as a service (SaaS) systems at the drop of a hat (aka LAMP, Ruby, *NIX, etc.)
  3. A graphics designer – with experience in “web 2.0” information architecture, PHP, CSS, etc.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, they should contact Andrew Hoppin directly at < nysenatecio_thatatsymbolhere_gmail.com >. Candidates should also include resume / portfolio and salary expectations.

Just the messenger.

tweetcc.com – creative commons for twitter

tweetcc - creative commons on twitter

tweetcc.com just launched allowing any twitter’r to publish their tweets as a creative commons licence. after facebook’s TOS POS, i find this to be super rad!

per my previous post, creative commons is lobbying facebook to adopt progressive, human readable content licensing. don’t forget to tell facebook what you think – Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.