OUR "STOP THE HIKES" CAMPAIGN ON HUNTER COLLEGE CAMPUS

(Originally posted on 5/10/2016)  

 The lack of state funding in the higher public education of New York City  represents a financial threat for students and their or limited financial resources. We carried out a campaign to informed students, professors and staff about the decisions that were taken by the New York Legislators on the proposed funding cuts that the Governor Andrew Cuomo designed in the 2020 State Budget. We informed stakeholders that this issue was not completely resolved since tuition could be increased by the end of the next year. Also, we discussed that professors still need contracts and salary increments and the financial support that CUNY needs for maintenance and the expansion of academic programs was not fully granted.  

However, our campaign’s initial task was based on taking action to stop the tuition hikes that have been affecting students and their families for five consecutive years. The CUNY institution used to be free and its mission statement declares that “CUNY has a legislatively mandated mission to be of vital importance as a vehicle for the upward mobility of the disadvantaged in the City of New York... ensuring equal access and opportunity to students, faculty and staff from all ethnic and racial groups” (http://www.cuny.edu/about.html). With our campaign, we reminded students and professors about these facts and we also discussed that since the year 2000, the tuition cost of higher public education in New York increased $300 each year. Similarly, after the organized campaigns, rallies, marches and the public demonstration that students, professors and professional staff carried in New York and Albany during the first semester of the year 2016, the New York Assembly negotiated a tuition freeze for CUNY students on April 1st, 2016. But this break in the cycle of tuition hikes does not represent a permanent solution to the financial burden that have been affecting New Yorkers of the working class strata, immigrants and minority groups. Therefore, our CUNY funding group started a petition in which Hunter College students, professors and staff ask Governor Cuomo, the New York State Legislature and the Board of Trustees to "commit to a tuition freeze that would allow underprivileged students to access higher education in the years to come and to discuss how the city and the state will work together to make CUNY colleges continue to provide quality education while being cost efficient." This petition was a small contribution in comparison with other collective actions and events that we attended and that were organized by professional staff groups and unions. But we wanted to discuss this issue on campus, and complain about the state policies and speak about the backlash in the financial support of CUNY in the middle of the context of a daily routine of classes.

Therefore, our CUNY Funding campaign was carried out in the Hunter College campus on April 21st, 2016 from 3:00pm to 6:00pm on the third floor of Thomas Hunter and the North buildings. By carrying out our campaign out on the Hunter College campus, our message could reach people with shared values and similar grievances. Our campaign and the framing of our petition could be persuasive enough to encourage ‘free riders’ on campus into action.