As people all over the nation and world hunker down to avoid contaminated from the dreaded Wuhan Flu, college students in particular are wondering why they are paying top dollar for goods and services they’re not actually getting. Though some universities are refunding back meal plans and other fees, they are not dropping the cost of tuition – even though the education the students are receiving is obviously not as high.
New York University senior Michael Price explained, “I am personally upset that we are being denied access to this equipment and facilities and still being charged the same amount for what is admittedly by the university a lower quality education.”
NYU’s Dean of Tisch School of the Arts Allyson Green had a rather, um, unusual response to Price’s inquiry for a tuition refund. The dean explained no refunds would occur (and that she didn’t have the authority anyway to grant them), she attached this video — on purpose – of her dancing at her home, to R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” (If any of you are wondering this was an official school communication, as it was uploaded to NYU’s official Vimeo account.)
Tisch's Dean sent out an email update regarding the student body's demand for refunds and transparency regarding NYU's handling of COVID-19, and at the end of it attached a video of her dancing to REM's "Losing My Religion."
— Jeric Brual (@thejericbrual) March 23, 2020
So naturally I saw an opportunity. pic.twitter.com/vNRrIWYZ7q
“This was not an accident, this was her sort of way of trying to reach out to the student body,” Price said, obviously baffled by the tone-deaf response.
If you ask me, this is totally nuts. In other words, exactly what I would expect from a NYU dean.
“The focus of my career as a performer, choereographer, and dance educator, and my most authentic mode of expression, has always been dance,” Green explained after the video went viral. “In the video, I shared the song with which I have welcomed first-year students to the Tisch School of the Arts for the past eight years. It is a piece that — as I explained in the accompanying email — speaks to frustration and disappointment, and that helped see me through the loss of 30 friends to AIDS — another difficult period for artists,” she wrote.
I get it. So a global pandemic goes throughout the world, but her rich artist friends are the ones hardest hit? Sounds about right.
“What I meant to demonstrate is my certainty that even with the unprecedented hardships of social distancing and remotely-held classes, it is still possible for the Tisch community to make art together, and that all the artists in our school will find ways to remain closely connected even as circumstances challenge us. I regret it if my email left the reasons for my dancing misunderstood — although I will note that I have also received many positive acknowledgments — but its intent was surely neither frivolous or disrespectful.”
It is both frivolous and disrespectful.
The silver lining is this: maybe people will begin to see what a complete waste of money this so-called “prestigious” university actually is.
Hat Tip: Campus Reform
Image Credit: Twitter Screen Shot