I heard about this story a few days ago, but this is my first time seeing the video.
It is brillz.
A group of NYU students “barricaded” themselves into the school cafeteria, demanding greater transparency in the NYU budget, scholarships for Palestinian students, supplies for the Islamic University of Gaza and, of course, for someone with authority to pay attention to the big words they know, like “consensus” and “devices of force” and “dirty fucking rats.”
The kids don’t seem to understand that NYU is a private university — that their parents are paying a shitload for them to attend — and barricading oneself in an edifice belonging to a private establishment could easily be construed as trespass, destruction of property and total douche-baggery, among other things. They have zero rights here, and it’s to the credit of the security team that they manage to keep a straight face throughout all this.
Please stay tuned until the end, where they all huddle up to gain a “consensus” on whether or not they should show the security dudes their NYU IDs — which they are required to do when on campus, by NYU regulations. The security team has given them ten minutes to confer, and one of the guys is like, “Okay, who’s our facilitator? Who can facilitate?” That’s when, all alone in my apartment, I rolled my eyes.
Look, do we have an island where we can put kids like this? Like maybe once Guantanamo shuts down? They can all just frolic among the palm trees and seashells, bra-less and dreadlocked and videotaping the whole thing. They can shout meaningless platitudes and redundant legalese at the open sky during the day, and at night they can huddle around the camera and gleefully watch the footage, each experience more self-congratulatory than the last. After four years, when it’s all out of their system, we’ll just hand them a BA in Philosophy (that’s what they were studying, right?) and send them off to cashier at the Park Slope grocery co-op, which is all they really wanted in the long run anyway.
