SUMMER 2001

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Trustee Draws Protest at York.  At York College’s June 1 graduation, CUNY trustee Alfred Curtis found himself giving a speech to an audience of backs.  Acting on a request from the PSC’s York chapter, ninety-five percent of the students and faculty turned their backs on Curtis to protest the trustees’ decision to end remediation at CUNY’s 11 senior colleges.  York president Charles C. Kidd, Sr., having heard about the “silent demonstration” in advance, made an unplanned introduction to Curtis’ speech, describing him as “one of York’s best friends on the Board of Trustees,” but to no avail.  York political science professor Peter Ranis said this shows the strength of the alliance between the PSC and students at York.  “This was an African-American president introducing an African-American trustee to what was basically an African-American student body, yet they stuck to their guns,” Ranis said.  “It showed they are a smart autonomous student body that understands the issues.”  Eleven PSC chapters organized a visible union presence at Graduation throughout CUNY, with about 16,000 faculty, staff, students and family members wearing pro-union stickers. Thousands of leaflets on the PSC’s contract campaign were also distributed.

 

Call for $1 Billion Drive.   Three hundred CUNY professors have signed an appeal asking the Board of Trustees to initiate and actively participate in a one billion dollar fundraising drive for the University.  The appeal cites the guidelines of the Association of Governing Boards, which state that the personal involvement of trustees is essential to successful fundraising, and points to several public universities, all of them smaller than CUNY, that have conducted successful $1 billion drives (see http://148.84.1.40/endow ment_now.html). Then-Chairman of the Board Herman Badillo responded that Chancellor Goldstein is planning “a University-wide fundraising campaign”—an aggregation of the fundraising goals of individual colleges, which remain responsible for carrying them out. Badillo declined to commit to a figure or to a specific role for CUNY’s Trustees.

Peter Hogness

At Queens College commencement on June 6, most graduates wore stickers supporting the PSC's contract and budget campaigns.

 

CLTs Form Campus Councils.  College Laboratory Technicians at Hunter, Lehman and Queens Colleges have formed campus CLT Councils.  “One of the goals of the councils is to have some form of enfranchisement and participation in campus affairs,” said Shelly Mendlinger, chair of the PSC’s CLT chapter. The councils are needed for CLTs “to obtain inclusion in college governance plans and to gain recognition as professionals by both faculty and administration,” according to Hunter CLT and organizer Ellen Steinberg.  Steinberg said she hopes the Council model will spread to other campuses, and added that the CLT chapter is encouraging the trend.

 

Lehman Prof Named Poet Laureate.  Billy Collins, a PSC member at Lehman College, was named U.S. poet laureate on June 20. Collins, 60, has taught composition at Lehman for more than 30 years.  “It came completely out of the blue, like a soft wrecking ball from outer space,” Collins told The New York Times. A distinguished professor of English, Collins shares a one-room office at Lehman with three other faculty members.

 

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