Celebrating Peter Cooper’s Birthday, And Bemoaning Tuition Proposal

IMG_0721Stephen Rex Brown The scene at Cooper Square today at noon.
IMG_0722Stephen Rex Brown Peter Cooper, minutes before being donned with the wreath.

Under the shadow of Peter Cooper, students are celebrating the founder of their university while also protesting the possibility that future scholars at Cooper Union will have to pay tuition.

The wreath-laying ceremony is an annual event that honors Cooper’s birthday. Today at around 12:30 p.m., students were using the event as an opportunity to remind the president of the school, Jamshed Bharucha, of their opposition to any tuition hike. Many of the roughly 75 attendees held balloons that read “110 years free.”