NYU dean sends students video of herself dancing to REM's 'Losing My Religion' after denying tuition refund
The dean of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts has been slammed after sending students a video of herself dancing to REM's 'Losing My Religion' track as a response to their tuition reimbursement requests.
The students have been demanding a partial reimbursement of their $58,000 tuition after which they received the strange video as a response to the request. Many hundreds of NYU students demanded a partial refund given spring classes were shifted online amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Dean Allyson Green sent a video of the dance in an email to students explaining that she does not have the authority to reimburse tuitions. She also shared that it is currently 'challenging' for schools to give students money back, NBC News reported.
A student Michael Price took to Twitter to share the video and called the response 'embarrassing and tone-deaf'. "The Dean of Tisch sent this as an attachment to the email saying they won't give us our money back. Embarrassing," he wrote.
In the video, Green can be seen dancing in what looks to be like an office space as she mouths the words to the song. "This was not an accident, this was her sort of way of trying to reach out to the student body, " Price shared.
"There’s a feeling amongst the students, Tisch specifically, that we are being cheated out of something, so everyone thought it was really ridiculous and tone-deaf. She’s not answering any of our questions and it’s just her dancing to 'Losing my Religion'," he added.
"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," he continued.
A year's tuition at Tisch reportedly costs around $58,552 a year which is much more than the school's general tuition which costs $51,828. Students have taken to social media to blast Green with one student, Eli Yurman even writing an open letter titled 'An Open Letter to Tisch Dean Allyson Green: Please Stop'.
"Students argue that remote classes cannot possibly serve as an adequate replacement for classes that necessitate a physical presence in the room (like acting classes, or dance classes, or film projects, or etcetera). We here at NYU Local would just like to say: what the f*** is this? We get it. You’re stressed. It’s a stressful time. People are mad, a lot of them at you. But what the f*** are you doing?"
The students also started a petition to fight for tuition reimbursement. The petition has received around 3,500 signatures so far. Green shared that the video had been very 'misunderstood' and that she had never intended to be 'frivolous' or 'disrespectful'.
In a statement she wrote, "The focus of my career as a performer, choreographer, and dance educator, and my most authentic mode of expression, has always been dance. 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."
"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," she revealed.