Those kids who took over the New School building at 65 5th Avenue a few nights ago are catching up on some lost sleep today, after having peacefully ended their occupation of the building's cafeteria early this morning - like real, early, 3am. That's not a college morning.
After going back and forth with each other and representatives for University President Bob Kerrey, the students appear to be happy with the administration's concessions. However, their main end-all-be-all goal of ending Bob Kerrey's unpopular reign of terror at the school never came to fruition.
Rather, they got amnesty for all involved students, the right to "voting representation on the search committee for the interim-Provost and the Provost" and some freedom of speech allowances for the University Student Senate. That's about it. Their other requests were passed off as difficult or already in motion by Kerrey's representative.
The Times' City Room blog does a nice comparison between Columbia's student occupation of 1968, which looked a heck of a lot more fun than the New School's.
In the end, the New School's occupation ended peacefully, although there are reports that not alls that ends well. In a post today on the New School in Exile blog, which students used to communicate with the outside world during the last three days, they say, "A student I know was denied entrance this morning despite showing her work-study pay receipt (complete with name and student number and the words: NEW SCHOOL, stamped on its front) and valid driver's license together....We at the New School in Exile feel that this is highly inappropriate as we ended the occupation in good faith last night, they should be acting in the same fashion."
