Occupation in the West Lobby needs YOUR support

Posted on by
1

Statement for Occupation – 12/06/11

Occupy Hunter will be occupying the lobby in the west building of Hunter College throughout the night and into tomorrow. The occupation started at 3:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon and there is not yet a determined end time. This is an organic process and your participation, commitment and support is needed! Currently, there’s a group of Hunter students, adjuncts and community members in the west lobby. Occupy Hunter has a main table with food, literature and Occupy Hunter information, a library table with books from the library at Zuccoti park, a table committed to studying and writing papers, and a table to organize and propose ideas. We are here to nurture an active community at Hunter College by creating a space that addresses the pressing issues relevant to the Hunter community and CUNY as a whole. Occupy Hunter is occupying the west lobby to establish our presence, promote awareness, and create a culture of resistance. This is our school and our CUNY.

Come by to get inolved, or email:

occupyhunter@gmail.com

24 hour occupation of Hunter West Lobby

Posted on by
Reply

The occupation of Hunter College’s HW Lobby, on Tuesday, will mark the beginning of a celebration; We will use the occupied space as one which encourages the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and community building.

Celebration may be noted by entertainment, comfort, and the general thuoght-provoking atmosphere.
To start off, we need participants to contribute their time and energy to the evolution of this idea [occupation].

This is an organic process.
Come by on Tuesday: bring a friend, a record, a movie, a book, a cd, a tape, your homework, your laptop, an idea, a pillow, a blanket, or nothing at all. Interest in the occupation is enough to initialize the process. All that is needed for this occupation is presence (though much more would be pleasant). Looking forward to seeing you at Hunter’s Occupation of the Lobby.
http://www.facebook.com/events/175069725923040/

12/02/11 Hunter General Assembly Minutes

Posted on by
Reply

The Hunter General Assembly started a couple of months ago and very quickly endorsed a city-wide week of action for education. Students at Hunter and across the city walked out, went on strike, protested, occupied, dropped banners, provided jail support, sent emails, and, in many other ways, resisted attacks on public education.

Soon after the Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition the CUNY the Hunter General Assembly, as well as the CUNY-wide General Assembly, voted to restructure and formalize a lot of the things that have been implied during this intense period of action.

Here are the minutes from the last Hunter General Assembly where restructuring occurred and the restructuring proposal that was consensed on:

Statement from Hunter Student

Posted on by
Reply
 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.

PRESS RELEASE: Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing, Baruch College, CUNY #occupyCUNY[1], November 21, 2011

Posted on by
1

WE CONDEMN the use of police violence against CUNY community members who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College on November 21, 2011. We also reject the official statement[2] released by the administration of the City University of New York regarding those events.

STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF peacefully entered the Baruch lobby to attend the public meeting of the Board of Trustees and were immediately met by a line of police carrying large wooden truncheons and blocking access to the building. Students who were on the official roster of speakers were also denied access. At no time did the students, faculty, and staff attempt to push past the massed police officers, nor to confront them physically in any way. The police directed us to the first-floor overflow room where the meeting would be televised live. Knowing that our voices would not be heard in the broadcast room, we decided that we would hold an assembly in the lobby and allow people to tell their stories and testimonies of experiences as students at CUNY. Most of us sat down on the ground so that speakers could stand and be heard.

THE POLICE ATTACKED US shortly after we sat down and began pushing us toward the wall, responding to our peaceful, lawful protest with physical confrontation. The suggestion provided in the CUNY administration’s statement that anyone “surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials” is a categorical lie, and this is documented in video footage of the events (see below). As the officers continued to push us away from the public meeting, they blocked all exits from the lobby but a single, revolving door, through which we were forced to walk one at a time. Many of the peaceful protesters were shoved violently by the campus police, jabbed and struck in their ribs with wooden truncheons, and left badly bruised. At least one student was struck in the face. It was a miracle that no one was more seriously injured. Those who refused to leave were told that they would be arrested; when one person identified himself to officers as a CUNY faculty member and asked on what charge he would be arrested, he was not given an answer. Another officer blurted, “Because it’s a riot!”

WE DEPLORE THE USE OF VIOLENCE against peaceful protesters. We deplore the criminal charges made against peaceful protesters exercising their Constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly. We also deplore the CUNY administration’s misrepresentation of the events at Baruch, devised to obscure its complicity in violent action against its own students, faculty, staff, and community.

###

Video footage of the event can be viewed at the following links:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czi4Htwti44
http://vimeo.com/32494471
http://youtu.be/YAX4tzcPM9E
http://youtu.be/JpX48XIStEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkBGMULZKxY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGMS5G3gxq8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGvO8TQSLQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSeNS77XJd0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klsh3YlhEg8
https://www.facebook.com/video/?id=168721598130
http://www.theticker.org/about/2.8215/students-united-for-a-free-cuny-escalates-at-baruch-nvc-1.2675035#.TstLcvEWUTk

WHO WE ARE:

We are CUNY. We are of the working class of New York City. We teach the working class of New York City; we teach the immigrants who have come to New York to live and work; we teach the present and future public employees of New York City. Our brothers, sisters, children, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents—they are police officers, firefighters, social workers, teachers, factory workers. WE ARE NEW YORK CITY AND WE STAND WITH NEW YORK CITY. We are CUNY students, who believe in this university and in this city. We are CUNY faculty, who have chosen to teach at CUNY because we believe in the mission to educate and elevate our sisters and brothers. We are the 99%, and we demand a public education system that is truly public.

For standing with our brothers, sisters, and students, we have been assaulted by police officers who have not yet accepted that they have a legal responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, and that they have a moral responsibility to follow their conscience when they are told to turn on their own. Our fight is not with the Police Department of the City of New York, but the NYPD has chosen to fight their own brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and children. We have no desire to be in conflict with them, but if they continue to “just follow orders” in the face of all moral, ethical, and political compulsions to the contrary, then we have no choice but to resist them. But we will resist them peacefully, civilly, using our rights to do so. We do not want to fight them; we want them to realize that our fight is one fight. We know that they know this.

The students and teachers of the CUNY system stand with all of those who believe in the mission of public education, and the crucial importance of education for the public. We stand against those who seek to privatize an institution that was established to serve the most disadvantaged of New Yorkers. And we refuse to passively accept a program of tuition increases that would disenfranchise our students, whom we love and we fight for every day of the week. We do our jobs based on heartfelt and hard-won principles; we study in order to be better citizens and workers, we teach to be better citizens; and we ask that the city’s police, firefighters, public employees, teachers, transport workers, shopkeepers, students, factory workers, service workers, care workers, health workers—THAT THE WHOLE CITY STAND WITH US.

[2] CUNY Newswire. “STATEMENT FROM THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK”. 21 November, 2011. (http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/11/21/statement-from-the-city-university-of-new-york-2/). Accessed 21 November, 2011.