An Open Letter to the Dean of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts during the Global Pandemic

Dean Allyson Green,*

I graduated Tisch for Dramatic Writing in 2015. I am writing this open letter to you because grave concerns were recently brought to my attention by current students, and I am not sure where else to turn.

I will be frank: as a Tisch graduate, I am utterly floored by the behavior of this school, and yourself personally, in the past weeks.

I was already aware that NYU had handled the pandemic in unequivocally unacceptable ways. Most alarming as a New York resident was — incomprehensibly — NYU encouraging students to fly home as normal for their spring recess, for most students Friday March 13th, when New York was already in a desperate effort to contain the virus, and the day before, our mayor declared a state of emergency. Far worse, however, was — after students had flown home to all states and countries — a few days later, on March 16th, requiring them to return to the most densely populated city in the country to pack up their things, with only 48 hours’ notice (later extended until March 22nd in some cases), and a refusal to refund rent. No other landlord in New York City could have treated tenants the way NYU treated its residents during a global health crisis who would not be strung from the rafters, let alone put in jail. Not only was this a profound show of indifference to students’ well-being, many of whom depend on the school for their housing and food security; it showed callous recklessness to the health of other New Yorkers during the pandemic.

Effectively evicting over ten thousand New York residents — forcing them to share moving equipment, packing materials, crash in off-campus students’ apartments, when it was most crucial New York residents self-isolated, at breakneck speed — unquestionably endangered the lives of non-NYU New Yorkers. How many more lives were endangered by requiring over ten thousand students to fly back to New York and then home again, across the country and across the world, using a myriad of transportation, after being in what was already a hotspot of the virus in the United States, we’ll never know.

NYU claimed they took this action to allow for the “possibility” that dorms would be used as makeshift hospitals — while admitting there had not even been suggestions of doing so from the city. The idea that this risk was worth the possibility of ever using dorms for a makeshift hospital, with absolutely no suggestion of a need to do so, is stunning not just from an administrative perspective, but on a public health level.

However, I have long been aware I disagree with the fact that the larger NYU administration operates the university and its franchises in a money-driven, self-serving way. I attended Tisch in spite of its attachment to NYU, because I believed that our art school had an actual moral compass and personal commitment to its students, with professors who could name more than three students in a class of sixty, unlike the courses I took at NYU.

When I first saw a clip from the video you sent students, in an email where you reiterated they would not be compensated for losing half a semester of in-person classes, in which, bafflingly, you shrug your shoulders and proceed to dance to the song ‘Losing My Religion’, I thought it was fake. I assumed it was a parody or prank to underscore students’ righteous indignation at refusing to refund any part of their tuition. This indignation made perfect sense, given their tuition is higher than other schools at NYU specifically because they are paying for in-person, intensive class time, performance spaces, and physical supplies that, according to Tisch’s own admissions materials to justify the price, are unique and essential to their artistic training.

I was appalled to find that this video, which is hard to interpret as anything other than mockery and total derision of students’ grievances over having been charged — gone into years or decades of debt — for a product they are not receiving, was not only real, but posted on Tisch’s official Vimeo account.

I tried to internally scream and move on. I am not at this school anymore, it doesn’t affect me. I am incredibly fortunate to have a job I love in the industry I wanted and studied for. I work for bosses who were childhood writing heroes of mine. I have a long list of projects I’ve made depressingly little progress on during quarantine. I am, like everyone else, dealing with the terrifying ramifications of this global crisis on my own life, my friends, my family, my job, and my larger industry. To be blunt, I have other shit going on, and nothing to gain from writing what will in all likelihood be an ignored and inconsequential letter. I tried to let this go. Really.

There is so much injustice, unfairness, pain, that is happening now, in the world and at this moment, especially in New York. Sick people can’t get desperately needed medicine; hard-working employees are being laid off by the thousands; actors who got their chance on a major stage have had those shows cancelled; artists who earned places at festivals, shows, and productions for months, years, have had them disappear.

I am a stand-up comic and a writers’ assistant for television in New York City (or, I was both of those things until the virus put both indefinitely on hold). I never thought I would be able to shock someone who survived the Great Depression until last Tuesday, when I said the words: “More than half of the people I know lost their jobs today.”

Employers with far, far less than NYU or Tisch have done things that may bankrupt them in the process, in order to do right by their employees they’ve had to let go and their customers who kept them alive to this point. So many of my friends told me their bosses — bar and restaurant owners, comedy club managers, small shopkeepers — wept when they told them they couldn’t keep them on. They sent them home weighed down with food as the restaurants closed their doors. They set up donation funds and advocated for others to donate because they couldn’t continue to pay the wages they deserved. One traveled over two boroughs away to get Robitussin for their former employee sick with the virus during a shortage. Another let my friend, who, like many others, isn’t able to make April rent after losing their job, crash on their own couch.

The standup comedy community has seen our entire world collapse, and I have gotten heartfelt, sobering email after email from festivals, shows, producers — many non-profit, many that barely break even ordinarily — expressing torment over the fact that they could not deliver what they had promised. Every one of them has pledged to refund money if it was already paid; many are attempting to pay performers even as they refund ticket holders. As comics, many projects have gone online, streaming, Zoom, or virtual, but no one has attempted to pretend this isn’t a devastating loss, or that it’s an equivalent. It would be like telling someone who paid for the experience of a front-row ticket at a concert they couldn’t get their money back, but were welcome to watch the unfocused, constantly freezing livestream from someone’s iPhone as a replacement. They are artists and performers too. They know they aren’t fooling anyone. We will do our best, because we have no other option right now, but in-person interaction, physical presence, live audiences — that’s the core of what makes us artists. It’s not replicable over the internet, and it never will be.

I can’t fathom how at a time when they most need support, and when it is most imperative that those with safety nets of savings, endowments, and size, like NYU, make sacrifices to ensure it does right by its employees and students, a purportedly non-profit, educational institution is cutting its losses and refusing to even attempt to do right by its students fiscally, when they have already suffered a huge, irreparable loss.

To add insult to injury, I have already seen Tisch and NYU administration attempting to justify this by insinuating that, should a portion of tuition be returned, faculty members could not be paid. As an econ double major and former Citibank analyst, this is an absurd notion to anyone with the slightest understanding of either NYU’s finances or the powers of the trustees to use extraordinary measures during a crisis. I’m aware of the pittance in salary adjunct teachers and others who make up the vast majority of undergraduate instructors are awarded. It’s simple math to determine the fraction of a Tisch student’s tuition that goes toward paying the professors who teach them is small, and just a brief skim of publicly available data confirm NYU’s liquid assets are not so depleted that they depend on a single class of students’ tuition for a single semester to simply pay professors. This is not up for argument; this is basic financial math.

This is a school budgeted to construct new multi-million dollar athletic, classroom, and community spaces, and at the same time asserting it would be forced to stiff adjunct professors making less than $50,000 a year. This argument is a transparent attempt to make students feel guilty for asking for what they have paid for by implying they will be taking money from those they are closest to, who are also in a financially vulnerable position. I’ve yet to hear Tisch suggest that if they were to refund tuition, mortgage payments on the school’s vast property holdings would be late to banks. I imagine this would garner far less sympathy.

The most affected by this, of course, are the financially vulnerable students at Tisch, who already live in an uphill battle in NYU’s environment, one which impedes attempts at actual diversity in the community at every turn. The fact that these actions were taken without support for these students — that RAs who depend on their jobs for housing were terminated with no compensation (despite promises that all student workers would continue to be paid); that many students depend on NYU for their health care and insurance, and aren’t able to get care using it in their hometowns; that students on tight budgets were forced to return to New York to empty their residences at a cost that in some cases were all the money they had in their bank account; that the best the university has done is set up vague grants for students facing financial challenges (which is simply giving back a small amount of the money students themselves already paid) — only underscores ambivalence to this principle Tisch’s website and brochures loudly echo, but culture and demographics invariably fall short of.

As long as such behaviors continue without restitution, this is an institution I can never, in good conscience, donate money to, as — not yet five years out of undergrad — I have already been asked to do scores of times. The incredible behavior this school, a registered nonprofit, has displayed shows less regard for its students and its faculty than even the Wall Street banks and corporations like WalMart have in this international crisis. The few cases of assistance and restitution I have seen are the bare minimum, all the while NYU and Tisch touting it being done “at our own expense,” like a deadbeat dad who proclaims himself father of the year for finally paying back child support.

If this behavior, from yourself personally and the school at large, continues unchanged, I feel I will have no choice but to recommend others refrain from donating to such an institution. From a professional point of view, knowing that Tisch intends to give these degrees when students cannot complete the artistic theses that are at the core of their diploma, rather than return money, devalues the degree, and how much I can trust it or recommend it from a hiring perspective.

These actions are not going unnoticed by alumni. Many have spoken out already, and I encourage others who feel similarly to echo their feelings. I was proud to attend Tisch, and what has happened in the last few weeks hurt me on a personal level. I loved and promoted this school and encouraged people to attend. I have no answers for them now when they ask how they could be treated this way. I am embarrassed and ashamed watching what is happening to them.

I ask you, sincerely, to examine the way the school in general, and you personally, have treated students. I don’t think there is any malice behind your actions. It seems more likely it’s a disconnectedness with the reality of their situation, and a preoccupation with larger institutional interests in this crisis over the students themselves.

You’ve issued a written note that your dance was “misinterpreted” and not meant as mockery, which is an important first step, but you need to go further: you need to reflect on why you, as someone who represents and guides the school, made such an insensitive, tone-deaf mistake, and show you are actually implementing changes that will connect with students’ reality such that it won’t happen again.

To a broader extent, across everyone at NYU: intent aside, the actions of the past two weeks have consequences that demand urgent self-reflection and unflinching critical examination of what has brought a school of these resources, prestige, and standing to such a low bar of accountability and respect for the education it promises students.

Regards,

J.D. Meagher

*Please note this is also directly addressed to Associate Dean Robert Cameron, Associate Dean Andrew Uriate, Assistant Dean Josh Murray, and Chief of Staff Joan Maniego, as their positions are directly connected to these concerns. It is additionally addressed to Ms. Joanna Puglisi, Mr. Brian Perillo, and Mr. James Hurley, as I have been instructed to direct alumni affairs questions and concerns their way.