CUNY News In Brief (November 2008)
by Advocate Staff
Governor David Paterson’s decision to balance the state budget by punishing public education systems has rippled through the CUNY system with remarkable speed. While considerable attention has been rightfully paid to the reduced quality of education at campuses across the city, less attention has been directed at the negative effects experienced by the thousands of adjunct lecturers and contingent employees who teach and work at CUNY. A number of academic departments have sent out ominous e-mails announcing that adjunct layoffs will be inevitable.
At Queens College, to site but one example, the Sociology department sent out an e-mail to the faculty announcing class cancellations and increased enrollment caps for certain introductory level courses.
Meanwhile, at Hunter College, the Political Science department told its faculty that “The uncertain state budget situation is likely to have an impact on our adjunct budget in future semesters. At this point, we have been directed to cut the adjunct budget by 5 percent for spring 2009.”
For adjunct faculty who manage to keep their jobs, many will have their course loads reduced, and those who fall below two courses per semester may be forced to give up their PSC supported health insurance, a benefit that thousands of CUNY adjuncts desperately rely upon. The fact that adjuncts, who currently make up as much as 57 percent of the teaching faculty at CUNY, and have practically no job security, and can be easily dismissed, is nothing short of outrageous.
Compounding the ugliness of these impending job losses is the fact that, because of the contingent nature of their employment, most adjuncts will not be officially laid off. Instead, they simply will not be offered jobs for the next semester, creating the illusion that fewer layoffs are in fact being issued.
As if cuts were not insulting enough, the governor and the CUNY Board of Trustees are proposing to increase tuition for City University Senior Colleges by a full 15 percent. The CUNY Fiscal Affairs Committee, which met on December 2, has already approved proposals for a maximum $600 increase to full time tuition to be approved by the board of trustees on December 8. This increase is in response to the more than $51 million in cuts to CUNY this year and an expected $82 million in 2009.
For CUNY students and their families, many of whom are facing layoffs and dismal job prospects, this increase could not have come at a worse time. Some students say they will have to work extra hours, which means fewer hours to study, while others report that they will simply have to take fewer classes or drop out of school completely.
Queens College student Lilliana Ramnath told the Post “I think I’m going to have to take a year or two off, at the very least. I just won’t be able to provide for my son and continue studying.”
In response to these budget cuts and tuition hikes, student, faculty, and union groups across the university have been organizing a series of increasingly large and vocal demonstrations to urge the governor and the assembly to fully fund CUNY and other state agencies in 2009. The first was organized by the group CUNY Contingents Unite and took place at Hunter College on November 12th. Hundreds of students and faculty came together to publicly bear witness to the impact of the budget cuts on their lives. Perhaps most inspiring were the incredible number of undergraduates who spontaneously agreed to seize a makeshift “podium” and share their thoughts and stories about how the cuts are affecting them and what they plan to do about it.
Since then, students and contingent faculty have scheduled two more rounds of protest. The first will be held at the board of trustees meeting on December 8 at Baruch College (25th Street and Lexington) at 4pm. There is also a second huge rally planned for December 16 — the same day Patterson is supposed to present his budget proposal to the State Assembly — in front of Governor Paterson’s offices on 41st Street and Third Avenue at 4pm.
