A summary of some new news related to CUNY's and CSI's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. See https://csi-covid19.github.io for the archive.
To add/suggest news, please email John Verzani
7/9 Student petition against cuts to adjuncts (thanks to Michael Paris)
What does this mean for us?
Having fewer teachers means having fewer courses offered and larger class sizes. It means losing trusted mentors and advisors. This dramatically increases the burden on those faculty remaining, both full-time and part-time.
Of course, adjunct layoffs mean a reduction in the quality of services to our students: fewer courses offered and/or larger class sizes in those courses that are offered. This also means more work for those of us lucky enough to remain on payroll.
But there is hope in the middle of this crisis. We need greater collective power to turn that hope into money for CUNY. Let's show CUNY that we are more organized than ever before by gathering virtually or in your car on July 18th for a fight back caravan across the boroughs. The action will run from 11 am - 1 pm. For those who do not have cars, it is possible to participate digitally or by bicycle. At our last action, we trended on Twitter thanks to our hundreds of digital participants!
First, if the resolution is “simply a delegation of authority to allow for the necessary planning for the Fall,” why does it have to be passed with such urgency? The last-minute publication of the resolution and the one-day notice of an emergency meeting do not comport with your suggestion that the resolution is a formality, in order to facilitate planning. Thus, the PSC does not accept the position you appear to take that the vote on the resolution must go ahead today - leaving no time for the legal requirement of consultation with the PSC. Your response fails to demonstrate that there is such urgency about passing this resolution that the vote could not be postponed. ...
PSC Chair mails the Board requesting consultation prior to voting on instruction for fall.
While it may be that the PSC would not disagree with many of the provisions of the proposed resolution, submitting the resolution for a vote without any consultation with the PSC is a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, quite possibly a violation of the NYS reopening guidelines, and a profound insult to the faculty and professional staff on whose work the University depends.
Last night the CUNY Board of Trustees approved a resolution that gives us the most flexibility in making decisions and planning what the Fall semester will look like once New York City enters Phase 4, which signals the start of the reopening for CUNY.
We are preparing for a range of scenarios that combine in-person, virtual and hybrid instructional modalities. Thanks to the diligent work of so many in our system, 48 percent of the Fall 2020 courses that are open for student registration are already scheduled for hybrid or online delivery. We hope to increase this percentage in the weeks ahead in preparation for the start of the semester. I want to acknowledge and thank everyone across our university who has committed endless hours to getting the work done during these extraordinary times.
We are also getting ready to deliver a range of in-person courses and services, provided they meet New York State and University guidelines for re-opening and assuming that New York City enters Phase 4 over the next few weeks, as is the plan.
By Deborah Glick a nd Toby Ann Stavisky. Glick represents parts of lower Manhattan in the state Assembly, and Stavisky, who represents parts of Queens in the state Senate, are chairs of the Higher Education Committees in their respective chambers.
In one swift move this month, the City University of New York eliminated health care for hundreds of CUNY adjunct faculty, income for thousands, and reduced the quality of education it provides to its 245,000 undergraduates — all at a moment when residents of New York City are increasingly drawn to attend one of CUNY’s 25 colleges. Summer enrollment at CUNY is up 16%, and first-year enrollments for the fall are up in much of the system as well.
CUNY’s decision to lay off thousands of workers is counterproductive and devastating. It can and must be reversed, first by securing the $136 million in federal money that has been allocated to CUNY and remains untapped, and second by raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy and investing in our public higher education enterprise.
Harvard and MIT argue in their lawsuit that the policy change announced Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement threw virtually all of U.S. higher education “into chaos.” They say the decision, which would make international students enrolled exclusively in online courses subject to deportation, puts colleges in “the untenable situation of either moving forward with their carefully calibrated, thoughtful, and difficult decisions to proceed with their curricula fully or largely online in the fall of 2020 … or to attempt, with just weeks before classes resume, to provide in-person education despite the grave risk to public health and safety that such a change would entail.”