By COLIN MOYNIHAN
A protest by New York University students seeking negotiations with school officials over financial and academic issues ended Friday after almost 40 hours, with students leaving a dining room that had been barricaded and a school spokesman announcing the suspensions of 18 of the participants pending a disciplinary review.
About two dozen students were still involved in the protest when security guards removed barricades made of tables and chairs in the late morning and swept into a third-floor dining room inside the Kimmel student center, said Banu Quadir, 21, a senior who participated in the demonstration.
Ms. Quadir said that those inside the room were photographed and asked to present identification and that school officials distributed letters to N.Y.U. students that stated, “You are suspended from, and classified as a persona non grata at New York University.”
Shortly after 1 p.m., several dozen students rallied across the street from the student center to acknowledge the protest.
Among them was Ms. Quadir, who said that about two dozen students inside the dining room awoke on Friday morning to find that electricity and their wireless Internet had been cut off.
John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said, “From the outset, the university made clear to the protesters that they were violating the university rules and engaging in improper activity.”
He said that students had broken a lock on a door leading to a balcony that they had been forbidden to use and that a security guard had been injured on Thursday when a group of students who wanted to join the protest forced their way into the dining room.
After about 70 students took over the dining room on Wednesday night, they created a Web site (takebacknyu.com), where they listed demands, including a thorough annual reporting of the university’s operating budget, expenditures and endowment. They also asked that the university provide 13 scholarships a year to students from the Gaza Strip and allow graduate teaching assistants to unionize.
Some of the students who had been suspended said they would continue their campaign.
“We are fighting for transparency,” said Drew Phillips, a junior majoring in philosophy. “What we need right now is the support of everybody.”
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