Hunter needs to be more political than ever

We don’t have the privilege of being less engaged for a ‘real college experience’

Last week The Tab ran a piece by Charles Chakkalo entitled “Hunter is becoming too political to be a real college experience”. As a member of SWB and a Hunter student, this is why I disagree.

What is this “real college experience” the article is talking about? First of all, it’s impossible to remove politics from any college experience. College students everywhere are in a unique position in that they are young, active, and being exposed to new ideas. Furthermore, college is a privilege not afforded to everyone. The fact that higher education is largely closed off to working class Black and brown people gives any college environment an inherently political character. Perhaps some of us dream of a college experience like one you would find at a large state school outside of the city, where students can more easily ignore that political character. They do not have to worry about paying for that extra class so they can graduate in faster than six years, or if their school is taking away child care services, or if they can simply get to class on time because the public transportation fare keeps going up.

That is not Hunter College, or CUNY as a whole. Of course, that is the dream, right? To be able to go to college without having to worry about being able to go to college? But we ask, how else to get there without being political?

CUNY was established as the Free University in 1841 as a way for New York’s working class to access tuition-free higher education. Through the Civil War, two World Wars, and the Great Depression, CUNY was tuition-free. However, CUNY was largely off-limits to Black and brown New Yorkers until 1969, when a group of Black and Puerto Rican students at the City College of New York (CCNY) occupied their campus for five days demanding open access for New York City public high school graduates in an effort to ensure working class people of color access to higher education. By 1976, CUNY’s incoming freshman class was majority students of color. Of course there are other examples of CUNY’s historically political activism. CUNY was somewhat a haven for the political left during the McCarthy era. While the House Un-American Activities Committee was stripping those they deemed politically dangerous of their right to freely voice their politics, communists and socialists continued to organize openly at CUNY. Just a few years ago, several CCNY students were beaten and arrested for protesting against CUNY hiring accused war-criminal General David Petraeus to teach a class at Macaulay Honors College. CUNY’s history is rooted in political activism.

Today, the very thing those activists were fighting for, a free and accessible CUNY that serves New York City’s working class, is under direct attack from many different sources. New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is promising to shift responsibility for 1/3 ($485 million) of the state’s funding for CUNY onto the city. While CUNY faces massive budget cuts, the Board of Trustees invested over $275,000 in the private prison industry and over $1 million in the military weapons industry in 2014. The return on those investments is then used to fund scholarships for mostly white, middle-class students from upstate or Long Island, effectively locking out the city’s most oppressed communities. CUNY’s Chancellor James Milliken earns $670,000/year and lives in an $18,000/month apartment, paid for by CUNY with our tuition. Meanwhile, our tuition increased $300 every year from 2011-2016, and that is slated to be extended through 2021.

Students are not the only ones suffering. CUNY’s largest teacher’s union, the Professional Staff Congress, has not gotten a new contract with CUNY for 6 years. Adjuncts (most of your teachers) are being forced onto food stamps while others work two other jobs to make ends meet. And of course there are our campus workers, such as the custodial and cafeteria staff, who are in an even more precarious position than the rest of us!  

75 per cent of CUNY students are New York City public high school graduates. Many of these students cannot afford to not be political and there has never been a more crucial time to be political than now. We cannot continue to sit back as New York’s communities are shut out of what could be their only opportunity for higher education. Especially not just because some people don’t like political discussion.

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