Press Release From Hell
Bill Friedheim, Retirees/BMCC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010 

In a path-breaking resolution, the CUNY Board of Trustees at its September 19, 2010, meeting broke new ground in academia, decreeing that beginning October 1, 2010, the university would compensate all full-time management titles (Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, President, Dean) at part-time hourly rates. 

Under these new salary guidelines, no university officer would make in excess of $21,788.55 or equivalent to the annual compensation for an adjunct lecturer teaching a full-time load at a senior college. 

B.O.T. spokesman Tony Snow explained that there is a direct link between the board’s new 2010 initiative and the management-imposed 2007 faculty/staff contract that created full-time teaching positions at part-time pay.   

“The 2007 contract demonstrated the power of the free academic market, “stated Snow, “allowing us to create a 100:1 full-time to part-time teaching ratio in CUNY classrooms. “The beauty of all this,” he continued, “was that we had the best of both worlds – full-time positions at part-time/poverty-line pay with no possibility of tenure. And consider, the city and state got ‘an extra bang for the buck,’ reducing CUNY funding by another 75% at great savings to taxpayers.” 

Speaking from his new fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn’s East New York, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein expressed support for the B.O.T. resolution.  “My reduction in salary from $350,000 to $21,788.55 and loss of my Sutton place condominium and chauffeured limousine is a small price to pay when you consider the new efficiencies and management flexibility that the board’s decision brings to the CUNY workplace.” 

Only one college president, Hunter’s Jennifer Raab, expressed any dissatisfaction with the B.O.T. initiative.  She claimed that her new office, which she shares with 100 adjuncts in the English Department, “is even more crowded than the 6 train.”  Raab has been taking the 6 train ever since she lost her chauffeur and limousine under the board’s new edict. 

As his chauffeur held open the door of a Lincoln Continental, which is standard issue for all B.O.T. members, new trustee Richard Cheney snapped, “Jennifer needs to get over it.”   

Cheney’s grim demeanor changed when he began to talk about the board’s “contingent labor initiative.”  “With this resolution,” he enthused, “CUNY becomes the first public university to adopt the Phoenix U. model.  In fact we do Phoenix one better, bringing market-place cost savings to every sector of the university – faculty, staff and now even management.”   

In related measures, the B.O.T. passed resolutions at its September meeting (1) increasing tuition to $40,000 a year and (2) establishing a task force to investigate the feasibility of outsourcing both teaching and management positions to Uzbekistan.  

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