Students and faculty opposed to Cooper Union charging tuition for the first time in 110 years have released a detailed 32-page document dubbed “The Way Forward” that proposes a variety of methods to get the cash-strapped institution out of debt. “We would like to propose here that to consider introducing tuition is to consider selling out Cooper’s most precious asset: its ethos of equality and equity. There are alternatives,” it reads. The document’s release comes only hours before a “community summit” regarding the future of Cooper Union, which university president Jamshed Bharucha is expected to attend. Given yesterday’s protests, the meeting could get interesting.

Cooper Union students outraged at the university president’s decision to charge tuition to graduate students are staging a walk-out of classes that coincides with nationwide protests of the country’s massive student debt.

At around 4 p.m., students from Cooper Union will march to Union Square and join others from N.Y.U., CUNY, the New School and other nearby universities who are commemorating today’s milestone of $1 trillion in student debt.

Just before noon today around 30 students were mingling in Cooper Square, occasionally chanting “No tuition is our mission” and “Hey hey, ho ho, student debt has got to go,” and snacking on fresh veggies and bread. Read more…

Kevin Farley

Opponents of tuition charges at Cooper Union are voicing disappointment at the school’s decision to begin asking tuition of graduate students. The move comes just days before a meeting in which students and faculty members will unveil their own strategies to bring solvency to the financially strapped school.

As The Times reported, Jamshed Bharucha, the school’s president, announced today that starting next year, graduate students will have to pay tuition fees currently covered by scholarships. Undergraduates enrolled for this fall and next year, he assured, will not be charged tuition, as some had feared would happen.

Alan Lundgard, the student council president who recently convinced media outlets that Cooper Union had sold its new academic building to NYU, welcomed the news that undergraduates were off the hook for the time being, but worried that they might be charged tuition in the future. “It’s a step in the right direction,” he told The Local, “but one step in the right direction and a step in the wrong direction don’t really get us anywhere.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The scene at Cooper Square today at noon.

Stephen 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.”