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At "The Future of Higher Education" conference's keynote panel discussion on Thursday evening, New School President David Van Zandt was barely able to get through his introduction of City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, his voice overpowered by the loud coughs and frequent boos of those in attendance....

It is implausible to suppose that the behavior of a revolutionary, a radical environmentalist, or a friend or lover can be revealed by a benefit-cost analysis.

Dale Jamieson

#OWS

Mon. Dec 12, 2:00 – 5:00 Collaborative Groups, training by Starhawk. We will look at issues of power, group conflict and facilitation for horizontal organizing. Location: 16 Beaver St. Tues. Dec 13, 10:00 AM – 1:00, Deconstructing Empire, Building for the Long Haul offered by Starhawk and Lisa Fithian this session will explore strategic nonviolent action; how we might topple the pillars of empire and build a sustainable and liberating culture while doing it! Location: 16 Beaver St. Tues. Dec 13, 3:00 – 5:00, Healing Communities: Teach-In and Ritual with Starhawk. Understanding how trauma affects our work and how we might begin the healing needed to free us all. Location: Liberty Plaza

owsposters

alexanderpf

owsposters: Visual Student Loan Debt

Day 3 of OCCUPY HUNTER

Eviction of HW Lobby by Administrator; Indefinite Occupation- of the Hunter West Lobby- will no longer be present at the noted location.

PSC Prepares Pathways Lawsuit

The PSC is preparing a lawsuit against CUNY’s “Pathways” process that is overhauling colleges’ general education and transfer requirements.

“We do not take this step lightly,” said PSC President Barbara Bowen, “but we listened to faculty across the University and concluded that the way this process bypasses faculty governance goes right to the heart of our responsibilities as faculty members. That’s why we have begun to prepare litigation.”

“The PSC does not take a position on which courses should be part of general education or required for a major,” Bowen noted. “But we do take a position on respecting the University’s governance procedures, and a strong position in support of the role of elected faculty bodies.”

The Pathways process involves the biggest change in curriculum at CUNY since the elimination of remedial courses in the senior college, Bowen said. “Yet this important change is being designed by a committee that is hand-picked by the chancellor,” she told Clarion. “This bypasses the role given to the University Faculty Senate in CUNY’s Bylaws, and it bypasses the faculty senates on each college campus.”

While individual faculty members on this committee may be distinguished and may have the best intentions, Bowen said, “the fact remains they were selected by the Chancellor, the very person to whom they will report. They were not chosen by their peers.”

As the PSC Delegate Assembly pointed out in a resolution it adopted in June, Article 8.13 of CUNY’s Bylaws identifies the University Faculty Senate’s role in formulating policy on curriculum. The resolution declared that CUNY’s Pathways process “violates both the spirit and letter of Bylaw 8.13 and the principle of shared governance.”

No faculty governance body has supported the Pathways process. Resolutions opposed to the administration’s plan were adopted by faculty bodies at 11 of 12 senior colleges and at Queensborough among the community colleges. Pathways has come under continuing criticism as it moves forward this Fall.

The Executive Committee of CCNY’s Faculty Council said in September that it “strenuously objects to CUNY Central’s circumvention of the faculty’s historic authority with respect to curricula.”

In an October statement at Hunter, 26 department chairs and program directors declared, “While we recognize the need to address the issue of student transfer policies, this proposal as implemented will reduce the overall quality of a CUNY education and will erase the identity of its individual colleges.”

“It’s really demoralizing for faculty,” said Glenn Petersen, chair of the sociology and anthropology department at Baruch. “We’ve dedicated our careers to creating an education for our students that will serve them well, and 80th St. is unilaterally taking that apart.”

Some of CUNY’s procedures or ways of thinking about academic success may have been due for a shake-up, Petersen said – but “that’s a debate that should be had among faculty,” not imposed by central administration.

On October 31, the Pathways Task force released a draft of the new general education rules – the criteria for courses that are to be part of a college’s “Common Core.” Comments are due by November 15, a time frame that many faculty felt was inadequate for the serious discussion that this initiative should be promoting.

A frequent topic of concern in campus discussions on the criteria has been their restrictive effect on language requirements. “In an increasingly globalized world,” said the Hunter chairs’ and directors’ statement, “we do not see how CUNY can justify eliminating foreign language requirements and imposing curriculum changes that undermine the value of pluralism and diversity.”

As the general education changes were debated, the Pathways process moved on to other areas. Manfred Philipp, professor of chemistry at Lehman and a union delegate, told Clarion the centralization of authority through Pathways will ultimately give CUNY administration control over key classes in each department. New committees have been appointed to decide what introductory courses can be required for a given major.

DISCIPLINE COUNCILS

“They are not elected, they are appointed,” emphasized Philipp, a former chair of the UFS. “This takes control of the major itself out of a department’s curricular committee. These people will actually decide which courses can be required for your department’s major – and that is a fundamental change in how this University operates.”

-by Peter Hogness

Day 2 of OCCUPY HUNTER

@ Hunter West Lobby. 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, NY

Free food and literature!

Come by and bring a friend!

The Georgetown University Wall Street Alliance

invites you to

Tax Planning for the Rich and Famous

with

Joe Toce (C’73) and Ken Zemsky (F’74, L’77)

Managing Directors of WTAS

Monday December 5

6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Wolfe Trahan

420 Lexington Avenue

Graybar Building, 6th floor, Suite 648

New York, NY 10170

Curious about the tax plans of the ultrawealthy? Confused by state income taxes in the tri-state area? Whether you’re working on estate tax legislation or just want to brush up on the best strategies for managing your taxes, this enlightening and entertaining session will answer many of your pre-April 15 questions. Along with light hors d’oeuvres, this event will feature Joe Toce (C'73) and Ken Zemsky (F'74, L'77), managing directors of WTAS, a tax specialty firm that serves more than 3,000 of the country's most successful families, companies and individuals. The author of Tax Economics of Charitable Giving, Joe will offer timely financial insight on how the rich and famous—and you—can take control of taxes. Ken, who has authored many articles on state tax matters, will enlighten us on New York's treatment of tax matters affecting high net worth individuals.

Space is limited. Please RSVP to Merle Anselm with your name, school and graduate year at [email protected], or call 212-704-0884 for more information.

Letter in Response to What Appears To Be Blatant Censorship by CUNY TV

November 30, 2011

Dear CUNY TV; CUNY students, staff, and faculty; and the many people of New York City whom I imagine CUNY TV is supposed to serve:

I am a graduate student in Anthropology at The CUNY Graduate Center, an instructor at Hunter College, and a member of the public which comprises the city of New York. I am inquiring into why the CUNY Board of Trustees Hearing of November 21st is not posted on the CUNY TV site.

Having been to this “Public” Hearing, I am well aware that it was substantially different from the sanitized and false manner in which it was portrayed in official CUNY accounts. Even the most impartial observer would have described it as a series of perpetual and rowdy disruptions, which included: collective outcries, tearful and poignant individual testimonies about the brutality of the CUNY's economic exploitation of its instructors and students, vociferous standing declarations about the Board's anti-democratic practices, students and faculty being thrown out of the boardroom by security, sometimes by being physically carried out, and a Board member announcing over the microphone and with audible disgust in her voice (well-documented on youtube videos) that a student be “eliminated.”

Perhaps, as a "noncommercial cable television station," you are not required to post these Hearings. However, requirements aside, considering the important historical moment at which CUNY finds itself and considering the widely publicized and documented violence upon students – many of whom were denied access to this Hearing though the boardroom was not at capacity –that evening in the lobby, this omission reeks of something unethical and amounts to censorship of the public's voice. Besides, let's face it, it would make for far more interesting viewing than just about anything else you've recorded in that boardroom.

I ask that CUNY TV post its recording of the November 21st hearing in full and as it occurred with all its disruptions. By doing the right thing, you will also be staking out a place of relevance and legitimacy in the eyes of the CUNY public.

Any of the 200 plus people I have cc'd on this letter may feel free to use whatever parts of it they want to request CUNY TV to do the same.

Sincerely and Happy Holidays,

Priya Chandrasekaran

hexkaba-blog

Time to show congress our approval rating

Farmers Join Occupy Wall Street, Calling for Food Justice

Sunday, December 4th at 2pm

As Wall Street’s corrupt influence on the economy has grown, the corporate ownership of our food system has hurt the health and livelihood’s of some of our most vulnerable communities. This Sunday, December 4th food justice activists and occupiers will be travelling from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York to join together for the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH. Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply. Events throughout the day will call and inspire participants to fight against the corporate manipulation of the agriculture system. An industry that is responsible for using chemical toxins tied to soaring obesity rates, heart disease and diabetes and limiting access to affordable, wholesome food to the country’s poorest citizens. The event will kick off at 2pm at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden with a musical performance followed by remarks from food justice activists and occupiers. They will share their stories and listen to their peers as they highlight the role of urban-rural solidarity in building a sustainable food system as well as challenges of family-scale farmers in a culture of corporate dominance.

March Begins at 4pm from La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

At 4pm, musicians will be among those leading the Farmers’ March in a colorful parade from La Plaza to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza, the site of a Solidarity Circle at 5pm. Stories of struggle, triumph and ruminations about the role OWS might assume in the food justice movement will help form the circle. The circle will close with a Seed Exchange. Participants are encouraged to express their dissent creatively, donning fruits hats, wearing burlap sacks, carrying brightly colored signs and moving in time to the beat of the drums. Please join us, farmers, ranchers, farm workers, urban gardeners, foodies and supporters of all kinds in the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH. Speakers will include: George Naylor - Iowa farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition. Jim Gerritsen - Maine based farmer who was named one of 20 world visionaries by Utne Reader in 2011 and is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Monsanto. Karen Washington - Founder of City Farms Market and board member at NYC based organization Just Food. Severine von Tscharner - Food advocate and producer of the film “Green Horns”, profiling young farmer entrepreneurs. Jalal Sabur - Founding member of the Freedom Food Alliance and advocate working on the alliance of black urban communities with black rural farmers. Mike Callicrate - Colorado cattle rancher, entrepreneur and rural advocate . Andrew Faust - World renowned permaculture expert and educator.

At around 6:30pm, after voting nearly lock-step 15-to-1 in favor of a 33% across the board tuition hike per student (instituted gradually bringing it up to $6,300 per semester by 2015), CUNY’s Board of Trustees began individually filing out through back door of Baruch College into waiting town cars and at least one security truck.

Safely ensconced in a bubble of law enforcement, they had managed to shake all but one of the several hundreds of protesters who had massed angrily at the school; A solitary figure in a pink t-shirt holding a small stack of the Occupy Wall Street Journal in one hand and a middle finger in the other repeatedly shouting in a deep baritone, “Fuck the board of trustees!”

It was David Suker, United Federation of Teachers member and OWS stalwart who describes himself as being “on a mission” to set things right at CUNY since being expelled from City College in the “mid 90s” for protesting the system’s increases–when free CUNY education was demolished in earnest. Reminded that CUNY’s motto is “An Exceptional Affordable Education,” Suker just laughed and went back to heckling the board.

“Fuck the board of trustees,” he said again. “Take your fucking limo home you fucking idiots.”

Especially rankling to protesters is that $15 million of the budget increase is slated for private security. “That’s nothing new, they put more money in for security whenever there’s student unrest,” Suker says, referring especially to another tuition hike several years ago, which was met with widespread anger.

At the 25th Street side of the building, nineteen year-old native Jess Schiff was one of hundreds of protesters chanting down the new increase. “Its supposed to be a free system,” Schiff said. A lower middle-class Manhattan native, Schiff would theoretically be just the type of person CUNY’s original mandate of free higher education–the gradually abolished so-called “open admissions policy”–would serve.

Schiff, who does not live with her parents, says she is just one of many in her circle of friends who cannot manage city tuition and earning a living at the same time. So for now she “waits tables,” hoping to save enough to go back to school. Asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Schiff, replies almost inaudibly, “a musician.” Then she adds, “but in this economy that’s impossible. I’ll probably study English.”

by Matt Harvey on November 28, 2011 at 8:26 pm

-from animalnewyork.com

#Baruch #CUNY #OCCUPY CUNY

#OCCUPY CUNY #occupyhunter #Occupy

A Call to all New York City students, faculty, staff and allies for a peaceful protest:

Supported by the Graduate Center General Assembly, the CUNY-wide General Assembly and the Professional Staff Congress

TO condemn the violent and racist use of police force against peaceful student protesters at Baruch College on November 21.

To decry tuition hikes at CUNY.

To oppose the proposed appropriation of $15 million a year for additional security guards.

And to demand the CUNY Board of Trustees be held responsible to the students, faculty and staff of CUNY.

Monday, November 28

4PM

Baruch College--vertical campus

25th St. and 3rd Ave.

Take the #6 train to 23rd St.

Find out more and get involved:

web: www.occupycunynews.org

email: [email protected]

twitter: #occupycuny

facebook: CUNY WIDE General Assembly

#OccupyCUNY #OccupyCuny #Occupy

ABOLISH THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

My name is Roy Ben-Moshe. I am a graduate student at Hunter College, of the City University of New York, in the School of Education and a preschool teacher. I attended the CUNY board of trustees public hearing to testify against a proposal to increase full-time, in-state undergraduate tuition by $300 per year for five years. Legislators billed this as a “rational” or “reliable” tuition plan, because it makes tuition increases less erratic and unpredictable. I was one of very few non-adjuncting students present at the hearing, 'public' only in name. Hundreds of students who tried to enter were lead to an “overflow” room to watch a live-stream of the events held in a room continually booked by the board even when continually proven to be inadequate for admitting all those interested. Students refused to be barred, many resorted to civil disobedience, and fifteen students were ultimately arrested.

Regarding my testimony, if the question was ever about my opinion of what would be reasonable, reliable tuition increases for the next five years, the answer is no increase. Who actually benefits from tuition increases being more reliable? Does it really help students to know how many years longer we will be debilitatingly indebted to banking companies that seized our legislative process to fill their coffers with public money? The reliable tuition plan only provides financial reliability to administrators. There should be no tuition at CUNY.

CUNY was once free for all attending students. Chancellor Goldstein attended CUNY for free. After Black and Hispanic students won the right to attend CUNY, legislators introduced tuition to exclude people of color.

Legislators sponsoring this bill and members of the board of trustees have lead their constituents to believe that students must be complacent about budget cuts that justify their tuition increasing because the economic climate demands that citizens make concessions. It follows that we must allow legislators and board members to replace state contributions to CUNY's operation with the scraps of what CUNY students, the poorest, most marginalized college students in the country, can muster, leading us to life-long financial indebtedness or outright exclusion. According to a statement by CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, reliable tuition increases are useful because “During economic downturns, students might experience very steep tuition increases, while in other years, tuition levels would hold steady.” However, tuition at CUNY has increased even in years of economic stability.

Even if it was true that tuition increases were only implemented during economic downturns, why should it be on the backs of students when the country's economic troubles were created by banks that seized our legislative process to ensure their own very expensive survival? The political landscape is also one in which politicians with ulterior motives drove our resources into ecologically destructive, costly, inhumane wars, and pharmaceutical companies use public health programs to ensure the purchase of their unnecessarily expensive products. Meanwhile, at CUNY, men of the corporate world elected through no democratic process have created lucrative positions of hundreds of unnecessary administrative roles at the university. Budget cuts to CUNY do not exist in a vacuum, and the reality is that nearly every member on the board has a cozy, intimate relationship with all these players, and they are all too eager to make compromises on issues that seriously effect the present quality of our lives and our financial futures.

The board's anticipation of tuition increases amounts to a declaration that they have no ideological problem with balancing the budget on the backs of poor students, working class students, and students of color. They are effectively compromising with the conservative policies of the mayors and governors who appointed them of reducing taxes on New York's wealthy residents, a constituency that we have no deficit of, rather than supporting public programs.

Justifications for draconian cuts hold little weight among students, faculty, and staff, where it is obvious that the rhetoric of these policies does not square with the reality of how administrators conduct finances at the university. For example, while the board decides to increase our tuition, they consistently simultaneously increase administrative salaries. At Brooklyn College, my undergraduate Alma mater, administrators squandered millions creating and quickly tearing down multiple structures due to bad architectural planning, our community garden was uprooted to create a parking lot, and another level of deans was instituted, unnecessary to the functioning of the university, yet costing millions per year to maintain. It appears that the recession only applies to students, faculty, and staff. Everyone else gets to be completely reckless with money.

I consistently hear that CUNY is affordable so who cares that tuition is being raised? It comes with an incredible privilege to say that $5,000 per year is 'affordable.' I know more than enough students who have to choose between food, rent, and tuition. It is a lie that CUNY is affordable. $5,000 per year may be 'affordable' to the chancellor who has a $600,000 salary. Tuition is not affordable for the 99%. Such proclamations by the chancellor and the college presidents are thinly disguised advertisements to middle-class students who have been financially chased out of private schools. CUNY is for all the people. Not only those who can afford it.

Administrators claim that rigorous admissions policies will lead to philanthropic contributions, which will improve the university. As a fellow student once pointed out, trading public monies for private monies is a disservice to a public university. Public programs should not survive on the goodwill of the wealthy, that would be a charity model. Public programs require institutionalized programmatic funding through taxation. Also, admissions at CUNY should not be rigorous. There are enough universities with admissions policies that only de facto exclude students who were shortchanged by the public school system, or class position, or race, or some combination of all of these. CUNY is for educating the residents of New York.

Although Mayor Bloomberg and City Council hardly ever address CUNY in their state of the city addresses, CUNY is no small peanuts in city, state, or US politics. CUNY is one of the largest university systems in the country, it has been the linchpin in ensuring higher education for people of color, and it graduates more black students each year than all the traditionally black colleges combined.

Clearly, the totalitarian method of decisions-making at CUNY is not working for the residents of New York. This CUNY Board of Trustees is illegitimate by fact that they were elected through no democratic process, some of whom were appointed by one of the richest men in the world for the purpose of privatizing a public entity. The majority of this body has no experience in education. They are from the corporate world where people are only worth the dollars they can generate, not the minds they can cultivate.

In a next day response to student arrests at the board meeting, the chancellor reiterated that

“At CUNY we deeply value the exchange of ideas and the participation of the citizenry in the shaping of public policy. We are also mindful of the need to respect the interests of all members of our communities. We must ensure that expressions of protest do not infringe on others’ rights.”

Testifying in front of a panel of non-democratically elected board members, who make deliberate decisions to shut out students from public hearing and then increase tuition no matter how many student testimonies plead otherwise, does not sound like a 'right' of much substance.

The Board of Trustees as it stands must be abolished. That major decisions regarding an institution utilized, serviced, and maintained by poor and working-class people are decided upon by those serving only the interests of the owning class is illogical. I am calling for the abolition of the CUNY board of trustees and for a board that will not compromise on what is uncompromisable, a democratically elected student-staff-faculty governance over CUNY.

#Occupy

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