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A coalition of civil rights and anti-war groups called the New Student Union (NSU) led the first campus-centered political action in January 1966. They protested a proposed tuition hike, opposing not only the higher costs of their education but the absence of a student voice in determining such university policies. While losing this first skirmish with the NYU administration, NSU successfully organized an alternative program of radical courses called the Student University of NYU in which eight to ten faculty members taught courses on Marxist economics, radical psychology, and revisionist history. NYU students also helped found the citywide Alternative University on West 14th Street. Also during this year, the Black struggle was becoming more separatist, so the white student movement shifted further in the direction of anti-war and campus questions. In the spring of 1966, students in Weinstein Hall, one of the biggest dormitories at NYU, elected a SDS member as head of their student government. This marked the first expression of the widening "student power" politics and the decline of old-style "student leader" politicos. At commencement that year, 100 students walked out during ceremonies in protest against the awarding of an honorary degree to Robert McNamara, secretary of defense. |
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