Dancing dean: NYU admin sends bizarre video to students demanding refunds
The dean of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts reportedly sent a video of herself dancing in her home in response to students demanding a refund.
Students were seeking a refund after having their courses moved online due to the coronavirus.
Video circulating on social media shows Dean of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Allyson Green dancing to R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” in response to students’ requests for a tuition refund.
NYU Senior Michael Price uploaded the video to Twitter on Sunday, saying “The Dean of Tisch sent this as an attachment to the email saying they won’t give us our money back.” The original video can be found on the school’s official Vimeo account.
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NBC New York reported that after communications back and forth between Green and students, the school announced it would not be refunding tuition. Green reportedly emailed students explaining why she had no authority to refund their money, and attached the two-minute video of her dancing by herself in her home.
Tisch’s Dean sent out an email update regarding the student body’s demand for refunds and transparency regarding NYU’s handling of COVID-19, and at the end of it attached a video of her dancing to REM’s “Losing My Religion.”
So naturally I saw an opportunity. pic.twitter.com/vNRrIWYZ7q
— Jeric Brual (@thejericbrual) March 23, 2020
“This was not an accident, this was her sort of way of trying to reach out to the student body,” Price told NBC adding, “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.”
Eli Yurman, writing for Medium publication NYU Local, wrote in a blog post, “We get that you can’t just wave a wand and give people their tuition. It might even be the case that those students are in the wrong. Let’s talk about it! But even if they are, how could you possibly think this would do anything but piss everyone off.”
“We get it. You’re stressed. It’s a stressful time. People are mad, a lot of them at you. But what the fuck are you doing???” Yurman added.
NYU provided a statement to Campus Reform from Green, which said:
”The focus of my career as a performer, choereographer, 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. It is a piece that -- as I explained in the accompanying email -- speaks to frustration and disappointment, and that helped see me through the loss of 30 friends to AIDS -- another difficult period for artists.
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. I regret it if my email left the reasons for my dancing misunderstood -- although I will note that I have also received many positive acknowledgments -- but its intent was surely neither frivolous or disrespectful.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: Wyatt Eichholz
