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It’s a tour de farce.
Prospective New York University students and their parents are getting an unwelcome taste of the Big Apple’s homeless crisis as they tour the college’s Greenwich Village campus.
The student-led tour groups are being routinely harassed by begging vagrants — and even assaulted. One group was pelted with eggs Monday afternoon standing outside the Goddard Hall dorm on Washington Square East.
New York University (NYU) students walk by Rubin Hall in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
A guide told The Post this week that he has been hassled for cash and grabbed by a vagrant demanding money.
In one shocking display in view of several tour groups, a homeless person laid down in the middle of West Fourth Street in what the guide said may have been a suicide attempt.
"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."
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He said the visitors to the school — where tuition, room and board will range from $78,440 to $84,169 next year — are none too pleased.
"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."
A homeless encampment is seen at East 13th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue in downtown Manhattan Wednesday morning. New York City. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images)
The guides in their purple jackets which say "Admissions Ambassador" lead small groups around campus stopping at the charming Washington Mews and in front of the library and student center. But they studiously avoid the most famous landmark associated with the college — Washington Square Park.
The park and its famous arch have been off limits for tours since they resumed last summer after a pandemic-imposed hiatus.
The park has been a nexus of drug dealing, out of control parties, unsanctioned boxing matches and violence in the last year. A teen was stabbed in the head in the park at 2:30 a.m. March 18 after he refused to hand over his pot.
But even on the edge of the park, the guides are harassed, according to the Washington Square News student paper, which reported on the egg-tossing incident.
An NYU Security guard wearing a mask stands outside an NYU Building in Greenwich Village. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
The paper also reported that last year an unhinged man spit on another guide and started to follow a mom who exclaimed, "This campus is a bunch of bombs waiting to explode!"
Tour guides give a spiel campus safety including a recitation on 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," said one prospective student who was visiting from Los Angeles and said he heard a similar safety talk at Columbia University.
NYU announced this week it had received a record 105,000 applications for next year and offered admission to 12.2 percent of those who applied.
An NYU spokesman said tour guides had been provided with walkie-talkies, given deescalation training and been assigned to go out on tours two at a time in order to deal with "disruptive individuals."
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Beginning Monday, the tour groups will again be able to go inside campus buildings as the college eases COVID-19 restrictions, said spokesman John Beckman.
"NYU, in conjunction with other universities, has been surfacing safety concerns to the new city administration, and these incidents involving admissions tours will be among the issues we’ll raise," Beckman said.
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