Show Me The Money

This semester we’ve funded 20 proposals totaling approximately $55,000 from a wide range of student organizations and individual students, including New Light Opera, the Social Justice Leadership Retreat, and the first ever Battle of the Bands (and many others!). We hope to fund many more excellent events in the spring as well.

This means, if you have something cool you want to see happen at the New School but need help funding it, drop us a line and we’ll try to help make it a reality. You can find our Funding Guidelines and Funding Proposal Form right here.

Want to Be A Senator?

We will be holding the 2012-2013 senator elections much earlier than in the past. We are currently planning to begin election proceedings in February so that incoming senators will be able spend the last half of the spring semester becoming familiar with the USS and its obligations. Stay tuned for more details at the beginning of next semester.

Spring 2012 USS Meetings

Next semester USS meetings will be held almost exclusively in the lower lobby of the 16th Street building. We will also hold at least one meeting at the Mannes building and one meeting at the Drama building next semester. You can always find our meeting schedule and locations on our website, but we will also send out an email at the beginning of next semester.

Dinner & Discussion

This semester we introduced a new informal program called Dinner & Discussion to provide food to students, and to give students a space to talk about important issues. While many of the discussions this semester have focused on Occupy Wall Street and financial issues, we plan to continue this series in the spring with a wider range of topics — and we’d like to hear from you on what those topics should possibly be. You can suggest D&D topics to us here.

Beginning in February, Dinner & Discussions will take place the first Friday of every month. On February 3rd our first D&D will be “Tell Us What You Want!”

Tell Us What You Want

We’re here to support student efforts on campus and advocate for students, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what you want. So tell us what you want! We’re here to help.

Sincerely,
Your USS

You can watch video from the Monday Open Forum in Kellen Gallery here.

In the forum we heard from fellow students who work in the gallery and are educated in the space each day. The exhibition that was in the space and was taken down to make way for the 90 5^th occupiers was an important one focusing on the issue of climate change. However, there is a robust line-up of events scheduled to take place in the gallery during the next few weeks. If the space was not returned to the Kellen Gallery staff for programming then a number of important events scheduled to take place in the Gallery would be cancelled. After the meeting on Monday, it was clear that the university community wanted the space returned for its intended use to the Gallery staff. Click here to learn more about Kellen Galley and upcoming programs.

Although it is clear that Kellen Gallery cannot be the center for campus activism that many of us believe is needed on campus, we are committed to finding a space that students may utilize as a central planning hub for the remainder of the semester.  We envision that this space be commonly understood as one in which students may go to share ideas and organize. Please share your ideas here about a space you might recommend.  How do you envision this space being utilized?

The USS believes and will advocate that a new space needs to be created as a temporary student union in the interim period between the end of this semester and the opening of our new building at 65 5^th Ave. This would be a space where students may come together to meet and organize and begin to build a stronger sense of community.

As University Student Senators, we will do our best to facilitate the necessary connections to unite us all to learn and work together. We ask that you help us.  Please write us, like our Facebook page and come to our meetings (time/location posted on our homepage).  We’re listening. We’re here for you.

In solidarity,

The University Student Senate

After many discussions with the President, Provost, members of the faculty and fellow students, we have jointly agreed to call for an Open Forum on Monday November 28th at Noon in the Kellen Gallery. This will allow for a public forum for all of us to talk about what has happened on campus over the past several days, the future of the Kellen Gallery space, and how we as a community move forward from events of the past week. We will still be holding our scheduled USS meeting at 9 AM on Monday in 80 5th Ave, room 529, where we will be discussing these matters further. In addition, we are helping coordinate a reclamation and cleanup of the Kellen space at 2 PM Sunday (tomorrow) with Radhika Subramaniam, Curator of the Kellen Gallery and student employees of the space. Anyone interested in helping should contact us or meet at the Gallery at 2 PM on Sunday, November 27th.

Examples of the defacement at Kellen Gallery.

This event is sponsored by the Milano Dean’s Office, The University Student Senate (USS) and The Federation for Community Development Credit Unions (Federation), and will feature the following guests, who will be available to share information and answer questions:

Cliff Rosenthal, CEO/President, National Federation for Community Development Credit Unions

Linda Levy, CEO, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union work

Kevin McQueen, Assistant Director, Community Development Finance Lab

Annie McShiras, Responsible Endowments Coalition

We hope that you will participate in this event on November 4^th, on the eve of Bank Transfer Day.  Light refreshments will be served.

To RSVP, Click Here

The University Student Senate

(USS) USS Begins With U!

An Open Letter to the New School Community,

On Wednesday, September 21st 2011, the state of Georgia knowingly murdered Troy Davis, a black man whose involvement was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the death of a white police officer in August of 1989. The events surrounding the night in question are sketchy at best, no DNA evidence exists to implicate Davis, and 7 of the 9 original witnesses who testified against him have since come forward and recanted their original testimonies.  All of this, as well as numerous other details of the case, raise serious questions–questions which cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt–that Troy Davis was in fact guilty. Davis had spent the past 22 years on Death Row appealing his case and claiming his innocence. By ignoring these facts, we believe the state of Georgia knowingly executed an innocent black man, and as politically engaged citizens we cannot in good conscience stand by silently and accept this outcome as either fair or just.

Our concerns about the death penalty are deeply connected to the power and influence of the prison-industrial complex and the racial and class biases which structure and maintain this system in the United States. For example, in 1972 the U.S. jailed 330,000 people, but today that number is closer to 2.1 million.(1) Nor is it an accident that 60% of those incarcerated in the US are poor youth of color.(2) It comes as no surprise, then, that yet another black man was sentenced to death for supposedly killing a white cop, while white police regularly murder young men of color without any repercussions. The stories of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rodney King, Amidou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant and Troy Davis are not unusual, they are the norm for how racial injustice manifests in the so-called “criminal justice” system of the United States.(3)

Vigil for Troy Davis on Wednesday September 21st before his execution.

We believe a great injustice occurred when Georgia executed Troy Davis. Real reforms of the criminal justice system will only occur when enough of the U.S. public stands up and says no more and takes action to stop such continued abuses and injustice. We believe this statement, however small, is a step in that direction. As future leaders and citizens, it is up to us to create the change we want in the world. If justice is to have any real meaning, it is our generation that must take on that burden and reclaim it.

The University Student Senate (USS)

This statement is signed on behalf of the following members of the USS Representative Board:

Myrianne Clitus, Melissa Holmes, Bronwyn Lewis, Kathy Litchfield, Chris Crews, Voltaire Veloso, Divya Khandelwal, Michael Kaplan, Santiago Posas, and Hajir Sailors.

1. The Sentencing Project. Incarceration and Crime: A Complex Relationship. 2005.

2. http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122.

3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/fourteen-examples-of-raci_b_658947.html.

[Note: The following statement was approved by the USS for release. The Faculty Senate has also been asked to consider co-signing the following letter, and their response will be added once it is received.]