NYU graduate students - and their supporters - protesting the university's union policies were arrested yesterday during an afternoon rally in Washington Square Park. Fifty-seven people, including graduate assistants from Columbia, UPenn, and Yale, were arrested for civil disobedience - the Washington Square News says those arrested were the ones who "sat in the street and blocked traffic at Washington Square North for 10 minutes." According to insky, who took the photograph above, the students were demanding that NYU President John Sexton be fired. The arrested protesters were released after a few hours and NYU said, "We will not compromise our principles because of staged arrests.”
This is the latest chapter in the trying-to-unionize saga of NYU's Graduate Students Organizing Committee - last fall, they went on strike, only for the university to hand down ultimatums, and have been on strike for the past six months (the NY Times says that NYU believes only a few dozen assistants are striking). More photographs from insky and uffish.
