Students who have not yet agreed to the university’s updated student conduct policies are facing 30-second delays while logging into NYU Home, Albert and Brightspace, multiple students told WSN. 

The Brightspace module is one part of the “How We Engage Toolkit,” which requires that students agree to NYU’s non-discrimination policies and recently updated student conduct guidelines which cite “code words, like ‘Zionist,’” as examples of potentially discriminatory speech. In interviews with WSN, students who have not completed the module said that while attempting to login to NYU websites, they received a notification that states other penalties they could face if they don’t complete the required training, including extended wait times, mandatory password resets and “other administrative actions.” 

Steinhardt senior Haley Hodges said that she had not completed the second module of the “How We Engage Toolkit” due to the time commitment, which the university estimated to be about 45 minutes. Hodges said that the updated guidelines — which now state that speech “targeting Jewish or Israeli people” could violate NYU’s non-discrimination policies “if directed toward Zionists” — do not align with her political values. 

“It sounds like it’s really trying to make it out to seem like saying the word ‘Zionist’ is antisemitic, and as a Jewish person, I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’” Hodges said. “It just kind of distorts the entire conflict.”

Several on-campus groups, including the People’s Solidarity Coalition and NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, have refused to complete the mandatory modules and condemned the conduct guidelines on their social media accounts and at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Graduate student workers at the Tisch School of the Arts and the Graduate School of Arts and Science also sent letters to their departments and NYU’s administration, echoing criticism of and refusing to comply with the updated policy. 

CAS junior Alisha Khan, who experienced the delay on NYU Home login portals, told WSN that she has not completed the mandatory training because she struggled to find the time to do so. 

“I know that it’ll take only 30 minutes or a maximum of two hours, but it’s midterms [season] and I can’t be bothered to put my energy into something else right now,” Khan said. “I just have been waiting until I’ve had free time, but whenever I have free time, I’m not thinking of harassment training.”

An NYU spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Contact Mariapaula Gonzalez at [email protected].