SUNY Purchase Students Play Chess With The Governor

CUNY and SUNY students (as well as faculty) are sick and tired of being used as pawns in the Governor's serious game of budget cuts. While David Paterson waits for a bailout from the future Obama Administration, he is laying a large cut on the students of CUNY and SUNY by way of a large tuition hike. Leaders in Albany expect the young to be politically ignorant, but across the system people are organizing. At SUNY Purchase, students are getting creative to draw attention to their protestation of the tuition increases.

From The Journal News:

Purchase College students embodied the message that they are tired of being treated like pawns in the governor's budget by dressing up and acting out a human game of chess in the center of campus yesterday.

"We wanted to do something representative of how we feel," said Anna Helhoski, 20, a junior who helped to organize the event. "We are people, we're not pawns, and we shouldn't be treated as such."

About two dozen students rallied in hopes that Gov. David Paterson and the state Legislature would rethink a proposed tuition hike for the State University of New York system.

Similar events were staged throughout the SUNY and CUNY system, with more than 12,000 postcards being signed and sent to the governor with the message: "We're tired of being pawns!"

Students have been punished by budget cuts and tuition increases before, but now it is just too much. This is exactly the time to not touch education, as many of the recently unemployed look to more education to secure a job in these tough times. An immediate hike will not allow the limited amount of financial aid to adjust and many students will not be able to stay in class. Six hundred dollars may not sound like a lot to a Governor that is looking to cut $2 billion, but to the individual struggling to pay bills, work and attend class, it could make or break the path to a college degree.

Paterson Offers Higher Ed A Bone While Swiping A Leg

City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein praised the Governor for a "paradigm shift" by offering a small portion (10% in the first year) of his proposed tuition hikes for CUNY and SUNY back to the schools. Chancellor Goldstein of course is probably just happy from his recent $55,000 dollar raise, bringing his salary and benefits to over half a million a year. That he gets to swim in his money when students have to pay for a substitute for budget cuts is obscene. Perhaps it is his job as an Administrator to keep money flowing in and not out, but he must have forgot that the ones kicking in the extra dough are the students who can least afford it in these troubled times.

From The NY Times:

“The way it is now certainly is not the best way to do things,” said H. Carl McCall, a member of the SUNY board. “Any tuition program we put forward would be some program that would look at predictable, regular increases rather than these spikes during a crisis.”

In the past, he said, such a change has met resistance among lawmakers. “They feel their constituents are hard-pressed and don’t want to pay additional fees every year,” he explained.

Well yeah, no one wants to pay extra fees, but legislators looking at such a drastic budget cut called for by Paterson might not hear the students as well when faced with the alternative of pissing off their wealthy contributors. The millionaire's tax is getting some discussion but Paterson is adamantly against any kind of tax increase. What really needs to happen is for Paterson to be pushed to change his mind and pinch the pockets of the 26,000 Millionaires in this state and not the millions who are going to shoulder the burden of hard times if he gets to keep things his way.

As for tuition increases, Pat Callan of the National Center for Public and Higher Education has the right idea:

The concern is that if the colleges and universities are allowed to increase tuition annually, they will still turn to even-bigger increases during tough economic times because that is easier than the alternative of cutting spending.

“It is a whacko system that no one defends,” said Mr. Callan. “But it works well enough for the colleges and legislators, so no one is willing to risk changing it.”

He said the current crisis presented a brief window of opportunity by focusing attention on the problem.

“As soon as this moment passes, then there is no real incentive to fix it,” he said.

Now is the time to make things right and not spike the cost for those that are trying to go back to college in tough times. Ideally we shouldn't be paying for tuition to our state schools as it was decades ago, but we can at least start turning the trend around so that the system puts students closer to the front of the line when the budget battles heat up. We as the public can stand up and join CUNY faculty and groups like NYPIRG to fight back. Politicians do hear us when we organize, but we must be loud when Wall Street comes into the room with a multi-million dollar sound system when we have a bullhorn at best.

CUNY Gives Top Boss $55K Raise With Budget Cuts Looming

It must be nice to be Matthew Goldstein. In case you don't know, he is the Chancellor of the City University of New York, that includes dozens of schools across the city such as Baruch, Hunter, John Jay and City College among others. The budget crunch in our state is looking horrific and cuts have been promised across the board and CUNY has no special protection from the axe Paterson and the Legislature wield. So how does the board over there respond?

From The NY Post:

Chancellor Mathew Goldstein's raise puts his annual base salary at $450,000 - plus more than $100,000 for a housing allowance and other perks.

At 7 percent over each of the last two years, Goldstein's boost was just slightly above the 5 to 6 percent raises for vice chancellors, whose salaries were all pushed above $200,000.

"It's twice as high as the raise for the faculty," Barbara Bowen, president of the teachers union at CUNY, said of the chancellor's raise. "The faculty and staff at CUNY . . . are shocked by a salary of $450,000 when the university is facing the prospect of further budget cuts."

CUNY claims they are just doing what they are doing is perfectly fine and within the norms, but this is no normal time. If anyone gets a hefty raise, it should be the teachers, not someone that already got close to half a million a year in cash and prizes. With daunting cuts coming down the pike, this should be a time of frugality and wise spending choices by the educational megalith. Goldstein is aware that CUNY must make cuts of nearly $6 million this year and $9.5 million in the next. So while he is "closely monitoring its financial situation" at the helm, he'll be doing it with a nice cushion on top of his already well-funded salary.

City Universities Plan To One-Up The Mayor

Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC will be quite an undertaking, reducing carbon output by 30 percent by 2030. However the Universities of New York are planning to reach the Mayor's goals in only ten years. They are confident that institutions like CUNY, Columbia and NYU can work to reduce their carbon footprints on the city by 2017.

From WNYC:

NEW YORK, NY June 06, 2007 —Nine universities around the city, including NYU, Columbia and CUNY, have accepted the city's challenge of reducing carbon emissions by 30 percent in ten years, instead of the 23 years outlined in the Mayor's 2030 sustainability plans.

REPORTER: The mayor has already committed the city to meeting the accelerated timeline, and has urged other institutions to join in. Fordham University president, Reverend Joseph McShane, says schools can become more energy efficient even as they educate their students about climate change.

MCSHANE: In philosophy classes, in policy classes, in political science classes, we can engage them in conversations about the responsibility that we have as citizens and as sharers of the Earth, to make sure that the Earth is cherished and nurtured and passed on.

The centers of higher learning get that the problem of climate change is not only important, but needs to be dealt with urgently. There is no time like the present, so we need to get going and help do whatever we can to save the planet. One person cannot solve the problem alone, but if we all make a difference where we live, there might just be some hope.