3 CULTURE
6 ARTS
Grandma’s Place: where you’re always welcome
The Whitney’s exhibition on the legacy of the Kamoinge Workshop comes to an end
5 OPINION
Cuomo is Unfit for Governor
VOLUME LVI | ISSUE 4
MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
Student Health Center removes cap on therapy sessions Free counseling services at the NYU Wellness Exchange are now available based on clinical need. By KAYLA HARDERSEN Staff Writer
PHOTO BY GEORGE PAPAZOV
NYU’s Student Health Center, located on 726 Broadway, has removed the 10-session limit on counseling sessions this semester. Students are now allowed to make appointments for free counseling services at the NYU Wellness Exchange based on clinical needs.
The Student Health Center has removed the 10-session limit on counseling sessions this semester, instead allowing students to make appointments based on their clinical need. The initiative was brought to the SHC by the Student Government Assembly’s Health and Wellness Committee. “Beginning in Spring 2021, in consultation with students, we agreed that the frequency and exact number of counseling sessions a student has will be based solely on their clinical needs and will be decided by the student and their counselor,” the SHC wrote in an email statement to WSN. “Sometimes it will make clinical sense to work with a student for longer than 10 sessions and sometimes we will refer a student to longer term providers before 10 sessions are completed.” The SHC told WSN that there has never been a firm 10-session limit on the number of therapy sessions a student could attend, even prior to this semester. According to SGA Health and Wellness Committee Chair Gavin Arneson and Executive Director of Wellness Services Dr. Zoe Ragouzeos, certain students might have been able to attend more than 10 sessions in the past. However, 10 sessions was still publicly advertised as the limit. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
Migrating birds imperiled by NYU buildings as spring approaches By ALEX TEY Copy Chief As the spring migration season begins, birds traveling through New York City face the threat of reflective glass on NYU buildings. A Washington Square News review of crowdsourced data submitted to dBird.org and iNaturalist.org between 2015 and 2020 found 35 reports of dead or injured birds lying around buildings on NYU’s two New York City campuses, including f ive birds found dead below the windows of Bobst Library. However, given the absence of organized monitoring efforts and the fact that most dead birds are disposed of by maintenance crews before passersby f ind them, these f igures likely signif icantly underestimate the number of birds that have flown into NYU buildings.
Window collisions are one of the top threats to birds in North America. The bird population in North America has declined by 25% in the past 50 years, and according to the American Bird Conservancy, up to one billion birds die annually after colliding with window glass in the United States. “Birds can’t see glass at all, period, end of story,” said bird mortality expert and consultant Heidi Trudell, of Just Save Birds. “It’s either clear and completely invisible, or it’s a reflection and completely invisible.” According to Trudell and NYC Audubon Senior Conservation Biologist Kaitlyn Parkins, the vast majority of collisions occur at the treeline level during morning foraging. Although NYU buildings are not “modern allglass behemoths” like the most notorious bird-killing skyscrapers, Parkins
said, even small windows are extremely deadly when they reflect foliage. “In a lot of cases, what we see is reflective glass that’s reflecting habitat nearby,” Parkins said. “Birds perceive a reflected tree in glass as a real tree. So many birds hit that because it just perfectly reflects this tree, and it’s at the perfect height for them.” NYU buildings, such as Bobst and the Kimmel Center for University Life, are particularly dangerous for birds because they reflect the tree canopies of Washington Square Park. Songbirds migrating at night and concentrating in the city — drawn in by the urban glow, dropping into the f irst greenery they f ind as dawn approaches — face the most risk. In 2015, Parkins and her colleagues published the results of a study conducted at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan f inding that, on average,
the carcasses of 63% of birds that die from glass collisions are never discovered, even when volunteers are actively searching for them. When Viveca Morris was a graduate student at Yale, she worked with maintenance staff and ornithologists at Yale’s natural history museum to document window collisions. Morris, who is now the director of an animal ethics program at Yale Law, said that the cooperation of facilities managers was invaluable to the collision monitoring efforts, since she and her colleagues relied on custodians to recover and record dead birds. “I think that we’re lucky in that the facilities managers really, really do care about it,” Morris said. David Alonso, vice president of NYU Facilities and Construction Management, did not respond to multiple requests for comment for
this story. FCM Assistant Vice President Alfred Ng wrote in a November 2019 email exchange that the university does not track window collisions. However, anyone can contribute reports of dead and injured birds to dBird.org — a project by the NYC Audubon Project Safe Flight team on which Parkins works — to help inform conservation efforts. Georgia Silvera Seamans, an ecologist working in Washington Square Park and co-founding director of Washington Square Eco Projects, said she has received numerous reports from community members of birds colliding with windows at NYUowned buildings in Silver Village and Washington Square Village. “Some of those were found by kids just playing in the lawn area and coming across them,” Seamans said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
Washington Square News
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MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
NEWS
NEWS@NYUNEWS.COM
Edited by TRACE MILLER
Student health center removes cap on therapy sessions CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
According to Arneson, the advertised limit disincentivized students from using the counseling services available to them. “One of the things we heard with regard to the 10-session limit from members of our committee and also our constituents was that people didn’t really want to get therapy because they thought, ‘I’m a problem to be solved in 10 sessions or less,’” Arneson said. “It’s kind of scary. It’s kind of like the bottom line is money, it’s not my well-being.” Arneson said the SGA Health and Wellness Committee has been working with Dr. Ragouzeos to bring this initiative and others like it to students to improve mental health resources at NYU in lieu of a traditional spring break. In addition to their group therapy and urgent same-day counseling option, the SHC is now offering single-session counseling for students who need to work out one specific issue. The initiative to remove the 10-session cap was part of a package of amendments the Health and Wellness committee discussed with Dr. Ragouzeos in the fall. They also discussed capacity issues and reducing wait times to meet with a counselor for the first time. “No student anymore should be waiting more than 10 business days — two weeks — for their first appointment and every
day leading up to that,” Arneson said. “If they feel like they really need it, they should be able to speak with a counselor for like a 15-minute session every day.” Beyond changes made to the Counseling and Wellness Services’ website, the removal of the 10-session limit and other adjustments have not been widely publicized. “That’s an unfortunate aspect of this is that I don’t think it has been advertised,” said Arneson. Members of the SGA Health and Wellness Committee are trying to spread the word with newsletters from student senators and flyers in residence halls. Gallatin junior Azeki Ali recently completed the 10 sessions NYU gave him and is in the process of searching for an outside therapist. “I was actually never told of that,” Ali said, when asked if he tried to get more counseling sessions through NYU. “I wasn’t given that option.” A junior at the Rory Meyers College of Nursing — who preferred to stay anonymous because of privacy and scholarship concerns — said she is currently working with her second NYU counselor. She stopped seeing her original NYU-prescribed therapist when COVID-19 broke out and began again with a new counselor this January. “I think I’m missing that sort of pro-
fessionalism,” she said. “When I’m talking to her it seems more like my aunt is giving me advice than a trained psychotherapist is giving me advice.” Both Ali and the Rory Meyers junior requested counselors with whom they shared common identities. Despite their generally positive experiences, both said NYU Wellness lacks much-needed diversity. “[They] definitely need more Black therapists,” Ali said. “I don’t know about the other areas of diversity. I do know that they could use more Black therapists.” “I think they need to diversify their group of therapists and increase the number of them,” the Rory Meyers junior said. “I’m pretty sure there’s one counselor who specializes in LGBTQ+ issues. Any LGBTQ+ student who wants that therapist that identifies with their identities, it’s the same one person.” She added that she hopes NYU will pour more of its resources into improving the capacity of NYU Wellness services, especially for low-income students. “We’re paying so much for tuition and just to be in New York,” she said. “I do think they should work on making their program bigger and better for the student body.”
INFORMING YOU FIRST
NYUNEWS.COM
Email Kayla Hardersen at news@nyunews.com.
Migrating birds imperiled by NYU buildings as spring approaches
ALEX TEY | WSN
The large windows in front of the Kimmel Center are a subtle hazard. NYU architecture is aggressively unfriendly to the birds in the city. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Of the NYU buildings facing Washington Square Park, Kimmel is especially reflective of the tree canopy — even more so than Bobst. According to Trudell, a few panels of fritted glass around the third-floor balcony are an example of relatively bird-safe
glass. However, she said that the overall risk presented by Kimmel is still high because birds will likely avoid the fritted section and collide with other parts. Regarding the current state of the building, “almost anything is better than what’s currently there,” Trudell wrote in
an email to WSN. The ideal solution, according to Trudell, would be to treat all the windows. The most cost-effective treatment solution, she said, is to retrofit dangerous windows around campus with products like SOLYX Bird Safety Film, Feather Friendly or CollidEscape,
which are designed to make windows more opaque for birds, but still see-through for humans. Widely spaced stickers, another potential treatment, are largely ineffective at preventing collisions because birds try to fly between them. “If there’s one cone in the road, you’ll go around it,” Trudell said, comparing the way birds see window stickers to the way humans see traffic cones. “We want to prevent birds from thinking that they can get between the markers that we place on the windows.” On the other hand, birds see closely spaced window markers on clear or reflective glass as obstacles and avoid the windows. This not only slows the decline of bird populations, but also benefits people, Trudell added. Properly designed window stickers can mitigate glare, reduce incoming UV radiation, cut electricity costs by blocking solar heat and even offer aesthetic benefits. “That really neat cut-out pattern would be fantastic,” Trudell said, regarding the facade of the Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life. “Just cover the entire building and you wouldn’t have to worry about bird strikes at all.” For now, as birds continue colliding with buildings, Trudell and Parkins said reporting collisions to platforms like dBird is the best way to contribute to efforts to make the city safer for birds. “Identification really does not matter,” Trudell said, emphasizing that prior bird knowledge is not necessary to help document window collisions. “It’s just counting
the bodies, documenting them, getting survivors to rehab.” Only one such wildlife rehabilitation center exists in New York City — the Wild Bird Fund on the Upper West Side. Catherine Quayle, the WBF’s social media director, said that 1,200 of the 7,600 patients treated at the center in 2020 were window strike victims. During spring and fall migration, window strikes constitute 80% of their patients. According to a map Quayle shared with WSN, about 10 window strike survivors were found around NYU’s New York City campuses in 2019. The most important thing for a passer-by who sees an injured bird to do is to get it off the street, Quayle said. After moving them out of harm’s way, she recommended taking the bird to a wildlife rehabilitator like the WBF. According to Quayle, birds that survive window collisions often sustain severe injuries — such as concussions, eye damage or broken shoulders — that require professional treatment. Proactively preventing such injuries and deaths, however, involves creating safer buildings. In addition to helping birds, Parkins suggested that NYU could benefit by putting up educational signage around retrofitted windows and publicizing their efforts toward protecting wildlife on campus. “Retrofitting these windows will give you so much good press,” Parkins said. “You can be featured as a solution.” Email Alex Tey at atey@nyunews.com.
MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
CULTURE@NYUNEWS.COM
Washington Square News
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CULTURE
Edited by DANA SUN
Keeping Faith: What Community Means in Remote Religious Services By SABRINA CHOUDHARY Deputy Culture Editor Since the beginning of the pandemic, religious communities nationwide learned to adjust to remote services for the safety of their congregations. One year later, with Easter and Ramadan on the horizon, NYU students continue to worship from the isolation of their bedrooms. “The meeting style hasn’t changed,” Tisch junior Faith Zeng said about her Manhattan church’s Zoom services. “It just feels a little awkward to be alone in your room sometimes.” Tisch junior Alicia Oh moved back to New York from New Jersey. Instead of attending a local church in person as she normally would, she watches her home church’s prerecorded services on YouTube. She f inds peace in rewatching these videos, an ability that live services don’t offer. “The benef it of having church pre-recorded and everything is so I can go back,” Oh said. “I do f ind a lot of peace with service and things like that, so always having something to hold on to is really nice.” However, some religious services are harder to translate to the virtual realm. CAS senior Asma Bawla used to attend services at the Islamic Center at NYU. In response to the pandemic, though, the Friday Jumu’ah
prayer was moved to Zoom. “If the Jumu’ah prayer is not done in person, the same rulings of the prayer don’t follow,” Bawla explained. “The prayer cannot be fully done on Zoom, so you have to make a few modif ications to it if you’re doing it at home.” The solitude of quarantine has deepened these students’ relationships with their faith, which in turn has made them more resilient to the stress of the pandemic. “I was at home for, like, a full year basically,” Zeng said. “I have no siblings, just me and my parents, and it’s just very isolating. But because of the Lord, I just felt so much peace, and I never felt really alone because He was just always there.” “It’s like a core of my own strength, mentally, emotionally and things like that,” Oh added. On the other hand, some students miss the sense of community that came from attending in-person religious services. “[The ICNYU] was really a big part of my sense of community as a student at NYU, where like, the school is so big and the Muslim community is so big,” Bawla said. As the Vice President of the Muslim Students Association, Bawla has struggled to recreate that experience online.
“It’s been really hard to adjust the freshmen and create that sense of community when everything is virtual,” she said. Oh feels the same sense of loss. “A huge, huge part of my church back at home is that we would always have a couple of hours of fellowship and hanging out with each other, but now it just feels like people are struggling to hold on to our faith,” she said. “It’s harder to connect. We don’t know where people are at.” Despite the challenges, remote religious services created new opportunities to strengthen religious communities in other ways. Zeng’s home church in Washington D.C. participates in summer conferences, and under normal circumstances, the connections she makes there would end when she returns home. “One of the things I’ve noticed is like, because of the pandemic, we are actually reaching out to those people at the conferences more and staying connected more,” Zeng said. Meanwhile, the MSA hosted meaningful online events, including fundraising for communities affected by COVID-19. The virtual format has allowed people to contribute from all over the world. “One of the ways that, you know, you can feel better, or that you can give back to the community is by raising
ALEXANDRA CHAN | WSN
NYU’s Global Center for Academic & Spiritual Life, located on 238 Thompson Street, houses religious centers and various student-run clubs for students to form a faithbased community if desired. Due to the pandemic and remote learning, students have found new ways to connect with their faith and redefine what it means to have a religious community.
money for people who have lost their jobs or are in food insecurity, whether that’s affecting them in America or in another country,” Bawla said. Despite their eagerness to return to in-person services, all three students agree that they will wait until they’re vaccinated — or perhaps even longer. “It’s something that I’m willing to
wait for, even though it’s something I really miss,” said Bawla. Until then, these students will continue to redef ine what a religious community means from in front of their screens. Email Sabrina Choudhary at schoudhary@nyunews.com.
Grandma’s Place: where you’re always welcomed home
JAKE CAPIROTTI | WSN
Grandma’s Place, located on 84 West 120th Street in Harlem, is a children’s toy and bookstore. Founded by Dawn Crosby Harris-Martine, Grandma’s Place has served the Harlem community since 1999.
By SARAH GIL Staff Writer Grandma’s Place, a toy and bookstore for children located on Lenox Ave. and West 120th St., is a home for everyone in Harlem. The store has served the Harlem community since 1999. Inside, customers can find a large selection of educational toys, books, curriculum guides, games, dolls and more. It provides Harlem’s children with educational resources to foster their development and confidence, all thanks to one woman, Grandma Dawn.
Grandma Dawn, whose full name is Dawn Crosby Harris-Martine, is an 81-yearold New York City educator and small business owner who has dedicated her life to helping children. She got her nickname from the kids of Harlem, who have come to know and refer to her as such. Martine’s passion for children’s education began long before Grandma’s Place came to be. According to Martine, it started with her own children, and then grew when she first began teaching in 1984. “[The children] needed to know that they had a gift and that they were capable of doing
something that they enjoy and like and share it with the world,” Martine said. From then on, Martine’s goal was to help children live up to their potential, discover their interests and expand their confidence. Through Grandma’s Place, Martine showcased her enthusiasm for education, which has made a genuine difference in the lives of countless children. Prior to founding Grandma’s Place, Martine used the lower level of her brownstone building as an intergenerational literacy center: a place she referred to as “The Nurturary”). At this center, she taught people of all ages how to read. When a vacant storefront next to her brownstone became available for rent, she moved her literacy center there. In doing so, Grandma’s Place was born. In the first five years after its opening, Grandma’s Place served as a literacy center. Martine made the store a toy and book boutique to keep the place open. Each product is carefully selected for optimal educational value. “I handpick everything that goes in there,” Martine said. “There’s a lot of books and a lot of toys that come out in the market every year but I personally, as a teacher and as a parent, I read every book, play with every toy I curate.” In addition, no electronic devices can be found at Grandma’s Place. Martine wants to create a space where children have to think critically and independently without the use of screens. “Toys [and games] that would be fun, open-ended, critically thinking and that get kids learning in a fun way,” Martine said, de-
scribing the kinds of products she sells. Another central aspect of Grandma’s Place is its emphasis on catering to people of all ethnicities and backgrounds. “Harlem is a mixture of all kinds of people, it’s really a melting pot,” Martine said. “So, in my store any number of people of all denominations and ethnicities come through there. And that’s why I have dolls and toys and games with everybody’s ethnicity.” Customers can come in and request books in certain languages, and if Grandma’s Place doesn’t have it in stock they will order it. Martine recalls receiving a request for a Greek-English book, which she specially ordered for the customer. Martine also works with a dollmaker in Florida who makes custom dolls based on the customer’s appearance, in order to perfectly represent their ethnic background and features. “I think it’s really important that the child has a doll that looks like them,” Martine said. “I want the children to see themselves.” However, Martine doesn’t just have resources for children. Parents can access curriculum guides and attend workshops to stay updated on what their children are learning. Additionally, Grandma’s Place connects families to various resources and services they may need in order to support themselves and their children. Martine wants to provide a positive learning environment for all those who come to her store. “I want customers to say that the staff is extremely friendly and helpful — we’re not pushy, we don’t oversell parents. We want the
kids to come in and select their own books, look at their own toys,” Martine said. “I want it to be a positive experience there.” Unfortunately, some New Yorkers don’t feel safe venturing outside their homes. However, Grandma’s Place has put careful thought and effort into curating a positive experience outside of the store and online for those who would rather not come in. “We have a [Zoom] tour that you go to this link and it literally walks up and down the aisles ... we change it weekly and all the products are out there,” Martine said. “[The customer] can call up, they can order it, pay for it by credit card and then they can come and pick it up. Or if they are in Harlem or in an area close by, we will deliver it to them.” The Zoom link is currently under construction on the store’s website. However, there is a 17-minute-long YouTube video available on the website that gives a tour of the store’s interior. Martine’s goal is to encourage more children to read, write and express themselves — a mission she hopes to continue this summer through her new venture known as the Bookmobile. “I really want to put a Bookmobile out there and give away books and other things that children need,” Martine said. “Giving out free books and little things like kits with toothbrushes, pajamas, underwear, socks and things like that for the kids.” If you visit Grandma’s Place, you can go there knowing that whomever you are, you are always welcome. Email Sarah Gil at culture@nyunews.com.
Washington Square News
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MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
OPINION
OPINION@NYUNEWS.COM
Edited by EMILY DAI and ASHLEY WU
CITY
New York City Has an Obligation To Vaccinate Prisoners
By LUCY YAMA Contributing Writer New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan has excluded prisoners, one of the city’s most vulnerable populations. The Legal Aid Society accused Gov. Cuomo and New York State Commissioner of Health Howard Zucker of neglecting CDC guidelines in a lawsuit f iled last Wednesday. The suit argues that the state chose not to vaccinate prisoners at the same time as prison guards. Correctional facilities, which are designated as “other shared housing settings,” should grant prisoners widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines. These shared housing settings “by their very nature place individuals at high risk for contracting and transmitting the virus.” In January, the infection rate in prisons was double that of the gen-
eral public. Cuomo has only allowed vaccinations for prisoners 65 and over or those with medical conditions, which excluded the general prison population. This is unacceptable, considering that residents in other shared living settings have not been subject to the same eligibility restrictions. City off icials are neglecting their responsibility to grant equal vaccine access to highrisk groups, and setting a dangerous precedent that disregards the lives of incarcerated New Yorkers. Prisoners in New York City are subject to low standards of sanitation and are unable to social distance. At Rikers Island, several prisoners have disclosed the scarcity of essential resources such as soap, disinfectants and sanitation wipes. Off icial reports released in late 2020 found that 63% of the city’s jail population is residing in an area exceeding 75% capacity, preventing any form of effective social distancing. These conditions directly contributed to the spread of COVID-19 among incarcerated individuals. Across the state, 97% of prison COVID-19 cases originated in overcrowded prisons, and 84% of people in custody live in high-occupancy facilities. The
absence of immediate vaccination efforts jeopardizes the health and safety of the city’s prisoners. To combat overcrowding, the city implemented early release efforts. From March to April 2020, there was a 30% decrease in the daily jail population. However, the prison population increased again due to a signif icant rise in pretrial detentions. In November, 87% of the city’s incarcerated population had not been convicted of a crime. On average, prisoners are awaiting trial for three months longer than before, which places them at higher risk of exposure to the virus. Juan Cruz, a former prisoner at Rikers Island, died of COVID-19 after his trial hearings were pushed back six times. Of these pretrial detainees, many are in for technical parole violations, including minor infractions such as missing appointments. Even Gov. Cuomo has noted the concern of incarcerating such individuals who “present no danger to our communities.” It’s not ignorance that prevents the vaccination of incarcerated people in New York City, but a willingness to overlook the plight of fellow community members. This failure of our city off icials
is not passive, but rather an active denial of efforts to improve conditions. A judge declined to order city jails to improve their hygiene regimens in February in a lawsuit f iled on behalf of several former Rikers prisoners. Furthermore, reports have found that the NYC Department of Correction underreported the number of prisoners who died of COVID by at least half. The Board of Correction, the city’s correctional oversight committee, found a lack of social distancing, a failure to distribute masks and denial of basic medical treatment were all responsible for the deaths of three prisoners in April 2020. It is clear that efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 in prisons have been insuff icient at every step, and now the need for vaccines is more pressing than ever. The consequences of the pandemic for incarcerated New Yorkers extend beyond contracting the virus. Experts have highlighted issues regarding prisoners’ mental health during COVID, which may be exacerbated because of the inability to feel properly protected from the virus. In a letter from New York Doctors to Gov. Cuomo, the authors warn that “the physical stress
and strain from imprisonment itself leads to worse health outcomes.” Furthermore, failing to vaccinate inmates directly exacerbates disparities that have plagued vaccine accessibility. Off icial reports reveal that Black and Latino residents make up the smallest share of the city’s vaccinated population, despite being more likely to test positive for the virus. Compared to their white counterparts, Black and Latino New Yorkers have suffered from higher rates of hospitalization and death. Historically, the state’s prison population has been disproportionately Black and Latino, which is largely consistent with trends across the country. There is a crisis in our city’s jails. The distinctions drawn between correctional facilities and other congregate living settings are not only arbitrary, but they are also inherently discriminatory. If the goal is to slow the spread of COVID-19 and ensure equal access to vaccines, New York City should extend access to all imprisoned individuals as soon as possible. Email Lucy Yama at opinion@nyunews.com.
CITY
Disabled Subway Riders Deserve Better
By ASHA RAMACHANDRAN Deputy Opinion Editor Only about 25% of New York City’s subway stations are accessible for disabled people, whether that’s through wheelchairs, ramps or elevator access. Of those accessible stations in NYC, most of them are located in Manhattan, while other boroughs lag further behind. Even with that dismal number reflecting the city’s lackluster commitment to disabled riders, many of the accessible stations themselves are only somewhat accessible, with multiple train platforms not meeting the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA requires wheelchair accessibility on public transportation vehicles, which is extremely limited in New York City subways. New York City has failed to meet this requirement, despite multiple renovations in 2013 to the Smith-9th St. station in Brooklyn, in 2017 in Astoria and in 2014 in the Bronx, where they were sued two years later. These pushbacks have led to some victories, as the case pursued in response to the 2014 renovations in the Bronx was won by disability rights groups. However, these minor victories are not enough. With the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s recent requests for billions of dollars in federal funding, it would make sense that a signif icant portion of that money would go towards making stations accessible. Instead, the MTA is evading its responsibilities and misappropriating funds for unrelated projects. Despite the $4.5 billion the MTA received, they have failed to deliver on promises of station accessibility
Washington Square News
renovations. Instead, they have directed these funds toward non-accessibility related projects such as modernization, reconstruction of tracks and updating communications systems. Other projects have long been prioritized over the safety and accessibility of subway stations for disabled people, who are entitled to better conditions under the ADA. The MTA’s failure to prioritize disabled riders has disproportionate implications for other groups as well. Substantial research has illustrated the correlation between disability and poverty, with disabled people being twice as likely to be living in poverty as opposed to non-disabled people. Disabled people have higher unemployment rates and make less money than their non-disabled counterparts. This discrepancy persists despite the ADA having been passed almost three decades ago. Data also shows that low-income New Yorkers are more likely to take the subway, because they have limited job flexibility. Impoverished
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disabled people are increasingly stranded with limited transportation options and a system that is doing everything to skirt its responsibility to provide for them. The MTA had a capital plan to create 70 new accessible stations by 2024 and ensure 100% accessibility by 2034 — already an unrealistic promise. That plan has been put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, making a bleak situation much worse for disabled subway riders. Disability advocacy groups who challenge MTA practices legally have been met with legal resistance and lack of transparency. Recently, the MTA denied a request from multiple disability rights groups asking for data. The group — led by Joe Rappaport of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID) — wanted to know the amount of taxpayer dollars the MTA spent f ighting discrimination lawsuits f iled by disability advocates. Refusing to be transparent about the amount of taxpayer dollars spent
challenging these lawsuits clearly shows where the MTA’s priorities lie — and it’s not with disabled riders. Despite the MTA’s practices, the lawsuits raised by these disability advocates ask for a commitment to accessibility on a specif ic timeline. They do not even request a monetary settlement, despite the outrageousness of the MTA’s practices, and only ask for a dedication to accessibility.The MTA cannot even live up to this request. The MTA’s secrecy further illustrates its issues with accountability to the government and the public who it is meant to serve. It is time for transparency, accountability and a clear commitment to making subway stations fully accessible and compliant with the ADA. Disabled New Yorkers deserve respect from the MTA and a clear commitment to making subway stations fully accessible. Email Asha Ramachandran at aramachandran@nyunews.com.
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MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
STAFF EDITORIAL
Cuomo is Unfit for Governor A New York Times investigation published on March 4 revealed that an NYU Law professor was complicit in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s cover-up of nursing home deaths. Linda Lacewell teaches an “Ethics in Government” course at NYU Law. She and two other top Cuomo aides tampered with the number of nursing home residents who had died due to COVID-19, excluding the residents who had died in hospitals, thus bolstering Cuomo’s reputation as a leader during the early months of the pandemic. According to recent reports, Cuomo’s top advisers coerced state health officials into underreporting nursing home deaths by the thousands. A petition by NYU Law students has since been circulating, calling for Linda Lacewell to be barred from teaching at the university. Cuomo has yet to face the consequences for orchestrating this cover-up. While Cuomo has come under fire for numerous sexual harassment allegations and this latest scandal, upon closer inspection of his leadership during the pandemic, it is clear that the Governor has never had the interests or health of New Yorkers in mind. The recent nursing home scandal is only one incident in Cuomo’s long history of disregarding the health of New Yorkers. In March 2020, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested imposing a shelter-in-place order after 923 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the city. In response, Cuomo dismissively stated that the move “cannot happen legally,” and that “No city in this state can quarantine itself without state approval, and I have no interest whatsoever, and no plan whatsoever, to quarantine any city.”
If Cuomo had taken the pandemic seriously and locked down New York when de Blasio first suggested it, 17,000 New Yorkers would still be alive today. In April 2020, when the COVID-19 death toll in New York City soared past 10,000, Cuomo cut $400 million in funding for the Medicaid program, including payments to hospitals and nursing homes. This is in spite of the fact that Medicaid expansion saves at least 19,000 lives annually. This decision to slash Medicaid funding during a pandemic followed the loss of more than 20,000 hospital beds over the last 20 years, exacerbating a disastrous situation. In his pandemic response, Cuomo has demonstrated he is willing to let thousands of New Yorkers die as long as his misdeeds remain secret — the only ethical recourse is for him to step down. As Cuomo was working to slash the Medicaid budget, he was setting the groundwork for the recent nursing home scandal. On March 25, 2020, Cuomo issued the controversial mandate that prevented nursing homes from refusing to accept patients recovering from the coronavirus in their facilities. While policymakers don’t have the ideal amount of time to respond to any sudden crisis, a pandemic that implicates the lives of New Yorkers everywhere required the Cuomo administration to be even more vigilant. However, Cuomo and his team failed to talk to medical experts before issuing the directive. Jim Lytle, CEO of LeadingAge, a trade association for nonprofit nursing homes in New York, believed the initial policy to be “hospital-centric” and a “mistake.” It’s unsurprising, then, that Cuomo has previously expressed distrust of scientific expertise and has re-
peatedly opted to work with healthcare industry leaders instead. This decision was made despite early evidence showing that nursing home residents are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. The decision was ultimately reversed on May 10. However, the repeal came too late. 6,400 residents had already died in New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities. For comparison, the residents who died constitute 6% of New York nursing home residents, and experts have concluded that Cuomo’s policy substantially increased the magnitude of the COVID-19 death toll. These numbers were effectively concealed by the Cuomo administration until recent reports exposed their true extent. It is clear that Cuomo neither understands nor respects scientific expertise. If Democrats parade themselves as the party that stands for science, they must condemn their beloved New York governor who has repeatedly demonstrated he will not sustain this value. While cable news shows treated Cuomo like a living legend last summer, the governor was busy dismissing virus warnings, cutting hospital beds and Medicaid, and sending ill patients to facilities full of vulnerable people. After Cuomo was accused by multiple aides of sexual harassment, numerous members of the U.S. House of Representatives urged him to resign. He refused. Despite the flagrant abuses of power that Cuomo exercised over his subordinates, he still denies all instances of wrongdoing. Instead of responding to the allegations, Cuomo claimed some were false, and that he was simply acting like an old-school politician. The first woman to step forward was Lindsey Boylan, a former adviser, who recounted a traumatic experience in which the governor attempted to kiss
her on the lips without her consent after a business meeting. Shortly after Boylan’s allegations, a number of other women made their experiences with Cuomo public. These allegations span from unwanted remaks about women’s appearances and their sex lives to one woman’s report of being groped under her shirt. Contextualized against the backdrop of the burgeoning #Me Too movement, Cuomo’s sexual misconduct is inexcusable, especially under the ruse of behaving like an old-school politician. His lack of accountability sets a dangerous precedent for not only those holding political office, but for others in positions of power across the United States. If Cuomo refuses to resign, then governmental action must be taken to impeach him. Before the scandals, Cuomo was lauded as an example of exemplary leadership. However, after recent events, Cuomo’s memoir “American Crisis” on how to govern during the pandemic has seen greatly diminished sales. Additionally, on March 9, his approval rating hit an all-time low, clocking in at a measly 38%. During a pandemic, the first responsibility of a state governor should be to keep as many of his constituents alive as possible — not to fuel personal vanity and accomplishment. The challenges of this pandemic call for somebody who respects that scientific knowledge is necessary to address them. Cuomo has repeatedly shown he is not that leader. As he faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment, and criticism for his cover-up of the true COVID-19 death toll on nursing home residents, Gov. Cuomo’s refusal to resign indicates not only a failure to recognize his wrongdoings, but a failure to understand his job.
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MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2021
ARTS
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Edited by SASHA COHEN and NICOLAS PEDRERO-SETZER
Music Technology: Not Just a Man’s World
NICOLAS PEDRERO-SETZER | WSN
NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development’s female Music Technology students are taking note of the lack of representation and under-compensation for women in the music industry. The female music technology students are deprived of student diversity and role models within their field.
By CANDACE PATRICK Staff Writer As Women History’s Month is about to come to a close, we turn our attention to powerful women who have made vast con-
tributions to the music industry. However, a lack of representation still plagues the field, leaving those hopeful of breaking into the music industry questioning whether they will have the opportunity to do so. Three female NYU music technology students
have shared that the scarcity holds true even before the professional level, as they all agree that women are underrepresented in their major. The endless number of talented female performers might portray a music indus-
try that is above average in gender diversity, but recent studies show less than 3% of music producers are female. Attending her male-dominated music technology classes, Steinhardt first-year Raquel Delgado finds this statistic daunting. As a woman, she
doubts her ability to succeed in the industry. “I can’t see myself in any of these careers because I don’t see representation in any of them … Where is the safe space? We don’t have one,” Delgato said. While Delgado finds being a woman in music technology intimidating, her peer Oriana Valcamp, another first-year at Steinhardt, embraces her role as an underdog. “I wanna go through and prove a whole bunch of people wrong,” Valacamp said. She is determined to overcome the adversity she and so many other female music technology students face daily. Reflecting on her past experiences working with men in music technology, she notes their standoffish nature and skepticism toward her skills because of her gender. “I want to be a part of the growing number of women doing that,” Alejandra Tran Rosado, another Steinhard first-year, agreed – referring to the gradual rise of female music professionals. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given the trends of salary inequality across many other fields, women in the music industry earn a salary of approximately $20,000 less than their male counterparts. This is not restricted to backstage producers or songwriters. Even famous female musicians face unequal compensation. In 2017, sister pop trio HAIM fired their agent after discovering they were being paid paid 10 times less than a male performer at the same event. While they, and many others, have taken a stand against this injustice, the unequal compensation on the basis of gender in the entertainment industry persists. Email Candace Patrick at arts@nyunews.com.
The Whitney’s exhibition on the legacy of the Kamoinge Workshop comes to an end By NICOLAS PEDRERO-SETZER Arts Editor A photograph featuring 14 Black photographers stands at the center of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 8th floor. Some of them are laughing, others stand stoically: they all pose with dignity. These 14 f igures comprised the Kamoinge Workshop, a Black photography collective formed in 1963 to take photographs of and for the Black community. They were the subject of the Whitney Museum’s latest retrospective: “Working Together.” “Kamoinge” means “a group of people acting together” in the language of the Kikuyu people of Kenya. The Kamoinge Workshop’s oeuvre reflected the principles of self-determination and self-suff iciency championed during the Civil Rights Movement. Their photographs of Civil Rights activists like Malcolm X, celebrated Black artists such as Sun Ra, Mahalia Jackson and Miles Davis, and people living in countries that had recently gained independence from colonial holdings, like the neighboring nation of Cuba, reflect a social awakening that’s as pressing today as it was 60 years ago. With “Working Together,”
the Whitney Museum honors the work of each and every one of the Kamoinge Workshop’s early members by bringing together 140 photographs that highlight their contributions to American Art. “They weren’t Civil Rights photographers,” Curatorial Assistant Mia Matthias said in a Whitney Q&A. “They were doing Civil Rights.” The Black Arts Movement represented politically motivated Black artists working throughout the 1960s that posited artistic experimentation as a way of reappraising the history of the Black community in America. The Kamoinge Workshop embraced this tradition, providing alternative forms of representing politically active members of the Black community that challenged the mainstream media’s depictions of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, Adger Cowan’s “Malcolm Speaks” chooses to frame Malcom X as a dot in a sea of activists, challenging the common portraits of his isolated face that positioned him as a singular radical f igure in the eyes of the world. “This exhibition covers the f irst two decades of the collective, which is 1963 to 1982, and this is a period that coincides with the Black Arts Movement and the Civil Rights
Movement,” said Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial Assistant at The Whitney. “The name [Kamoinge] reflects the ideals of the collective as well as a global perspective the members had.” “Working Together” comes at a time of cultural reimagining given the pandemic’s ubiquity when it comes to reframing every facet of human existence. The pandemic lent itself to increased efforts on behalf of social movements like the Black Lives Matter Movement that protested police brutality following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police off icer. This past year’s many revolutions have made a wide range of institutions reevaluate their inclusion of Black Artists. Since the summer of 2020, Criterion Channel lowered their paywall so people could access more f ilms by Black directors, Vogue highlighted Aurora James’ efforts to get more brands to pledge 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses and the Whitney Museum unveiled “Working Together.” The legacy of the Kamoinge Workshop was obscured for far too long. The Whitney Museum’s “Working Together” brought it into the light.
NICOLAS PEDRERO-SETZER | WSN
“Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop” is an exhibition in the Whitney Museum of American Art, located in Lower Manhattan. This exhibition on the legacy of the Kamoinge Workshop comes to an end, after its opening in November.
The beauty of the 140 photographs collected by Springer and Matthias rebel against the lionization of white artists by presenting a new way of capturing and interpreting Black lives through photography.
As Kamoinge Workshop member Louis Draper put it, “We speak of our lives as only we can.” Email Nicholas Pedrero-Setzer at npedrerosetzer@nyunews.com.
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