Even a pandemic like COVID-19 won’t stop the BOT from raising CUNY tuition
After hiking tuition two times, back in July 2019 then again at a contentious and raucous meeting at Baruch College in December of 2019, the Board of Trustees has been mobilized by the much lauded Governor of New York to increase the tuition of students due to New York’s own disinvestment and lack of funding/interest in the future of those who attend the state and city public colleges. During a pandemic.
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC went on the record to say that New York Governor Cuomo has become “America’s Governor” for filling the void in leadership that would’ve seen Trump as the leader in fighting this invisible enemy that is ravaging the world and causing a near shut down of society as we all know it. While it is understandable why people might be looking at Cuomo in a more favorable light, the bar has been set so low in terms of what we have to expect from those who hold positions of immense power. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio of New York City have been working hand in hand over the years to push more of our public infrastructure into further austerity and each year, hospitals, public universities, NYC Department of Education, among many others are continuely disinvested by the state and worse, yet when we have elected an Assembly and Senate majority, we’re seeing an utter lack of conversation about funding our state.
Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have a very contentious relationship. I’ve looped in the Mayor of NYC in addition to Governor Cuomo because these two have done much harm collectively to the future of this state. They both have:
- Closed hospitals. In fact, it is being reported that due to the Governor’’s cuts in public health, we are short on the number of beds we need to look after every patient possible.
- Governor Cuomo has been pushing for individual counties to take over healthcare costs like Medicaid and brought on a team to examine where healthcare cuts need to be made under the name of ‘Medicaid Redesign’
3. Has appointed a Board of Trustees for the City University of New York that is voting more often to put the burden of tuition on the backs of young students what is more outrageous is mobilizing the BOT during the pandemic and get this tuition hike passed while students and professors alike have been struggling to adapt to the online method of classes. In the middle of a pandemic, the state of New York identified student dorms as a place where they would take over and sent young people into the wider NYC boroughs were the rate of COVID-19 is higher and more dangerous and house them at The Summit in Queens College.
4. Has provided more relief to homeowners and not renters who still have to pay for their lodgings come April 1st, 2020.
5. International students are being charged three times as much for both tuition, meal plans and room & board.
6. They were working harder to bring in Amazon to displace New Yorkers and to push off the responsibility of investment in communities from the state to using our taxpayer money to give a gift of corporate welfare to Jeff Bezos. Cuomo’s thinking was that if Amazon did come to Queens, that would mean that CUNY would be a sourcing sector for Amazon and that the University system would benefit from the revenue generated by the economic activity. So even if tuition was raised, the students were employed by Amazon and wouldn’t notice the uptick in their tuition bill.
Selling off our students to the highest bidder instead of investing in them has been the {dis}regard with how Cuomo views the young future of New York. Nowadays Bezos is begging the public to donate to his workforce instead of using the capital of 100 million + to directly protect his staff from the deadly COVID-19 virus. The comment period for students to submit testimony is until March 30, 2020. The Board of Trustees will convene in June to formally vote on tuition which will in all likelihood would increased.
Journalist Andrew Prokop noted that while Governor Andrew Cuomo may have progressive learnings on social policy, when it comes to the economy:
On economic issues, though, Cuomo has blazed a very different trail. Repeatedly, Cuomo has tried to cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy. He’s cut the estate tax, repealed the state’s bank tax, capped local property taxes, and reduced an existing tax on millionaires. He’s stymied de Blasio’s attempts to raise New York City’s taxes on the rich and to increase the city’s minimum wage. And he’s consistently been skeptical about the value of government spending, and proven willing to cut billions from health and education. “He’s adopted the philosophical and political posture that the problem with government is overtaxing and overspending,” former assemblyman Richard Brodsky tells me. “How is that different from a Tea Party conservative?”
Prokop goes on to further note that:
These views helped Cuomo win some valuable allies. New York’s budget process was infamously dysfunctional — the state hadn’t managed to complete a budget on time in five years. Cuomo argued that the state’s unions were at fault. “We’ve seen the same play run for 10 years,” he said. “The governor announces the budget, unions come together, put $10 million in a bank account, run television ads against the governor. The governor’s popularity drops; the governor’s knees weaken, the governor falls to one knee, collapses, makes a deal.” Cuomo had a strategy to prevent this: he’d mobilize the 1 percent. At his urging, a group called the “Committee to Save New York” was formed to pay for ads backing his budget proposal. The committee raised $12 million from just 20 anonymous donors in 2011, and appeared to be heavily funded by real estate interests. It ran ads lavishly praising the governor and his budget.
With his history of appealing to the 1 percent and fundraising off them to prevent the end of his political career, Cuomo is putting the burden on working students and single mothers who need to attend CUNY or SUNY in order to move the state forward and bring prosperity to our state. Every single year I was in CUNY from 2015 to 2019 I found myself heading to Albany to try to convince the legislature to find solutions to pay for CUNY and to make sure that the ceiling wouldn’t be dripping on top of me during my class at Brooklyn College or that when the elevators stopped working at Baruch that there was a way for those repairs that are desperately needed in a public institution that has been long neglected, and to not raise tuition — especially in the middle of a pandemic.
What makes this situation worse is the additional $120 ‘mental health services’ fee, that won’t assure students that they will have access to mental healthcare and not have it rationed out to 10, 15 or if you’re incredibly lucky, 20 sessions at a CUNY Campus.
With all this said and done, I urge the NYS Assembly and Senate -as I have been over the last four years- please do not raise the tuition and tax students out of an education. Please institute a cap and oversight over the Board and Trustees ability to raise tuition on a year round basis. Depression can’t be cured in 10 sessions. We need to see some courage coming out of Albany otherwise having a majority in NYS government will mean nothing for New Yorkers who depend on public institutions to get ahead in this globally competitive economy.
Austerity is not the answer. Taxing the billionaires is. Raising tuition is not the answer.
UPDATE:
According to The Buffalo News, Governor Cuomo in order to address the fall in revenue across New York State:
Cuomo administration is looking to enact a temporary, “initial” budget with spending adjustments made throughout the coming fiscal year depending on the flow of tax revenues to Albany.
The approach, if accepted by the Legislature, could have a dramatic impact on entities that rely on state funding for their operations — including 700 public school districts, local governments, health care providers, nonprofit agencies, as well as state agencies involved in everything from paving roadways to regulating banks, farmers and utility companies.
Tom Precious also notes that due to the Corona virus the legislative session could also take a hit:
Cuomo also floated the notion that the 2020 session — due to go until early June — could end when the budget is adopted in the week ahead. That’s why, he said, he wants to include a host of nonfiscal items in the budget, something that happens every year anyway.
