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Students Occupy New School University

New York, NY – Hundreds of students at New School University in Manhattan are currently occupying a building, 65 Fifth Avenue, demanding that the school president, Bob Kerrey, and vice president, James Murtha, immediately step down, and the school restructure its budget. Students transformed the building, which is set to be torn down next semester, into an overnight study place.

"We have come together to prevent our study spaces from being flattened by corporate bulldozers, to have a say in who runs this school, to demand that the money we spend on this institution be used to facilitate the creation of a better society, not to build bigger buildings or invest in companies that make war," students posted in an open letter on their website: http://www.newschoolinexile.com.

Many of the Students are members of Students for a Democratic Society, Student Environmental Action Coalition, and United for Peace and Justice. They want a voice in how their university operates. Besides their president and vice president stepping down, they are also demanding that Robert B. Millard - director of L-3 Communications, a military contractor with business in Iraq - step down from the school's board of trustees for his support of torture.

Students are asking for budget disclosure, affordable education, decision making rights over issues that affect them, and administrators that have support of students and faculty. Faculty members had an overwhelming vote of no-confidence in President Bob Kerrey last week.

During this global economic crisis students here are connecting their struggle for autonomy with the struggles of ordinary people across America and the world who are losing their homes, jobs, and futures. The occupied building is now a model of collective decision making, group study, cooperation, music, and poetry.

In an invitation of support the students write, "Come here to join the uprisings and outpouring of passionate resistance currently taking place all over this country, and all over the world – from factory workers in Chicago to students in Greece. Come for yourself. Come for all of us."