Free Press

# 01FEB2015

David Van Zant: Questions and Answers

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Editors-in-ChiefAnnelise McGough

NiQyira Rajhi

News EditorsTamar LapinAdrian Eng

DesignMarissa Baca

Miles Barretto

ReportersMicha Borneo

Magnus CollinsPenelope Eaton

HJ GaskinsCharles Innis

Christopher KennedyTaylor KuglerMaya LazzaroZarira Love

Christina Mancuso Marija Mayer

Ekua MusumbaSydney OberfeldDylan Schulman

Josh SegalCallan Shattuck

Faculty AdvisorsRoberto Buchanan

Aidan Gardiner

The New School Free PressPublished by

The Eugene Lang College Literary Studies Department

65 W 11th St. Room 458New York, NY 10011

Contents

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Remembering David Carr

We Have a Gym

Sexual Assault Policy on Campus

DVZ: Midterm Milestones

Fifty Shades of Divestment

Student Spotlight: Keren Hasson

Where Have all the Computers Gone?

New School Student Arrested at Art Basel

OP-ED: Why I’ll Never be President

Check this Mate

Narwhals Hit the Slopes

A Tribute to Floor 3

Inside the Newly-Opened U.C. Basement

Four Years with David Van Zandt

A New Take on an Old Story Arnhold Hall Computers Reboot in New Location

Student installs chess set in Lang Courtyard

New School students travel to Windham Mountain

By Taylor Kugler

Images screen shot from YouTube video

New School Student Arrested at Art Basel

Remembering David Carr

Dildo-wielding performance artists were arrested during the final days of a Miami arts festival in De-cember when police mistook the phallus for a gun and now one of them, a New School student, worries she may be deported, she said.

Maria Valenezuela, 20, of Parsons, and artist Kalan Sherrard, paraded through the world-renowned Art Basel event at the Miami Beach Convention Center on Dec. 7, shouting text of the BMW guide to collecting art, which was distributed at the event. “Fuck Art Basel! Fuck all you rich people,” they shout-ed as they were escorted out of the Collector’s Lounge, as seen in numerous videos taken by bystanders.

Passersby filmed Sherrard, whose performances have appeared in major media outlets, and Valenzuela, who is in the United States on a student visa, and posted the clips to YouTube.

As police arrived, Sherrard reached to his pants to pull out an object prompting the officers to grab him, offi-cials said.

“He began pulling away and resisting the officer’s effort to control him and the unknown object,” the police re-port said.

“[Valenzuela] went toward me from the rear in a threat-ening manner,” police said in the report. Officers then intercepted her, and got her to the ground.

The artists’ account differed.

“As we exited the building, having been forbidden to pick up our checked bags by Basel security, police vio-lently pounced on us from behind, supposedly having mistaken a prosthetic packing penis for a handgun,” they said in a statement.

The two were arraigned on charges of disorderly con-duct and resisting an officer without violence, court re-cords show.

Valenzuela is now worried because she’s on a student visa and been arrested several times before which could lead to her deportation.

“I could risk being deported. I was arrested last year for painting a mural, detained in January at the subway after the Art Basel arrest,” she said in an email. She did not elaborate about her other arrests.

Valenzuela was due to appear in court on Feb. 11, but said her date was changed and is now set to appear on April 15.

“I am in contact with some lawyers that are trying to help out with the accumulation of arrests. Yet I have nothing clear so far,” the artist added.

As of press time her lawyer declined comment.

The journalism world lost a legend on Thursday Feb. 12. The New York Times media columnist David Carr, 58, died of lung cancer only hours after leading a panel discussion with Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald at The New School. It was the sec-ond time in a week that Carr had moderated a New School event, having hosted another high-profile panel discussion seven days earlier.

After Carr’s death, Irwin Chen, a professor at Parsons and Lang, wrote on the Journalism + Design’s Face-book page about he and the columnist’s brief interac-tion on campus:

I met David Carr just last week. He was moderating the Serial and the Podcasting Explosion event we were doing at The New School. It was my job to greet him at the en-trance and make sure he made it to the Green Room. I was nervous about picking him out of the crowd. I knew what he looked like from “Page One,” the documentary which was ostensibly about the The New York Times but he be-came its unintentional star when he smacked the VICE guys down a few pegs and reminded them (and the rest of us) about the power and wit of a real, seasoned journalist.

By Annelise McGough

He trundled through the door with his parka, taking off his gloves appropriate for the tundra (he later told us that David Plotz had implored him to do something about his Minnesotan accent) and grasped my hand firmly, exam-ining me first with his cocked eye for a second before say-ing hello.

We talked briefly about teaching, about his new class at BU, and he tried to give me the impression that he was somehow still figuring it out. “Made some rookie mis-takes,” he said. But I knew better, having read his bril-liant syllabus which he had posted on Medium, wishing simultaneously that I could take his course and steal his way with words for my own.

Ultimately, our interaction was brief, but what I was left with, what touched me was his deep insightfulness, charm and generosity. Can you miss someone you only admired from afar? I will.

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Photo by Earl Wilson from New York Times

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Photos by HJ Gaskins

By Josh Segal

OP-ED: Why I’ll Never Be President

We Have a Gym

On Feb. 6, Barack Obama stood in the auditorium at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and out-lined his plan for making two-year community colleges free. One reason he wants to do that: colleges have got-ten too luxe.

“These days I hear everybody is looking for fancy gyms and gourmet food and really spiffy dorms,” Obama said.

Hey! Could he have been talking about us? The cafete-ria in the University Center just recently started serving osso buco. The dorms in the upper floors of the center are nicer than most New York City apartments. But do we really have one of those “fancy gyms”? Actually we have three, one each in Kerrey Hall, Stuy, and Loeb. (If you live at 13th Street, you can place a re-quest with central housing and gain access to the dorm gym of your choice.) But for the rest of us — and here’s the rub; this part is, for lack of a better word, bullshit — we can only use New School facilities if we are signed-

in guests of a student living in that residence hall, and our hosts must stay with us at all times.

Remember when they first announced the University Center? They were so excited to tell us about the “Event Cafe” (still not open, two years later), the “Communi-cating Stairs” (open, obviously — they’re just the stairs in the building — but what’s up with this nonsensi-cal name?), and the Center for Student Success (again, open, on the fourth floor, but why is this a specific place? Shouldn’t our whole school be a “Center for Stu-dent Success?”). They sent email after email, a constant barrage that was aimed to excite. And it worked. They talked about the basement, which on L1 would have computer labs and on L2 would have, among other things, a gym. I was excited to get in shape. I wanted that gym.

So, when yet another email would come, I would open it, scan it quickly, and glean whatever pertinent infor-mation I could. I guess I never looked that closely, be-cause I never noticed that the perks of L2 — the music rooms, the lounge, and, most importantly, the gym — were closed to students who don’t live in Kerrey Hall.

But then, that water main broke and the basement flooded, and L1 and L2 were ruined. So, I joined the McBurney YMCA for a reduced New School student rate of $60 a month.

A year later, on Jan. 26, after paying $720 for the priv-ilege of using sweat-covered elliptical machines, I got another email from President Van Zandt. This one, whose subject line read “Campus and Facilities High-lights: New This Spring,” seemed like it was my ticket

out of the communal locker rooms and showers. In the email, Van Zandt said the basement was open. I didn’t read it that closely. I was too excited.

I went to school that day about an hour early to check out the basement. It was still mostly unfinished and completely devoid of human life, save for one sad and bored looking security guard. I asked him where the gym was. He smirked and told me I’d have to go back up, out, and around, to the residence hall entrance. I waited for the elevator for what seemed like forever (seriously, can someone explain what’s going on with those elevators this semester?), walked out and around, and asked the security guard at Kerrey Hall to let me go to the gym. He laughed in my face and said, “No.” But now, a month later, the school is thinking about finally opening the gym to all students.

Obama’s college, Occidental, didn’t have a cafeteria like ours. Instead of bone marrow, the students ate some-thing they jokingly referred to as “roast beast” because they couldn’t identify what kind of meat it actually was.

They did have one thing we don’t. “Let me tell you, when I was at college, we — the college I started at, Occidental College, it did have a gym,” he said. “But like the weight room was — it was like a medicine ball and you had — (laughter) — I mean, it wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t state of the art.” At least you had a gym, Barack. How am I supposed to grow up and become the Pres-ident of the United States if my college doesn’t even have a gym I can use?

By Callan Shattuck

The University Center’s basement amenities including gym, art room and lounge will soon open up to stu-dents from throughout The New School, reversing re-strictions that limited access to the building’s residents, administrators said.

Administrators still need to develop a security protocol for non-residents and plan on discussing those details during a Feb. 17 meeting, said Robert Lutomski, Assis-tant Vice President of Resident Life.

Full access could come that same week, Lutomski said.

The amenities “will be made available to all universi-ty students, with the exception of the laundry room, which will remain exclusive to residents of Kerrey Hall,” Lutomski said.

The broadened accessibility comes during a pilot pro-gram period that will allow students to use the Univer-sity Center for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the vice president said.

The center’s basement floors, L1 and L2 opened at the start of the Spring 2015 semester. L2 boasts amenities which include a lounge, art room, gym, study hall, mu-sic practice rooms, and laundry. L1 is partially still un-der construction and houses two computer labs.

The University Center basement was expected to be finished by June 2014, according to the school’s web-site. But its opening was postponed after it flooded in January 2014 when a water main broke nearby under Fifth Avenue.

Amenities housed in the University Center’s basement have been accessible only to Kerrey Hall residents, ad-ministrators said.

The practice rooms on L2, were the only exception to this rule and were available to students all day every day as part of the same pilot program, administrators said.

“Any registered student in good standing with The New School may access these practice rooms via an online sign up system,” according to the school’s housing web-site.

Since the opening of the University Center basement students have voiced their disappointment with the re-strictions surrounding basement amenities, namely the new gym.

“Most schools do have a school gym so, it is kind of weird that you have to live here,” said Julia Purcell, a Lang Arts-in-Context major.

Lutomski explained that the official operating status and internal configurations of both levels are still sub-ject to change.

Photos by HJ Gaskins

How am I supposed to grow up and

become the President of the United

States if my college doesn’t even

have a gym I can use?

Inside the Newly-Opened U.C. Basement

The amenities “will be made available to all

university students, with the exception of

the laundry room, which will remain

exclusive to residents of Kerrey Hall”

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February 17 1953: David van Zandt (DVZ) is born in Montgomery Township New Jersey to Edgar and Edna Van Zandt. Descended from 17th-century Dutch settlers DVZ is a tenth generation American and raised on his family’s dairy farm.

After Bob Kerrey steps down in December 2010, Van Zandt becomes the eighth president of The New School. He joins the administration at a time when the school is struggling to find firm financial footing.

DVZ graduates summa cum laude from Princ-eton University with a degree in sociology.

“The New School is engaged with New York City and it is engaged with the rest of the globe, particularly the urbaniz-ing world. The point of that public engagement is to pursue social justice, to right wrongs, and to make the city, urban life, and the world better,” Van Zandt says at his induction ceremony at Tishman Auditorium.

He marries Lisa Huestis, a former federal prosecu-tor in Chicago. They have two children, Caroline and Nicholas. Hustis teaches Humanities and Literature at the New School.

Receives his JD from Yale Law School where he is managing editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Van Zandt holds the first university town hall with Provost Tim Marshall, the aim being to increase transparency. Van Zandt and Marshall still hold town halls throughout the school year.

Serves as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Goes on to become an Associate at the prestigious Wall Street firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Students protesters agree to move their occupation to the Student Study Center at 90 Fifth Av-enue as part of Occupy Wall Street. Van Zandt tells occupiers that, “Damage to our property will not be tolerated.” When protesters leave a week later the University says the bill for repairs exceeds $40,000

Publishes his doctoral thesis on the Children of God, a religious cult based in England with whom he lived for three months in the 1970s while doing undercover research. Receives his PHD in sociology from the London School of Economics.

In an email to the New School community, Van Zandt announces that he and Marshall will take a 5% pay cut in what he described as “a time of belt tightening.” Van Zandt’s current base pay is still $647,128 a year. This number does not include his Universi-ty-owned townhouse.

On the eve of the storm, Van Zandt urges students to take precautions and remain safely indoors. There is no electricity in any New School dorms for about a week, but Arnhold Hall remains open as a shelter and workspace for students. Van Zandt, whose university-owned Eleventh Street town-house lost power in the storm, spends time at Arnhold Hall with students playing Scrabble and working on jigsaw puzzles.

Van Zandt and Marshall roll out a new ‘vision statement’ for The New School. The statement says the university’s fu-ture will focus on design and the integration of traditionally distinct academic categories, but nevertheless adhere to “core values that have de-fined our past: academic freedom, tolerance and experimentation.”

A Forbes article claims that The New School owes $440 million worth of tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York State Dormitory Au-thority, or twice what is in the endowment at the time. The New School falls $17 million short of balancing its $330 million 2012 budget.

Feb. 1 2013: Bob Kerrey resigns as president emeritus. Van Zandt sends a short email noting the event. “Bob Kerrey will always consider himself our ally and advocate,” he writes. “I salute his contribu-tions and wish him the very best.”

Van Zandt announces that the that the new $353 million Univer-sity Center will open in January 2014 and become, “the heart of our campus.”

Faculty receives a 2.5% across-the-board pay raise--their first raise since 2010.

WATER MAINBREAK

A water main break on Fifth Avenue and 13th Street floods the lower two levels of the brand new University Center. Nevertheless the upper stories of the building open for classes on schedule.

New York City media outlets report that New School administrators are discussing renaming the university after Parsons. The following day, Van Zandt sends out an email to the community saying the reports are, “inaccurate and there is no intention to make this change.”

In an email to the faculty, Van Zandt says that 2015 pay raises will be awarded to faculty based on, “excellent perfor-mance, exemplary service and leadership and parity considerations.” Super-visors will recommend to Van Zandt who should receive a raise and who should not.

Following pushback from faculty, Van Zandt sends out another email in regards to the proposed merit-based pay raises, saying the Faculty Senate has requested , “greater transparency and faculty involvement in the process.” Nevertheless, he says, an annual across the board pay raise, “would not be an equitable or effective use of limited resources.”

Van Zandt sends out statement regarding the events in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island. “Actions taken based on stereotypes of others–whether about race, religious beliefs, gender/gender expres-sion, ethnicity, sexual orientation–should not be tolerated in our soci-ety, and especially not in our own university com-munity,” he writes, while also urging all members of The New School participating in protests to do so non-violently.

Van Zandt announces that the Board of Trustees has decided to divest from fossil fuels, and introduces a new Climate Action Plan. The plan includes proposed changes to curriculum and the introduction of the Tishman Environ-ment and Design Center as a hub for environmen-tal justice and climate change related research and projects.

He serves as dean of Northwestern’s law school for 15 years, making his tenure the second-longest in Northwestern’s history. As dean, he integrates the law school with the Kellogg School of Man-agement, and creates the nation’s first J.D./M.B.A. program where students can study both business administration and law.

Joins the faculty of Northwestern School of Law.

After the University’s enrollment numbers fall 2.5% below projections, Van Zandt announces budget cutbacks, saying that “revenue for the current fiscal year is approximately $9 million lower than planned.” He says a reorganization of the president’s and provost’s offices will save $2.5 million.

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Midterm Milestones

by Annelise McGough, Tamar Lapin, and Niqyira Rajhi with reporting by Adrian Eng

timeline by Miles Barretto

Got a question for DVZ?

On February 26 2015 at 4pm, join the New School Free Press for a live online conversation with New School President David Van Zan-dt hosted on the Free Press website. It’s your opportunity to get real answers to your most pressing questions--about social justice on campus, rising tuition costs, the on-going bat-tle for space, or any other aspect of The New School that you care about.

The First Four Years with David Van Zandt

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Sexual Assault Policy on CampusBy Tamar Lapin

A new piece of legislation proposed by the city’s Pub-lic Advocate Letitia James aims to combat on-campus sexual assault by establishing education and prevention programs at universities across the city.

“Survivors of campus sexual assault have been failed by a system meant to educate and protect them,” James said addressing a crowd made up of advocates, educa-tors and students during a Feb. 12 forum at The New School about the legislation dubbed the New York City Campus Safety Act.

Her statements came shortly after The New School outlined its own efforts to educate students, staff and teachers on sexual assault through an online survey- a survey that went unnoticed by many students.

James’ act aims to remedy an epidemic that has received widespread attention by universities and the federal government, with the surfacing of cases like those of Emma Sulkowicz at Columbia and of unnamed stu-dents at the UVA, CalArts, and Vanderbilt.

“We are having this forum not because all of a sudden this is the issue of the moment, but because sexual vio-lence has always been and will always be unacceptable,” said Rachel Knopf, of the university’s office of Wellness and Health Promotion.

Zoe Ridolfi-Starr, a Columbia senior who co-founded advocate group No Red Tape, and launched a Title IX complaint against the university also spoke at the pub-

An arts student installed a 700-pound wood and con-crete chess board in the Lang courtyard in early Feb-ruary in hopes of bringing New Schoolers together, he said.

Josh Ehrenberg, 23, a BAFA student at Lang and Par-sons, and a team of others built the chess board, piling slabs of concrete and plywood atop each other, on the eastern steps of the courtyard on Feb. 2, fulfilling a class assignment he was given in the Integrative Design Pro-gram, he said.

He struck on the idea of a chess board when he was assigned to create “a personal project,” but wanted to make something that benefitted others and remem-bered the popular chess games in nearby Union and Washington Squares.

“I want people to have a reason to gather around and watch a game, people who don’t necessarily know each other will be standing next to each other with a com-mon interest and that’s an opportunity,” Ehrenberg said.

Ehrenberg thought The New School lacked a close community but saw the Lang courtyard as a unique and

lic forum. She emphasized that a lack of education is what caused her to spend a long time not being able to comprehend her assault, which happened during her freshman year, and classify it as rape.

James and other speakers at the event emphasized the importance of an education based curriculum to com-bat on campus sexual assaults by citing a series of trou-bling statistics including that one in five women will be sexualy assaulted during their time at college, according to the oft cited Campus Sexual Assault Study of 2007.

Event attendees broke into groups to discuss James’ legislation that is trying to bridge gaps between gov-ernment and laws and universities by reviewing and implementing a sexual assault curriculum.

“We need something more useful than an online quiz,” a CUNY educator said in one of the groups.

The New School, on Feb. 2, followed the path many universities have taken, like CUNY, by mandating an online anti-sexual assault training for students, staff and faculty.

The training, administered by Texas-based company Workplace Answers, explains rights under Title IX and asks over 100 multiple choice questions explaining fed-eral anti-discrimination rights under the law.

Administrators did not say how the university would confirm that people completed the training.

“Every member of the community is expected to take the training,” said Linda Reimer, Senior Vice President for Student Services, who sent the email, when asked if completion of the training would be mandatory.

Ninety-six postsecondary schools are under Title IX review by the federal government for sexual assault vio-lations, including Columbia, CUNY Hunter and Sarah Lawrence to name a few in New York. Any school that receives federal funding is required by law to abide by Title IX regulations.

Student reactions to the training aimed at educating them about Title IX regulations range from confused to disinterested.

“I got the email but felt like there was not enough ex-planation,” said Emma Hersh, a Lang student.

Another student, Dungin Shin, an M.F.A. student who also works in the provost’s office, said she was required to complete the training in order to get paid.

“It was really fascinating, better than what I had ex-pected but also a little too long.” Shin was no longer really paying attention to the training by the end of it, she said.

This new online effort to educate the community about sexual assault joins a collection of existing programs. The university has a class as part of their freshman workshop seminars that teaches students to make sure all parties consent before engaging in sexual activity.

The New School also offers two information sessions during orientation on definitions of sexual assault and where to report incidents, which Tracy Robbin at The New School’s Counseling Center said are poorly at-tended.

Though there are resources available at The New School, like the Health and Wellness Office and the Sex-E Collective, it seems that there is a lack of out-reach to students.

Though Hersh says that the staff at the Health and Wellness office is very approachable and that she would feel comfortable going there to report an assault, she also said that this would probably be difficult for stu-dents not plugged in to that community.

“Isn’t there like the center thingy? Isn’t there like an office or something for that?” said Lang freshman Eliz-abeth Afutti.

Robbin also said that she is part of a team working on making more resources available to students online and that she is planning on sending out a Campus Climate Survey at the end of February to collect data from stu-dents and gauge their sexual assault awareness. This data will inform New School administrators on how to move forward.

Photo by Marissa Baca

By Penelope Eaton

unused opportunity to change that.

“Ever so often something will happen in the center [of it] and it’s a very nice feeling when that happens. It brings people out to it and kind of gives people the opportunity to enjoy something together,” Ehrenberg said.

Once Ehrenberg solidified his idea, he met with the Lang Student Union and discussed the funding for his chess set.

“Josh determined the [cost] through research. We made sure he broke down how much each part of the chess board would cost, rather than just estimates. He then got approval from facilities and the university’s curator to execute his project,” said Amanda Manning, a Lang Student Union facilitator.

Ehrenberg has yet to see the impact of the board, but hopes it will be more rewarding as the weather warms up. Regardless, he has gotten a lot of positive feedback about the installation from friends and acquaintances, he said.

“It’s cold right now so I have yet to see it work in the

group,” Ehrenberg said.

“I think that a lot of people will use the chessboard after the winter especially since it’s in such a convenient area where students are all the time already,” said Lily Smith, a sophomore at Lang.

For further chess interest, Ehrenberg is planning on creating a chess club in the near future. So if you’re looking to join, please email him at: ehrej883@new-school.edu.

Where Have All theComputers Gone?By Magnus Collins

By Callan Shattuck

Where did all the computers go? That was the question on New School students’ minds when they returned from winter break to find a construction zone in place of the popular third- and fourth-floor computer labs at Arnhold Hall on 13th Street. “I thought it was some kind of cruel joke,” said Miciah Carter, a Parsons photography sophomore who said he had raced up the stairs in Arnhold to print something for his first week of classes only to find construction tape barring his way. “New School’s just playing with us right?”

“This decision was made by academic and administra-tive leadership along with the Board of Trustees,” said Michael Joy, the New School’s Director of Campus Planning and a member of the University Facilities Committee.

“Arnhold Hall’s generous ceiling heights, which pro-vide better acoustics, along with the proximity to the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, made it a

natural destination for the newly formed Performing Arts School,” Joy added.

Meanwhile, the computers that were once there have been distributed around the university, administrators said.

“The computers on the third and fourth floors were moved to the Innovation Center on the sixth floor of 6 E. 16th St., and the University Center in the lower level of 63 Fifth Ave.,” said Lillian Sartori, the New School’s Assistant Vice President of Information Tech-nology and also a member of the University Facilities Committee.

Most of the 108 computer stations wound up in four classrooms on Lower Level 1 of the University Center where there is also a designated print center. About half of the work stations are Macs while the rest run Win-dows, Sartori said.

Students are welcome to use the computers, provided classes are not in session.

“It’s so annoying cause the computers are never free, every time I go down there’s always classes,” said Grace Kim, a fashion senior at Parsons, who said the comput-er labs are not as accessible as they once were at Arn-hold Hall.

But the University Center is now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the sixth floor library open all night Monday through Thursday, but that broad access won’t extend to the computer labs which will only be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. until late March, when construction at center is completed.

For those in need of a free computer there is the new-ly finished Innovation Center on the sixth floor of the Vera List Center at 6 E. 16th St. Housed inside of a new library wing these computer rooms are situated in a studious and less well-known area than the Univer-sity Center’s lower level, with printers located on the seventh and 11th floors and opening hours from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m.

“Even though they took away the easiest way to print stuff before class last minute, the Innovation Center makes up for it,” said Kausik Mishra, a literary studies senior at Lang. “Yes, not as many computers, but not as many people either so that’s nice.”A Tribute to Floor 3

The building is tall and warm. It’s almost like a com-forting friend, and why not? After all, it is literally called Arnhold.

While the sixth floor is home to the jazz students and the ninth is a hotspot for the photography buffs, the third floor is -- or rather, was -- the quintessential hav-en for the rest of us. Students congregated here around the computers, but never flocked. The lab was crowded during finals, but never utter chaos. Instead, there was a mutual agreement among students to work hard and in unison like bees in a beehive.

The walls were white, but the lights weren’t too bright so it didn’t feel like one was in an insane asylum. Time wasn’t measured by minutes or seconds, but by the calming repetition of the printers printing pages upon pages of our deepest thoughts. Even if the population in the room was sparse one did not feel alone, any pos-sibility of the eerie feeling of solitude combated by the constant peripheral motion and presence of the colorful screensavers. Texting was rampant, animated conversa-tions occasional, and eating tolerated, especially if it was from the New School cafeteria or Murray’s Bagels.

The dynamic between the students was one of accep-tance. A girl slept comfortably, passed out on her gray hoodie while two blue wires waterfalled out of her ears. Another student watched “Family Guy” with-out being questioned. A Parsons student typed away, working towards ten pages on the ethics of fashion. One always wondered, what could someone be doing on both a desktop and a laptop simultaneously? There always seemed to be a healthy balance of individuals with and without headphones. A girl would sip vigor-ously through her straw and stare intently at the screen. One might have expected her to be enraptured in her school work while sipping on that energizing smoothie, when in fact she was enjoying the humor of Tina Fey and company in “30 Rock.” Another student had Goo-gle Maps pulled up. Someone had searched “Tucson” and after a few minutes was looking through different, flashy, rock climbing shoes. The students and users of resources were all connected but still distant.

Illustration by Sarah Bibel

Check this Mate

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acceptance.

Student Installs Chess Set in Lang Courtyard

with reporting by Dylan Schulman

Arnhold Hall Computers Reboot in New Location

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Student Spotlight: Keren HassonBy Annelise McGough By NiQyira Rajhi

with reporting by Sydney Oberfeld

Fifty Shades of Divestment

The New School plans to sell the portions of its en-dowment that it has invested in companies heavily associated with fossil fuels, and has adopted what ad-ministrators heralded as “a bold and comprehensive” environmental plan that includes the founding of a space for environmentally-focused student and faculty research projects, as well as public programs and chang-es in curriculum.

President David Van Zandt and Provost Tim Mar-shall announced the plan in a university-wide email on Jan. 30. The plan, which is not the first to be presented to the New School community, was a culmination of about two years of work between administration, the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility and the Sustainability Coalition, comprised of various stu-dent-led environmental groups.

Administrators, however, say they do not know when the university will fully divest from fossil fuels. There are also not many detailed specifics available regarding new environmentally-oriented research projects and curricula.

In March 2014, 1.4 percent of The New School’s en-dowment was invested in fossil fuel companies, accord-ing to a list of frequently asked questions that was de-veloped in connection to a public forum that took place on March 19, 2014.

A year later, the school’s investment in fossil fuels has dropped even lower to less than 1 percent, according to Chief Operating Officer Tokumbo Shobowale and Parsons Dean Joel Towers.

The school’s Board of Trustees also approved an invest-ment in a solar energy at the end of last year, according to Shobowale.

“So we actually now have more invested in solar en-ergy companies than we do in fossil fuel companies.” Shobowale said.

“I have not heard of any university in the world that’s in that situation,” Shobowale added.

The New School’s aggressive move towards green fi-nancial policies comes as other universities around the world are striving for the same.

However, as Research Assistants for the Advisory Committee worked to improve the university’s pol-icies, they found that other universities recognized for their success with divestment are not all they are cracked up to be.

With help from New School alumn Samer Hosn, re-search assistants Brandt Weathers and Ian Howlan reached out to other schools for pointers.

“It was kind of a joke,” Weathers said.

“Many schools had never invested in fossil fuels to be-gin with and none of them even cared to look at ‘indi-rect’ investments,” he added.

Weathers and Howlan have continued working to de-velop a new strategy for The New School to assess its endowment that is unique to the university and pro-vides more transparency about its divestment process. The metric in development is called the Carbon Emis-sion Intensity of Endowment.

“This metric has a very specific way of being interpret-ed,” explained Weathers. “A score would be calculated within 100 and negative 100. A score of 100, for exam-ple, would mean fossil fuel assets make up every invest-ment in the New School’s endowment.”

Conversely, a score of negative 100 would signify that the university’s endowment would consist only of re-newable energy investments, Weathers said.

“The carbon intensity will not just be either it’s good or bad. It’s weighted,” Shobowale said.

“It’s much more nuanced. It’s not a binary. It’s not ei-ther good or bad. There are shades of gray,” he added.

The metric would provide the university with a kind of scale to measure progress over time.

“It’s one thing to say ‘lets divest,’ but it’s another thing to say kind of how much are we and how much does it change year to year,” Weathers said. “So I think the idea is to try to create this way of doing this number and then every year us giving a report card, and saying ‘here’s how we’re doing.’”

Once perfected, Weathers and Howlan plan to take this metric to a conference in New England and pres-ent it to other universities around the world.

In interim, administrators say the already existing Tish-man Environment and Design Center will function as a hub for the aforementioned student and faculty re-search and projects sometime in the foreseeable future.

“TEDC will be leading efforts to coordinate the Uni-versity’s Climate Action Plan across the school,” Assis-tant Professor Ana Baptista told the Free Press.

When pressed, Towers, Parsons Dean, said the details would be fully formed when TEDC is reintroduced to the community on April 22.

Michelle Depass, Dean of Milano and TEDC Director did not respond to a request for comments about the reformulated environmental center.

Narwhals Hit The Slopes

On Sunday, Feb. 8, while most of us were probably nursing a hangover, 11 New School students met at Paragon Sports near Union Square to head to Wind-ham Mountain for a full day of skiing and snowboard-ing.

The conditions were perfect. A snowstorm had recently rolled through, leaving these notoriously icy runs cov-ered in a layer of fresh powder. “It’s good for accessibility purposes. It’s great for the price,” said Liz Noonan, a BAFA student and seasoned skier.

The highlight of the trip for Noonan was when she got to see her friend, Chelsea Rubin, a senior at Parsons “crush it,” as she “dominated the black diamond run.” The New School Recreation and Athletics Depart-ment hosts several similar events each semester, like an overnight ski trip to Mount Snow, ice skating in Bry-ant Park and an archery lesson. All outings are offered for free or discounted prices, so students don’t have to worry about breaking the bank. So get out there Nar-whals and tusk up the slopes!

Story and photo by Blair Morgan Reeves

New School students travel to Windham Mountain

While searching for the New School Free Press’s office, Keren Hasson used the monkey emojis to express her embarrassment over not knowing her way around the 11th Street building. I gave her general directions and told her to text me if that makes sense. “yeah think so *monkey emoji*.”

We met in the dingy Free Press office on a cold Tuesday evening. She shifted in her seat, smiling shyly, tucking a stray strand of hair under the Chicago Bulls hat she was wearing backwards. “Do you want me to give, like, an artist statement?” she asked, giggling nervously. We decided against it. “I’m an illustrator and I do screen printing,” said Has-son, a Parsons senior majoring in Illustration Design. “I mostly use black and white ink, dip pen stuff. It’s pretty fantasy based.”

She paused. “And I’m working on a graphic novel.”

The novel, Hasson says, is based on a story her moth-er’s aunt wrote about her experience in the Holocaust when her family was divided into different concentra-tion camps.

“My mom translated it from Hebrew to French and I’m translating it from French to English,” Hasson said. “My friend and I are working on a story that is adapted from that and then making a graphic novel from that. That’s my big project.” Hasson started the project in the fall of 2014 as part of a class assignment and decided that rather than telling the story as it was, she would transform it into something uniquely her own.

“I decided I would use that story to adapt into mine and use all my characters in my world, that I have in my head and incorporate that into an adapted one,” she said. I asked what the storyline of the graphic novel would be and I could tell that she was searching for a way to form a digestible synopsis for others to take in.

“It’s a long and complicated thing. How do I even condense?” She paused to find the words, her eyes scanning the ceiling. “We sat with it the other week

“I decided I would use that story to adapt into

mine and use all my characters in my

world, that I have in my head and incorporate

that into an adapted one,”

A New Take on an Old Story

and there are so many questions unanswered, like, this is cool but why did that happen and how do we explain that?”

The novel is about a family whose island is taken over by a darkness, “which we haven’t totally figured out yet. They get transported to this different island where they’re made to work, which is pretty much the con-centration camps. But the story is super-based on the stories that she tells of [my mom’s aunt’s] experience.” She said that the graphic novel is just one of the many things she’s working on. She is finishing up her illustration degree while working at a print shop in Brooklyn called Bushwick Print Lab. She is also preparing for a solo show at an art gallery upon gradu-ation, which will be in three short months.

Hasson laughed when asked about her future goals, admitting that she should probably be thinking about it more.

“In the long run, it would be cool to work at an inde-pendent animation studio like Augenblick in Brooklyn or Titmouse,” she said. As for where she hopes to take the graphic novel, she said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to finish it by the end of this semester so my goal is to have several drawings for it but hopefully I’ll have at least one or two chap-ters done that I’ll be able to get sent out to bind.”

Photos by Marissa Baca

The New School