Around 50 students held a sit-in at New York City’s Cooper Union on Wednesday to protest an end to the school’s longstanding tradition of free tuition for undergraduates. The school recently announced it will begin charging up to $20,000 after more than 100 years of being tuition-free. Student activist Victoria Sobel spoke inside the office of Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha.

Victoria Sobel: “The action began as a sit-in in Jamshed Bharucha’s office this morning at 11 a.m. The plan was to intercept the president and read this statement to him. Right now we have more than half of the signatures of the School of Art for students, so that is a majority of the students voicing no confidence in Jamshed Bharucha. So, for us, it began as a sit-in. And his absence has marked it as an occupation. He is no longer welcome in this office space. It is one that’s been reclaimed by the students, for the students, for this school. It’s not about tuition. It’s about repealing tuition. It’s about reclaiming administrative spaces and re-examining the roles of administration within a school context.”

The sit-in marked the latest action in nearly two years of protests from students and faculty to preserve Cooper Union’s tuition-free policy. Watch Democracy Now! video coverage from the protest.