Despite student protests, CUNY raises tuition

WW photo: G. Dunkel

After 15 students were beaten and arrested last week for daring to attend a Nov. 21 hearing of the City University of New York’s Board of Trustees where they attempted to tell the board why raising tuition would make their lives much more difficult, 300 students in Students United for a Free CUNY gathered in Madison Square Park on Nov. 28.

There, they spoke bitterly about how hard it was to get an education and how the attacks by CUNY’s security forces the previous week weren’t designed to preserve order, but to crush dissent and limit the right to free speech to times and places CUNY’s administration selects.

The students then marched a few blocks to Baruch College where the Board of Trustees was meeting to pass the tuition increase. In an attempt to further silence free speech, the CUNY administration that day had canceled all classes after 3 p.m. at that campus.

About 150 to 200 faculty and staff, organized by the Professional Staff Congress, were already picketing the board meeting in support of the students, while the Rude Mechanical Orchestra played tunes like “We Shall Not Be Moved” and other civil rights standards.

Some students marched around the neighborhood and others joined the PSC line. At its height, the demonstration had more than 800 protesters.

In the PSC’s open letter to CUNY’s chancellor, the union pointed out: “It is inconceivable to us as faculty and staff that a college would cancel its primary activity — teaching — on the grounds that doing so will ‘ensure the safety of all students, faculty and staff during the period surrounding the meeting of the CUNY Board of Trustees.’ ... What creates unsafe conditions is not the presence of peaceful protesters on a college campus, but rather the college’s approach to policing.”

The board voted to approve a $300 tuition increase per year for the next five years, amounting to a total increase of 30 percent by the year 2016. Three protesters were arrested.