Protesting our neighbors
When I started my graduate studies in theology last year, I never anticipated a curriculum with vocabulary like air rights, luxury condominiums, or student protest. But Union Theological Seminary faces an ethical and financial conundrum, one that threatens to fracture our community from within.
In October, Union president Serene Jones announced a controversial plan to address exigent renovations and repairs to the campus’s infrastructure. The work is required under New York City safety regulations; its estimated expenses exceed $100 million. In what administrators say is the only option to raise the required funds, Union is selling development rights to a contractor to build a tower of high-rise luxury condominiums in the campus’s central courtyard.
The aftermath of the announcement was visceral: petitions and protests by students, alumni, and labor organizers; some comparing the plan to the tower of Babel or Tolkien’s tower of Sauron.
