Like students at many other schools, some students at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts are asking the school for refunds now that the campus has closed over Coronavirus.
One student who made such a request got a rather unique response.
A dean at the school sent a video of herself dancing.
NBC News in New York reports:
NYU Tisch Students Demand Tuition Back, Dean Responds With Dance VideoStudents at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts want some of their tuition money back because they say virtual classes aren’t what they paid for — but instead of addressing the situation, the school’s dean sent them a video of herself dancing to REM’s “Losing My Religion.”Following several communications between students and the school administration, Dean Allyson Green earlier this week attached her dance video to an email to students in which she explained that she doesn’t have the authority to refund tuition and that it’s “challenging” for the school to give students their money back right now…”This was not an accident, this was her sort of way of trying to reach out to the student body,” Price told NBC News. He said his initial reaction was that the video was ridiculous and “tonedeaf.”A year’s tuition at Tisch costs about $58,552 (it’s arguably a lot more when you consider other fees) and most of the students at the private and prestigious art school require hands-on education. The school informed students that it would not be reimbursing tuition fees even though they were forced to move to remote learning due to the spread of COVID-19.
See the video in the tweet below:
This has sparked quite a few responses:
Campus Reform has a response from the dean:
“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.
What a bizarre time we’re living in.
Featured image via YouTube.
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