Comments on: Imagining Greenwich Village in 2031

By: The_Pen_Is_Mightier

The_Pen_Is_Mightier — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:22:00 +0000

If NYU
2031 is some people’s idea of progress or “victory” for the University administration, it is most certainly a Pyrrhic victory, if ever there was
one. Pres. Sexton, his PR suits (who would have the public believe that open space is the same thing as green space and that the award-winning and much-beloved Sasaki Garden was somehow inaccessible to the community), and, above all,
the NYU trustees (many of whom harbor real estate interests and ambitious
of their own) are no doubt clinking champagne glasses. Yet what is
there to celebrate? This imperious expansion, if it indeed materializes
in its present gargantuan form, will come with the heaviest of costs.
Not only the neighboring community that has so long sustained the
University with its cultural and economic vibrancy but NYU’s own
intellectual community — its faculty, students and a growing number of
dismayed alumni, whose degrees are becoming devalued by the year — are
grieving for what is in danger of being lost. For faculty, like myself,
the price is the erosion of faculty governance, which has never been so
imperiled at our University, and our stewardship of the students placed
in our trust. The same students already paying over $58,000 in tuition,
room and board per year and whose numbers are increasing annually,
thanks to a lax admissions policy, currently responsible for an
admissions rate around 30% (compared to the Ivy League schools’
high-selectivity of 9-11%, with Columbia hovering around 10%). And what
are we to expect as early as this fall? NYU claims to have
“accidentally” had an over-yield of 10-15% (woops!)… all the while
hiking tuition costs another 3.8%. When will the fleecing of our
undergraduates and their increasingly-struggling families end? Is it not
enough that our student body is the MOST indebted of any private
university (and, as Newsweek just revealed this week in their college rankings, the 4th in student debt among ALL national universities), the average graduate owing as much as $41,000 in loans? As
everyone knows, there is no more punishing, unforgiving debt than
student debt. Yet, while we’re among the “top-ranked” in university
student debt, we have just come in #97 in this year’s Forbes Magazine
“American’s Best Colleges” rankings. While the administration may
tolerate academic mediocrity as long as it maintains its bottom line,
the faculty demands better. Our students deserve better, much better.

And so, when is big enough, big enough?
When will the NYU administration, for all its global branding ambitions reaching from Abu Dhabi to Shanghai, be
fully satiated?

All of these academic and fiscal concerns fall on a deaf ear, when
addressed by the faculty — to say nothing of the Village community and local business, environmental and preservationist groups —
to the NYU administration. “Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott
Fitzgerald once wrote. “They are different from you and me.” Boy, are
they ever. And it is now left to the faculty, our students and the devastated community to pick up the pieces.

By: Hubert Steed

Hubert Steed — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 07:01:00 +0000

The current NYC Government from the Mayor, City Council President, Manhattan Borough President, NYC Planning Commission, NYC Land Use Committee, Greenwich City Council Representative and the NYU Administration cannot be trusted to represent the local community, Greenwich Village and NYC interests in approving the NYU2031 Plan that gives public property to nonsustaining and exploitative private interests by re-zoning the land in question from residential to commercial interests. Please note that is Commercial and not residential or educational purposes.

This plan will reduce much of the current open space by destroying children’s playgrounds, public park strips, the treasured Washington Square Village Sasaki Garden, the LaGuardia Corner Garden, Mercer and Bleecker Street Gardens and over a thousand mature trees, bushes and plants for massive skyscrapers in the heart of historic Greenwich Village. The local community, Local NYC Community Board, NYU faculty members against the plan and the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation have protested and campaigned against the NYU2031 Plan for several years asking NYU to expand to NYC neighborhoods where they are wanted and needed with no success.

Please Google my internet handle ‘hjsteed’ for more information on this matter.

By: Alicia Kammerling

Alicia Kammerling — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:16:00 +0000

NYU needs to expand in the name of progress just like the rest of the city. NYU brings jobs,money and prestige to NY . You can’t have your cake and eat it too.