When people ask me, “How do you like NYU?” a montage of scenes from the past four years plays in my mind: I see me and my friends sitting around our cramped table in Third Avenue North wearing matching snowman pajamas and binge-watching the “Hunger Games” movies before Thanksgiving break; I remember one-on-one sessions with my thesis advisor where we discussed non-Western Iraq War narratives and the gaps of archival memory that come with American occupation; I hear my voice joining the chants and drums as I, alongside my peers, protested the war in Gaza in Gould Plaza on April 22, 2024. Yet, these memories of communal strength and belonging always appear in tandem with the literal and figurative walls the administration has increasingly put up to limit student expression.

Thus, when it comes to answering this question and understanding that NYU’s administration will represent my college experience, I feel at odds with myself. As someone who dreamed of attending NYU since middle school, I would have never thought that come graduation, I would be wary of being represented by this university. 

The barricades put up in front of Bobst Library, the seemingly never-ending construction occupying Gould Plaza and the recent restrictions on student expression — like the brief cancellation of affinity graduations and the censorship of live speakers — starkly contrast the “campus without walls” I experienced during my early years. When I think about how the incoming students are experiencing NYU for the first time, I can’t help but feel like the memory of what it once was is steadily being replaced.

I am so disconnected from the current state of NYU that I cannot imagine a graduation where I feel wholly represented as a student. Because it is in the moments where students come together and fight for a cause greater than themselves where I have felt most represented at NYU. The administration’s constant limitations on student voice have turned graduation into a moment focused on saving institutional face rather than a celebration of the students that have made NYU what it is today.