CUNY News in Brief (October, 2009)
Governor Paterson set to slash CUNY budget yet again
Putting the Criminal Back in Criminal Justice
Hats off to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who made this month’s most significant contribution to ensuring CUNY’s enduring track record of cooking the books. A recently released audit by the State Comptroller’s Office finds that a handful of CUNY colleges aren’t bothering to report campus felonies. John Jay leads the way, failing to report nineteen of twenty felonies, followed closely behind by Queens, Baruch, Hunter and Medgar Evers Colleges, who collectively buried a whopping 73 percent of campus crimes during the period under State review. According to the Gothamist, “John Jay administrators are also accused of keeping two sets of crime logs, one created two weeks before auditors arrived.”
Students, unsurprisingly, were upset by the news. Speaking to the New York Post, John Jay sophomore Deana Kelley pointed out that “I think it’s unethical. It’s like if there’s a crime in your neighborhood, you want to know what’s going on.” A graduate student at the college, Juliana Velazquez, added, “It’s shocking to hear you attend a criminal-justice school and there’s still crime.” Yeah, imagine that.
In case you were worried that CUNY couldn’t care less about the safety of its students, university spokesman Michael Arena reassured anyone who’d listen that the colleges were taking concerted action to remedy the situation. An emergency two-day training session for every campus security director was immediately convened. What, exactly, these crime-fighting professionals were being trained in remains unclear, but CUNY officials contend that the problem has been meaningfully addressed.
Of course, as in all things, despite CUNY’s impressive capacity for internal corruption, the university once again failed to beat out New York University for top honors in the city. You thought our numbers were bad? NYU failed to account for nearly 90 percent of its campus crime last year. When all crimes committed in the NYU’s residency halls and classroom buildings are tallied up, the school ranks as the second most dangerous campus in the country. And here we were thinking those kids on Washington Square were just a bunch of poseurs!
Bed Bugs
While the authorities at John Jay are busy covering up campus crimes they pretend never happened, students are falling victim to another kind of assault—this time, from bed bugs. Towards the end of September, the school announced that an army of bedbugs had taken up residence in John Jay’s classrooms and administrative offices. But don’t be alarmed: just as there isn’t any crime at the school, John Jay officials assure their community that the bugs aren’t a major problem, describing the situation as a “condition.” “Infestation is when you can see them swarming,” college spokesman Jim Grossman told reporters.
This bit of nonsense was followed by more of the same from the college president, Jeremy Travis, who attempted to allay fears by noting that “no bites had been reported, only skin rashes.” That’s reassuring! All the same, the school has a significant problem on its hands. According to the New York Times, a “crowd of about 200 faculty and staff members and students let out a gasp when school officials showed a map of affected areas. Evidence of bedbugs was found in roughly half of the rooms on the second floor, and the inspection had not been completed on the third or fourth floors of North Hall, though evidence was found on the third floor. Officials said that other buildings would also be inspected.” And then what?
It Takes a Pillage
Just to make sure that he seals his legacy as “WORST GOVERNOR EVER” of New York State, David Paterson has ordered yet another rape and pillage campaign against the state budget, unsurprisingly proposing to slash $53 million from allotted funds for CUNY. This, of course, instead of, uh, we don’t know, maybe increasing taxes on the rich by ½ a percent? In case other educational institutions might have been feeling left out, the governor also proposed cutting $90 million from SUNY’s annual budget, and hacking off $35 million from monies allotted to the Higher Education Services Corporation which administers student aid.
Paterson’s proposed cuts come on the heels of the $44 million he cut earlier this year, which followed $68 million in downsizing in 2008. Meanwhile, CUNY students were also squeezed for an additional 15 percent tuition raise to make up for Paterson’s unwillingness to go after other areas of the budget or raise taxes on New York’s wealthiest. What a coward.
According to Professional Staff Congress president Barbara Bowen, “CUNY cannot absorb any more cuts. The University is already cramming students into overcrowded classrooms and squeezing sixty adjunct faculty into a single office. Enrollment is the highest it has ever been; the demand for a CUNY education has never been greater. It makes no sense—economically or morally—to cut the University now.” The PSC, she announced, “calls on the legislature to reject this destructive proposal. Now more than ever, when the recession continues to hit New Yorkers hard, CUNY represents the only chance for a college education for thousands of ordinary people. A cut of this size could force the University to reduce its student population and deny thousands of people an opportunity for a better life. That’s the wrong choice at any time, and especially the wrong choice now.”
CUNY Research Foundation Workers Walk Out
The Advocate reported last month on the one-hour CUNY Research Foundation (RF-CUNY) walkout on September 14. Fed up with a seemingly intractable contract dispute, PSC members at the Research Foundation Central Office walked out of their offices and began picketing along the West 41st street headquarters of the RF.
The action began at 8:30 when the PSC began picketing at the front and back entrances to the RF-CUNY’s West 41st Street headquarters. After an hour of boisterous chanting and marching, the workers entered the building with PSC President Barbara Bowen to seek a meeting with RF-CUNY President Richard Rothbard. But the RF turned off the elevators to prevent Bowen from reaching Rothbard’s office.
PSC members ratcheted up the pressure shortly thereafter. The PSC’s This Week reports that “members at the RF-CUNY Central Office voted 91 percent “yes” for a strike authorization on Thursday, September 24 with 83 percent of the workers voting.
“‘This is about respect,’ explained Chapter Chair Tony Dixon. ‘By all indicators, RF-CUNY has plenty of money. It’s hard for us to watch as they spend it on a 44 percent raise for President Rothbard and on an expensive anti-union law firm, when they could be putting that money toward a fair contract for us. So it’s really about respect.’”
The vote authorizes the bargaining committee to call for a strike at any point of their choosing moving forward. Since then, “PSC members at the central office of RF-CUNY have met RF-CUNY management at the bargaining table once since the union members voted to authorize a strike. RF-CUNY made some encouraging moves, but maintains its proposal to increase the employee contribution to the health insurance to 19 percent in the third year and keep it at 19 percent in a newly proposed fourth year.”
The PSC goes on to announce that “there are two more bargaining dates scheduled for this month, and PSC members continue to mobilize for a fair contract…To join other PSC members in supporting the RF workers, or with any questions about their mobilization, please email Kian Frederick at [email protected] or call her in the PSC office, 212-354-1252.”
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