Universities march against huge budget cuts

Some 400 to 500 faculty, staff and students from the City University of New York and the State University of New York marched and rallied against midyear budget cuts on Oct. 27.

Students, faculty, staff unite to save education. WW photo: G. Dunkel

Like most public colleges and universities throughout the country, CUNY and SUNY are overflowing with students who want to increase their skills to improve their chances of getting a job.

CUNY now has 250,000 students, the most in decades, and its six community colleges, which are open to any students with a high-school diploma, have been forced to put thousands more on waiting lists. Two-thirds of CUNY students are people of color and more than 60 percent were born outside the United States. (CUNY Office of Institutional Research)

SUNY is less diverse but has 440,000 students spread across 64 campuses, according to a report on the New York State United Teachers Web site.

New York Gov. David Paterson’s response to the state’s booming enrollment in public higher education has been to cut the budgets of CUNY and SUNY—SUNY by $410 million over the past 18 months and a $68.3 million cut for CUNY last year and $44 million this year.

In the last two weeks of October Paterson cut $90 million out of the SUNY budget and proposed cutting $53 million from CUNY, along with taking $33 million from CUNY and SUNY community colleges.

Paterson also decreased the most common form of student aid by $120, starting next semester, and got CUNY and SUNY to raise tuition in their senior colleges by 15 percent.

Behind booming drums, the march left Hunter College on Manhattan’s posh East Side and marched to a rally site on Fifth Avenue. The most popular chants were “The unions united will never be defeated!” and “Students, faculty, staff, unite! Same struggle, same fight!”

Students seemed to like “No tuition hikes! We will do what’s right! We will fight, fight, fight!”

Phil Smith, president of United University Professionals, which represents the faculty and staff at SUNY, said the struggle had to continue and called for a demonstration Nov. 10 in Albany, when the state Legislature convenes in a special session to make budget cuts.

Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents the faculty and staff at CUNY, said, “There is tremendous power when we all come together with a single message: Hands off higher ed! I’m tired of the attack on us, because that’s what it is—an attack on every family, every person who relies on public education, and an attack on every student who hears, ‘Stay in school.’” A number of high school students expressed their trepidation about how cuts in higher education would affect them.

Bowen pointed out that the state government has a $1.5 billion “rainy day” reserve fund it could use. It could also step up efforts to collect taxes that are unpaid and stop contracting out work at a saving of $730 million over the next three years.

Bowen predicted that the struggle against budget cuts isn’t over and that more and bigger demonstrations will take place.

The contract for the United Federation of Teachers, which represents 85,000 kindergarten through 12th grade instructors and staff in New York City schools, expired Oct. 31. It is clear that the city’s Department of Education will demand significant concessions from the UFT.