NYU student tours harassed, attacked with eggs by homeless

Prospective New York University students and their parents are being harassed by homeless around its Manhattan campus, reports the New York Post.

The student-led tour groups are regularly harassed by homeless who beg for cash, according to an anonymous tour guide.

“Every single day something is happening,” the guide said. “Our duty is to sell the school, to showcase our campus and obviously being harassed is not something you want to deal with on a daily basis.”

In one shocking incident in view of several tour groups, a homeless person laid down in the middle of the street in an apparent suicide attempt.

“You can see them visibly disgusted and say ‘I don’t want to apply here, I don’t want to apply here because I feel unsafe,'” the guide said.

He added that no one should forgo the school “just because a homeless person asks for money on the tour.”

Room, board and tuition at the prestigious private university ranges between $78,440 to $84,169 per year, according to the Post.

Sometimes, the homeless get violent. One campus tour group was pelted with eggs on Mar. 28, hitting one prospective student.

“I see this white spherical shape coming towards my group, and I initially thought it was a snowball because it just snowed last night,” the tour guide told the student newspaper. “In my head, I was thinking, ‘This is going to be bad.’ And then I saw the yolk on the ground.”

The egg attack took place on the edge of the famous Washington Square Park. A teenager was stabbed in the head there on Mar. 18 after he refused to hand over his marijuana.

Tour guide emphasize the safety measures on campus, such as security guards, shuttle buses and emergency call boxes.

“Anyone of reasonable intelligence would be concerned about safety in New York City or any large city,” one prospective student who was visiting from Los Angeles told the Post, who said he heard a similar safety talk at Columbia University.

NYU announced in January that it had received a record 105,000 applications for next year. It has offered admission to 12.2% of them.