Queens Free Press (http://www.queensfreepress.com/tag/cuny/)
The testimony of Barbara K. Emanuele, adjunct lecturer in the English Department of Queensborough Community College, on the matter of updating the CUNY policy on class size, was recently presented to the CUNY Board of Trustees.
In a recent vote, 92% of the members of CUNY's Professional Staff Congress (PSC) voted yes on authorizing a strike if their contract demands are not met. Actions have been organized across the CUNY system to keep faculty, staff and students informed; and garner support.
On Wednesday, June 8th, PSC members at LaGuardia Community College (LaGCC) gathered at LaGCC for a picket, speak out, and a brief question and answer period about the potential strike.
CUNY faculty and staff have been without a contract or a raise for several years now. Many are struggling to get by, and all are wondering what the hold up is. "It's going to be almost 7 years now that we haven't had a raise, and we're working in New York City," says Nivedita Majumdar, PSC Secretary and Associate Professor of English at John Jay College, "So the first demand across the bargaining unit is a fair salary that does justice to the work we do...and is adequate for our living expenses, and our families, and the communities we live in. So the first demand is a salary demand."
On February 25, more than 400 students traveled to the New York State Senate in Albany for Higher Education Action Day to call upon state Legislature to fight for increased investment in higher education.
In this autumn 2015 report, Amanda Ocasio takes a look at the fight for a contract by members of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty and staff union at the City University of New York.
This recording captures most of what was said at Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez's Tuesday, January 5, 2016 press conference about the situation of Ron McGuire, a longtime legal advocate for student activists and journalists whose situation was described yesterday in the Queens Free Press.
New York City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez is one of 154 City University of New York alumni, faculty and community members calling on the federal appeals court in New York City to convene a rare special session of all thirteen judges to reverse a court order that devastated an elderly lawyer who represented Rodriguez and hundreds of other CUNY students.
Ron McGuire, Esq. is a 67-year-old attorney who represented Rodriguez decades ago, when the progressive City Council member from upper Manhattan was a City College student and community organizer. McGuire, who says he represented low income students for free "as a matter of principle," now is distraught and penniless, due to the unusual actions of a federal judge that some of McGuire's clients call "vindictive" and "chilling."
Faculty at the City University of New York have been without a contract for six years. On the morning of October 1st, almost 1000 faculty, staff & students gathered outside Chancellor JB Milliken's residence to get him to "wake up" & realize the consequences of his inaction.