Hmmm: Maybe It's Time to Go Back to College

Usually when we notice anything at New York University it's for something stupid, such as earlier this year when a band of merry pranksters decided to try and liberate a cafeteria. But now I have to say there's some stimulating news to note. If this young lady had any hopes of keeping a low profile, well, that's pretty much dashed.

One of NYU'S newest grad students is better known for her XXX-tra curricular activities.

When she's not in class, porn star Lorelei Lee jets to the West Coast to film skin flicks with some of the biggest names in the industry.

It's a lifestyle Lee, 28, knows well.

The busty blond has been working in porn and juggling life as a student for nearly 10 years.

"It's not weird anymore," said Lee, a first-year student pursuing a master's in fine arts. "I've just been doing this for so long."

Still, the Buffalo native doesn't spend much time with classmates. She fears even a question as simple as, 'How was your weekend,' could lead to some hairy conversations.

Though she may not know it, Lee's classmates are big fans - of her decision to pursue a master's.

"It's wonderful," said Ayesha Attah, 25, of Brooklyn. "Whatever experience you can draw on, you should. Hers is amazing."

Michelle Kim Hall, 27, is equally supportive. "Good for her," said Hall, of Los Angeles. "The woman who won the Oscars for best screenplay [Diablo Cody] was a stripper."

Lee's stories, based heavily on experiences in the porn business, have appeared in $pread magazine and the Denver Quarterly.

A 2008 graduate of San Francisco State University, Lee decided to pursue a master's in creative writing on the advice of former professors, she said.

When the porn queen got the acceptance call from the head of NYU's program, she was elated. "She said they were excited about my writing," said Lee, dressed in a pink tank top, black mini-skirt and knee-high boots. "I don't know if she says that to everybody, but it felt pretty good."

Lee has been in more than 200 films since entering the porn business at age 19, and she's been nominated for three Adult Video News Awards.

She gets paid up to $1,400 per day, and estimates she has made between $30,000 and $60,000 a year.

The worlds of academia and porn have collided awkwardly for Lee.

At a shoot in Los Angeles last month, a crew member asked the topic of a book she was reading. "Two misogynists looking for love," Lee told him. "The same plotline of the movie."

NYU Punks Get One-Week Suspension

Oh so harsh, one can only wonder if they'll survive the brutal punishment meted out. Maybe they should bring the ACLU in to help negotiate down these conditions.

The now infamous 18 Take Back NYU protesters who were the final holdouts during last week’s occupation — since called the “Kimmel 18” (maybe with too great a hint of heroics) — have been offered a deal from the university which they must decide to accept or reject today. For those who do not accept, suspensions will be retained until they are tried in a judicial hearing where punishments traditionally tend to be more severe.

Let’s consider the damage done: an estimated financial impact of over $80,000, including the costs of heightened security, minor repairs to the Kimmel Center and disruption to dining services; an NYU security guard physically harmed; and many students inconvenienced. Next, the consequences for a few of those who caused the disruption: a week of suspension from school and a year of ineligibility for student leadership positions.

If $80,000 is a fair estimate of the financial impact of the occupation, there seems to be a large discrepancy between the damage caused and the consequences doled out. NYU cannot and should not punish these students for putting on a poorly planned protest, but the students’ disregard for the well-being of the security guards and their purposeful destruction of private property deserve more than this symbolic slap on the wrist.

This just invites another silver-spoon revolution over some perceived grievance. Booting these punks from school is the proper course of action, but instead they get a wrist slap and a laugh at the school's expense.

For this alone they should get jail time.

NYU Students Arrested, Cafeteria Liberated

The silver spoon revolution at NYU is over. This will go down in the annals of leftwing idiocy as perhaps the lamest protest ever.

So much for the revolution.

Security guards on Friday dragged the last of the renegade New York University students out of a campus cafeteria where they had been holed up in protest for three days.

"Solidarity! Solidarity!" the fist-pumping rebels yelled as they were ousted from the Kimmel Center.

Four students tried to flee a balcony after campus cops breached their barricade. Others were physically removed - and unceremoniously dumped outside.

"He picked me up by the shoulders and dragged me through the door," complained protest organizer Farah Khimji, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I was physically subdued. I was thrown to the ground."

The rest of the two dozen or so protesting students left like lambs, and were greeted outside with cheers by supporters like 21-year-old senior, Clara Green.

"We're not going to take it any more," Green yelled. "This is our university. We should be allowed to stay. This is unfair and unjust."

Many of the other NYU students who stopped to watch the revolt fizzle said they still didn't know what the rebels were trying to accomplish.

"They're requesting so many different things," said Ryan Jacobson, a 19-year-old freshman. "None of it actually seems doable."

Senior NYU vice-president Lynne Brown said that whatever it was, the protesters didn't get it.

NYU did not "bend" to student demands and all the malcontents are banned from all NYU buildings - including the dorms - until their expulsion hearings, Brown said.

"This was an inappropriate forum for protests."

The writing was on the wall at 10 a.m. when four student negotiators went up to the sixth floor of the building to talk with NYU officials - and were ambushed by campus cops.

After that, campus security tore down the barricades barring the entrance to the third floor cafeteria and started evicting the Take Back NYU! Coalition protesters.

When the group took over the cafeteria, their stated cause was a demand for greater transparency in the NYU budget.

Then came talking points in which the protestors also demanded scholarships for Palestinian students - and for supplies to be donated to the Islamic University of Gaza.

Hopefully they're all expelled and charged to the full extent of the law. It would probably also serve them right if their parents booted them from the house. Let these little shits learn how to live on their own.

Morons.

Previously.

'Not Allowing Us Bathroom Rights Is a Human-Rights Violation!'

They just don't make protesters like they used to. Get a load of this bunch of sniveling pantloads at NYU. All those old hippies who took over Columbia back in the 60's must be rolling over in the communes, or wherever the heck they are.

THEY don't make radicals the way they used to.

Some 60 students - all elite, lily white and whiny - took over the cafeteria at New York University's Kimmel Center Wednesday night to stage not a party, but a protest.

The kids showed up armed for slumber, with sleeping bags, camera phones, laptops and plenty of cellphones for the homesick to call Mom.

Just minutes after the well-heeled warriors took over the room on the third floor, they made their first demand to the administration. Via cellphone, natch.

What was the No. 1 priority for this band of complainers? World peace? Free tuition? A hot bath?

Close. They demanded the right to use the bathroom.

"Not allowing us bathroom rights is a human-rights violation!" Emily Stainkamp, an 18-year-old freshman, said from her cellphone inside the cafeteria. The university relented, and students won the right to tinkle.

"My parents are a little worried," Fharah Khimji, 20, said from inside. "They're paying a lot of money to send me here."

Apparently Fharah has no idea of the sacrifices parents make to send whiny little brats to college and this is how they're repaid? How about shutting up and going to class so your folks can get something in return?

I thought with the ascension of Barack Obama to the White House that all was going to be well with the world?

Guess not. These overprivileged punks will always find something to bitch about.

With the kids' human rights indulged, they unfurled a dizzying list of 13 demands, which ran the gamut from lower tuition, to NYU pulling out investments in Israel, to giving freebies to Palestinian students. But their No. 1 demand was this: "Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation."

You can't say these kids are too dumb to look out for their own interests.

Outside, about 40 supporters held a rally. Keri Lyons, 20, and Nadia Collado, 19, walked around topless in some kind of protest over NYU's failure to expose where its money goes. Or something. It was cold.

A cop eyed the crowd and shook his head.

"It's pathetic," he said. "These are privileged kids. These kids have silver spoons in their mouths, and their parents send them here - so they can sit in the cafeteria."

Linked at Hot Air. Thanks!

Update: The "siege" has ended.