[ A post-strike coalition at The New School has dreams of
transforming the university and higher education more broadly.]
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STRIKE AT THE NEW SCHOOL SPAWNED A RADICAL COALITION THAT’S STILL
GOING STRONG  
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Miles Hamberg
March 16, 2023
Truthout
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_ A post-strike coalition at The New School has dreams of
transforming the university and higher education more broadly. _

Students begin their occupation of the New School’s University
Center on December 8, 2022., Miles Hamberg / Truthout

 

Though the 25-day labor strike of part-time faculty at The New
School, a private university in New York City, ended three months ago,
the university administration’s hardball approach
[[link removed]] has
not been forgotten. A student-led coalition that emerged in solidarity
with the striking adjunct faculty is still going strong. And with the
school’s graduate students set to begin their own contract
negotiations with the university later this year, the coalition could
potentially add pressure to the university administration to bargain
in a different manner than it did with the part-time faculty union.
The coalition is certainly poised to rally support during a strike if
no agreement is reached before the graduate students’ contract
expires.

The coalition that is engaged in this organizing — known as the One
New School Coalition — is building toward its goal of establishing a
cooperative university. At the moment, its members are prioritizing
meeting the campus community’s unmet needs. Their first act was to
establish a Community Center
[[link removed]] to bolster students’ and
faculty’s ability to teach, learn and work.

The One New School Coalition was formed on December 12, 2022, the day
when the striking part-time faculty went back to work. On that day,
students, staff, faculty, alumni and parents were invited to
participate in a vote of no confidence
[[link removed]] in
the university’s senior leadership and the Board of Trustees. The
measure passed 421-10 and quickly gained more than 1,600 signatories.

The coalition’s formation came on the heels of the 25 days last fall
when the lives of students at The New School were upended by the
part-time faculty strike. After months of fraught negotiations with a
hostile employer failed to produce a new union contract, members of
the part-time faculty union, ACT-UAW Local 7902, had begun their
historic strike on November 16.

The students’ solidarity with their striking professors reached a
crescendo on December 8, the 23rd day of the strike, when students
flooded into the school’s University Center on Fifth Avenue
[[link removed]],
beginning a nine-day occupation. Students were galvanized by the
university administration’s announcement that it would withhold pay
and contributions
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insurance and retirement benefits for all striking employees.

While students sang “Solidarity Forever” and entered the building,
a staff organizer with the part-time faculty union remarked that
student occupations have become ingrained into the culture at some
universities. This is certainly true at The New School, where the
university’s past three leadership boards have all faced student
occupations. In the past 15 years, there have been more student
occupations at The New School than U.S. presidents.

PRIORITIES OF THE ONE NEW SCHOOL COALITION

At its core, the coalition is an organizing effort within a segment of
the campus community that is actively thinking about the structural
issues at the university that led to the strike in the first place.
While much of the current work is student-led, the coalition claims to
represent faculty, alumni, staff and parents who think that the
university is in crisis. Long-term, they aim to 
[[link removed]]“no longer be governed by a
body of high-paid administrators chosen by a small group of wealthy
trustees who have no standing in the world of education.”

Bella Coles, a senior at The New School who was involved with planning
last fall’s occupation with the undergraduate-led Student Faculty
Solidarity group and is a member of the One New School Coalition, said
that “the best thing that came out of the occupation was people felt
an actual sense of community for the first time. It seemed kind of
like a no-brainer for most people that there had to be some kind of
continuation.”

If previous student occupations
[[link removed]] at
The New School have been explosions of discontent with the
university’s leadership, the One New School Coalition is more like
an attempt at controlled demolition; it aims to transform the private
university’s structure into that of a cooperative university. In
January 2023, interested members of the campus community discussed the
student occupation’s demands
[[link removed]] and
developed a blueprint
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their efforts. This led to the formation of six working groups that
are exploring things like: relocating the existing space for students
of color and designating a Black Affinity Space; organizing faculty
votes of no confidence in the university’s senior administration;
exploring the “feasibility” of implementing their two most radical
demands — a fairer pay ratio between the highest and lowest-paid
workers, and participatory budgeting; implementing a tuition strike if
tuition is raised; and developing a “para-administrative system”
from the bottom up to address the community’s unmet needs.

It’s not surprising that the One New School Coalition emerged in the
context of the part-time faculty strike. The strike was provoked by
the kinds of crises in academia that have been getting the writers
at _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ out of bed in the
morning since at least 1998
[[link removed]].
The university’s refusal to bargain in good faith with the union
left many students feeling like the school was falling short of its
stated progressive mission. But students weren’t just angry about
the university’s disregard for their professors’ contributions,
they were also angry because “the lack of respect that was shown for
students by the administration leading up to the strike and during the
strike was a big call to action for us,” according to Jane Buffo, a
senior fine arts major who was also involved with planning the
occupation.

With the school’s graduate students set to begin their own contract
negotiations with the university later this year, the coalition could
potentially add pressure to the university administration.

 

Inside the occupied University Center, students discovered that their
anger with their administration ran deeper than their frustration with
missing classes because of a strike that never should have had to
happen. They had common financial aid horror stories, a shared disgust
with the lack of dignified spaces for students of color on campus, and
a general contempt for the school’s austerity-driven policies
[[link removed]] that
— in addition to union busting — include the hiring of
much maligned Huron Consulting
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subsequently, firing of over 120 workers 
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October 2020. Coles said that although “occupations happen so much
at The New School that they’ve become a long-running joke,” she
believes that the frequency of occupations “shows that the
university as we know it seems to be and will continue to be in
perpetual crisis.”

COMMUNITY-BUILDING EFFORTS AIMED AT DEEPER TRANSFORMATION

Though the coalition began with a stated commitment to reimagining
what education could look like and transforming the university into a
self-governing institution, most current efforts are aimed at
fostering a deeper sense of community. Organizers say that their focus
on community care is so prevalent because of institutional failure to
deliver it. That’s the spirit that oriented the coalition to
establish a Community Center inside the previously occupied University
Center. It contains books, art supplies, food, office supplies, and
other essentials like tampons and condoms.

The Community Center has been warmly received. Students are quick to
point out that bathrooms at the university do not have tampons, and
students appreciate that the One New School Coalition’s community
building efforts have focused on basic health and hygiene needs.
Organizers from the coalition have also been coordinating with the
school’s student health services and plan to hold free Narcan
trainings later this semester, at which students can learn how to
administer the nasal spray that counteracts the effects of an opioid
overdose. There are also plans to begin organizing around the
announced changes in the university’s COVID policy; students are
frustrated that the university plans to stop providing free PCR tests
at the end of March. They plan to set up a calendar for events in the
space, perhaps inviting their professors to hold class there, and
recently hosted their first free community lunch
[[link removed]].

One New School Coalition organizers are hoping that their provision of
free food will help them reach segments of the campus community that
were not part of the broader solidarity campaign during the part-time
faculty strike. AJ Medeiros, a junior coalition organizer, has been
focusing his efforts on building relationships with cafeteria workers
and security guards. Medeiros brings plates of food to security
guards, who are not allowed to leave their post once their shift
begins. Medeiros says that “there’s still generally a sentiment
that they operate in a different world,” noting that these workers
are not in The New School Labor Coalition
[[link removed]] — a 2020 formation of the
university’s American Association of University Professors chapter
and unions on campus that has been crucial to organizing solidarity
efforts during contract fights like the one last fall. Medeiros
actually attends class with one of the security guards during the week
for a course entitled “Spaces of Struggle” that covers
occupations.

At a university with such a rich history of student occupations,
it’s notable that none of the recent ones have emerged strictly out
of students’ solidarity with faculty; this was the first time that
part-time faculty had been on strike in the university’s history.
And this is perhaps the most interesting thing about the One New
School Coalition, since students believe that their occupation
compelled the university administration to update its final offer.
Their belief that the occupation ultimately paved the way for the
now-ratified contract suggests that the coalition’s greatest utility
might be in organizing students in solidarity with unionized workers
on campus and adding pressure on the administration to deliver a fair
deal. When graduate students begin their contract negotiations with
the university later this year, the coalition’s community-building
potential will be put to the test.

“Occupations are fueled by the conditions of crisis that are
produced under racial capitalism and neoliberalism within and outside
of the university.”

Whether the coalition will be able to achieve its greater goal of
establishing self-governance is unclear. In its blueprint, the
coalition has a stated commitment to “reflect on possible
alternatives to the current model and structure of the Board of
Trustees.” Members seem to understand that a democratically run
university cannot exist until the Board of Trustees is abolished and
replaced with an elected, self-administrative body of students,
faculty and staff. At present, it’s mostly acknowledged as a
long-term project. With the part-time faculty strike over, one view is
that the rupture and opportunity presented at the beginning of the
occupation has passed. The resumption of normal life at the university
indicates that the coalition is an organization without a movement.

However, back when the University Center was still occupied, students
held a Zoom meeting with students and faculty from other universities
to reimagine the higher education landscape. Since then, they’ve
stayed in touch with students at local universities, namely CUNY and
Rutgers — two schools that may see faculty strikes
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the near future
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If they continue their community-building efforts beyond the
boundaries of their campus, they might find themselves igniting a new
era of student activism reminiscent of the 1960s.

Beyond the need for student-faculty solidarity in the face of
increasingly exploitative labor conditions, there is also a need for
other forms of campus activism, as higher education is rife with
crises. Recently, there have been student protests or occupations
at Connecticut College
[[link removed]], Temple
University
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Berkeley
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University
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University
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of Central Florida
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University
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Santa Barbara
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College of Florida
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At Connecticut College, the dean of institutional equity and inclusion
resigned over a planned fundraiser at a Palm Beach country club known
for its racism and antisemitism — a plan that sparked a student
occupation. At Marymount University, students and teachers were
outraged by their board of trustees’ decision to eliminate several
liberal arts majors. At the New College of Florida, students are
objecting to the abolishment of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
initiatives after Governor Ron DeSantis installed six new members of
the Board of Trustees. And amid this recent spate of campus
activism, protesters also rallied outside the Supreme Court 
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demand student debt cancellation. Continuing their work of connecting
with organizers beyond the boundaries of their campuses could energize
a more organized national student movement, which is desperately
needed to help combat the crises in higher education and beyond.

It’s not yet clear how active the One New School Coalition will be
in forming ongoing organizing ties with other students across the
country and envisioning what a unified student movement might be
capable of. But its members are clear on the fact that the conditions
that sparked the student occupation and their ongoing work weren’t
an isolated anomaly.

As Cole told _Truthout_, “Occupations are fueled by the conditions
of crisis that are produced under racial capitalism and neoliberalism
within and outside of the university.”

_[MILES HAMBERG is a freelance writer and researcher interested in the
labor movement, climate change and telling stories that are typically
overlooked in the media.]_

_Copyright © Truthout [[link removed]]. Reprinted with
permission. May not be reprinted without permission._

_Truthout provides daily news, in-depth reporting and critical
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* Faculty Unions
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* Adjuncts
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* academic labor
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* UAW
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* adjunct professors
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* collective bargaining
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* Labor Organizing
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* higher education
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