The Struggle at CUNY: Open Admissions and Civil Rights

By Ronald B. McGuire, 1992

The movement of the students of the City University of New York (“CUNY”) and their communities
against the proposed budget cuts which would result in tuition increases, financial aid cuts and
program cutbacks, is a civil rights struggle, not an argument over economics or fiscal policy. CUNY
contains the largest number of Black and Latino scholars ever to attend a single university in the
history of the United States. The importance of CUNY as a source of opportunity for non-white
students and their communities is highlighted by the fact that CUNY traditionally awards the largest
number of Master’s degrees to Black and Latino students of any institution in America. Last year
CUNY conferred 1,011 Master’s degrees to Black and Latino students while the State University of
New York (“SUNY”) awarded only 233. The integration of CUNY has been the most significant civil
rights victory in higher education in the history of the United States.

CUNY’s unique policy of open admissions transformed the university from a virtually all-white
enclave in the mid-1960’s, to an institution with over 200,000 students, the majority of whom are now
Black and Latino. CUNY’s predecessor, the Free Academy, was founded in 1847 for the purpose of
providing opportunity for higher education to the poor and disadvantaged of New York City.
Ironically, despite the fact that successive generations of immigrants had availed themselves of the
opportunity provided by CUNY, it was not until 1969 that the University undertook a commitment to
open its doors to students from the Black and Latino communities who had until then been virtually
excluded from the CUNY schools.1 In Spring 1969 a strike led by Black and Latino students at City
College engendered tremendous community support in favor of the students’ main demand that the
ethnic composition of CCNY reflect the ethnic composition of New York City’s high schools.

As a direct result of the open admissions strike, the Board of Higher Education adopted a plan
providing for the immediate implementation of a policy of open admissions guaranteeing all graduates
of New York City high schools a place in one of the CUNY colleges. Today, Black and Latino
scholars comprise a large majority of CUNY’s student body.

CUNY is the third largest university in the United States. The State University of New York (SUNY)
and the California State University are both larger. Together, SUNY and Cal State have almost four
times as many students as CUNY, yet CUNY has more Black and Latino students than SUNY and Cal
State combined. Overall, 63% of CUNY undergraduates are non-white, while 54% of all CUNY
students are Black or Latino.

Consequently, the future of the CUNY students and their movement is inextricably bound up with the
future of non-white people and their communities. The leadership being forged in the CUNY student
struggle prefigures the shape of movements for social change in the coming decades. This is the legacy
of open admissions and the reason why scholars, labor, community leaders and clergy have come
together in a coalition to save CUNY.

The second salient fact about the demographics of CUNY is that its student body is overwhelmingly
poor. Recent figures indicate that half of CUNY’s students come from families with incomes below
$21,000, with 28% of CUNY students living in households with incomes less than $14,000. These
average income levels are substantially lower when white students and graduate students are abstracted
out. For example, at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx, a 1986 CUNY study showed that
 2

42% of the student body came from households where the family income was less than $4,000 and
75% of the students had family incomes of less than $8,000 2 The same study showed that 96% of the
students at Hostos were non-white. Id. Table III-A at 135. Another study showed that three times as
many CUNY freshmen came from low income households than the national average for students at
public colleges and a majority of CUNY students work during their first year, more than double the
rate for college freshmen nationally.3 56% of CUNY students are self-supporting, 23% are supporting
children and over 60% are women.4 At some CUNY colleges administrators estimate that between
10% and 15% of the students are homeless.

CUNY BUDGET CUTS AND TUITION INCREASES HAVE TARGETED NEW YORK’S NON-
WHITE COMMUNITIES AND THREATEN THE INTEGRATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN
NEW YORK AND IN THE NATION

Public financial support for higher education of the poor has been steadily withdrawn in New York
since open admissions began to transform CUNY into a predominantly Black and Latino institution.
Beginning with the founding of the Free Academy in New York City in 1847, tuition was free at New
York City’s public colleges through world wars and financial crises, including the Great Depression,
until 1976, when tuition was first imposed at CUNY. 1976 happened to be the first year that CUNY’s
freshman class was predominantly non-white. The effect of tuition was catastrophic. Enrollment
dropped from 250,000 to 180,000 in a year and the proportion of non-white students in the incoming
class dropped by four percentage points.

The recent tuition hike was the largest increase since tuition was imposed and threatens the ability of
tens of thousands of nonwhite students to continue their education. Tens of thousands of others will be
forced to defer getting their degrees for years because the additional charges will force them to take
reduced academic loads or to take time off in order to work to raise the money for college. Studies of
student attrition have concluded that, even prior to the current cost increases, the major reason for
student attrition at CUNY is financial hardship, not academic failure.5

One of the myths propagated concerning tuition increases at CUNY has been that the poorest students
are insulated from the effects of drastic increases because of financial aid programs. However, even the
poorest CUNY students are rarely eligible for tuition assistance for their entire college career. The two
major financial aid program for which CUNY students are eligible have term limits which guarantee
that very few CUNY students will qualify for aid during most of their careers. The New York State
Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) limits recipients to four years of eligibility and the federal Pell
Grant Program limits students to five years.6 Only 21% of CUNY baccalaureate students obtain their
degrees within five years and the mean time for obtaining a four year degree at CUNY is
approximately eight years. Most students have to rely on their own resources to pay tuition in the lent
years before they get their degrees.

APARTHEID AT CUNY
CUNY AND SUNY: TWO SYSTEMS; SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

A pattern of racially discriminatory funding to higher education has been established in New York
State and acquiesced to by city officials and CUNY administrators. New York State extracted a high
price in return for providing financial aid to CUNY during the New York City budget crisis of the
1970’s. In 1976 CUNY was forced to charge tuition for the first time since its founding in 1847 as a
condition for qualifying for increased financial support from New York State. Three years later, New
 3

York State assumed financial responsibility for funding programs at CUNY senior colleges and the
governor received authority to appoint a majority of CUNY’s Board of Trustees. The result of the
assumption of state control over the financing of the senior colleges has been an increasing disparity
between the financial support of CUNY schools, which are largely non-white, and equivalent schools
and programs in SUNY, which has a student body which is over 83% white. Since the state assumption
of financial responsibility in 1979, the disparity in funding equivalent schools in CUNY and SUNY
has increased.
The net result of state financing of the CUNY senior colleges has been to produce a two tier system of
higher education which is racially segregated and unequally funded. The SUNY schools are
overwhelmingly white and are funded at consistently higher levels than equivalent CUNY senior
colleges and graduate programs.

The disparity between CUNY and SUNY funding is not confined to four year colleges and graduate
programs. The State Education Law7 provides a separate basis for funding SUNY community
colleges, whose students are 83% white, and equivalent CUNY schools, which are over 70% non-
white. Governmental sponsors of community colleges outside of New York City are required to fund
their community colleges out of revenues which are set aside for the purpose of funding the
community colleges and are not available for any other purpose. New York City Community Colleges,
on the other hand, are funded by the City out of general revenues. In times of fiscal crisis, the
predominantly non-white CUNY Community Colleges are required to compete with other city
agencies for scarce resources while the overwhelmingly white SUNY community colleges have
earmarked funds set aside for their support. Last year this resulted in the city slashing its support per
community college FTE almost 50% while increasing tuition to cover some of the difference.
Currently, tuition at CUNY community colleges is $1,750 per year, among the highest tuition in the
nation for public two year colleges. Although SUNY community colleges charge the same tuition, state
law allows the white community colleges of SUNY the option of establishing a two-tier tuition system
whereby community college students from the sponsor’s home district may be charged a lower tuition
rate and a number of SUNY community colleges charge lower tuition to students who live within the
jurisdiction of the community college sponsor.8

Even within CUNY, budget cutting measures are distributed in a pattern which is racially
discriminatory. When tuition was imposed in 1976 the Board of Higher Education was forced to adopt
a plan to cut the CUNY budget. The Board rejected a proposal to drastically cut administrative
expenses and instead voted to designate Medgar Evers College as a two community college so that it
would qualify for a lower level of funding. Medgar Evers, which has a student body that is 99%
nonwhite, was previously designated and funded as a senior college. The vice-chairman of the Board
resigned in protest, calling the Board’s action a “rape of the Black and Puerto Rican communities”.
New York Times, April 6, 1976, p.1.

For sixteen years the faculty and students at Medgar Evers College have refused to accept the
community college designation and have operated Medgar Evers as a senior college. Today, three
quarters of the degrees conferred on Medgar Evers graduates are baccalaureates despite the fact that
Medgar Evers remains the only one of the eleven public college in New York State which awards
Bachelor’s degrees but which is not designated and funded as a senior college.

Within CUNY there are four colleges which award Bachelor’s and Associate degrees. The state has
enacted special legislation guaranteeing that the state will fully fund all the programs at the College of
Staten Island, whose students are 78.9 percent white, while the state has refused to pay for the
 4

Associate degree programs at New York City Tech or John Jay Colleges. The undergraduate student
body at City Tech is 87% non-white and the 68% of the students at John Jay are non-white.

NEW YORK STATE ATTACkS PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION FOR ALL

The racist policies which threaten to destroy CUNY also threaten public higher education for all in
New York State. The Chronicle of Hiaher Education recently reported that New York State ranked
50th in a measure of “state budget priority” for higher education.9 New York State ranks 47th overall
in the percentage of state and local tax revenues appropriated to public higher education. Id.

Some state political leaders have blamed the economic difficulties of recent years for declining support
for higher education. However, the figures reveal an unmistakable pattern of invidious neglect for
public higher education by New York State throughout the economic boom years of the 1980’s.
Although the national average for appropriations per student attending public colleges dropped by
5.7% since 1977/1978, in New York, the funding per student has dropped 17.1% over the same period.
Id. With 3.8% of state tax revenues appropriated to higher education, New York lags far behind the
national average of 6.9%. Id.

Although New York State’s funding policies amount to a threat of educational genocide for people of
color, the state budget cuts are a disaster for all the people of New York because they continue policies
which will lead inevitably to the abandonment of accessible public education in the state.

EXCELLENCE AT CUNY

Since CUNY became a predominantly non-white institution it has faced years of unremitting attacks
on its budget. Yet, despite the imposition and escalation of tuition charges, the cuts in funding in
programs and financial aid, the students and faculty of CUNY have maintained CUNY’s historic
commitment to excellence. A recent Standard and Poors survey ranked CUNY first in the nation as the
source of high level executives (CUNY 1,288; Yale 1,258: Harvard 1,041). See New York Times, June
25, 1990. Since 1960, City College, which ranks 186th nationally in number of students, has been the
third largest source of Bachelor’s degree recipients who have gone on to earn doctorates. Brooklyn
College ranks 12th and Queens College is 22nd for the same period.10 Hunter College is the third
largest source of women who earn doctorates. Id.

CUNY awards more Master’s degrees to Black and Latino candidates than any other institution in
America. Id. 68 .
City College alone has graduated eight alumni who went on to win Nobel prizes, more than any other
public college in America. Its Engineering school confers more Bachelor’s degrees to Black and
Latino students than any other school in the nation. Id.
Six of CUNY’s 32 Ph.D. programs rank in the top 13 nationally and eleven are in the top 25. Id. 70 at
25. The success of CUNY’s graduate programs is remarkable because of the 33 leading graduate
institutions in the nation, CUNY ranks 32nd in financial assistance per graduate student. Id. 68 at 24.
For example, SUNY provides financial aid to 80% of its Ph.D. students, while CUNY only provides
financial aid to 18. 5% of its Ph.D. candidates, due to insufficient funding. Id. 108 at 43.

Over the past eleven years CUNY’s faculty includes 178 recipients of National Endowment of the
Humanities Fellowships, 51 who have received awards from the American Council of learned
Societies as well as 34 Guggenheim Fellows. Id. 69 at 24-25. Three of the ten scholars holding New
 5

York State Einstein and Schweitzer Chairs are in residence at CUNY institutions and 93 members of
CUNY’s faculty have achieved the rank of Distinguished Professor. Id.

The heroic efforts of the academic community at Medgar Evers College to maintain Medgar Evers as a
four year college despite the 1976 decision by the State and the City to fund it as a two year
community college epitomizes the struggle for academic excellence at CUNY against seemingly
impossible obstacles. Today, three quarters of the degrees conferred by Medgar Evers College
continue to be baccalaureates.

The success of the CUNY academic communities in continuing the university’s commitment to quality
education has been achieved despite over fifteen years of budget cuts and tuition increases which have
made it increasingly difficult for CUNY to maintain its tradition of academic excellence. If CUNY is
to continue its mission of providing open access and first class education, then the State and City must
recommit the resources needed to restore the damage wreaked by fifteen years of underfunding.

THE INTEGRATION OF CUNY

The integration of CUNY ranks as one of the greatest victories of the American civil rights movement.
The integration of CUNY was as significant as the integration of the public schools and universities of
the South and, like the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, or the decision
in Brown v. Board of Education, the winning of open admissions at CUNY was the culmination of
years of struggle. As late as the mid-1960’s CUNY was a virtually allwhite enclave. A study in the
mid-1960’s revealed that City College, in the middle of Harlem, had a matriculated student body
which was 92% white and 2% Black, leading the Amsterdam news to dub City College “the White
Rhodesia in Harlem”. Black students comprised barely 1% of City College graduates from 1960 to
1965.11 The other units of CUNY were even more segregated than City College. Prior to that time,
rigid academic admissions requirements barred most Black and Latino applicants to CUNY, as well as
many other colleges.

It was not until September, 1965 that City College and several other units of CUNY initiated the SEEK
Program (then called the “Pre-Baccalaureate Program”) designed to reach out to economically
disadvantaged students who did not meet the standard CUNY academic criteria.12 The success of the
early SEEK program is measured by the fact that it became the prototype for other affirmative action
programs at public and private colleges throughout the nation. However, the integration of CUNY was
not easy for the first several hundred students admitted to the SEEK program. Their struggle and
commitment to transforming CUNY into an institution which would serve the needs of non-white
students and their communities is one of the most significant stories in the integration in the history of
American education.

The early SEEK students were confronted with a system of educational apartheid at CUNY. Classified
as non-matriculated students, the SEEK students were not entitled to hold student government office or
to participate in extra curricular activities.13 They were not allowed to vote in student government
elections. Id. They did not receive college credit for any of their classes. In fact, a number of white
professors would publicly express their displeasure at having SEEK students in their classes. Id. at 72-
73. Despite the fact that approximately 95% of the SEEK students were non-white, all the counsellors
assigned to the original SEEK program were white psychologists.
 6

Rather than accept the segregated educational system they had been thrust into, the early SEEK
students became a Trojan Horse inside the university as they fought to find a place for themselves and
other non-white students at CUNY. Agitation by students succeeded in getting non-white counsellors
hired for the SEEK program. At City College SEEK students organized a basketball team which
regularly defeated the CCNY varsity, undermining the regulation banning SEEK students from
extracurricular activities. Id. By the Fall of 1968, SEEK students won the right participate in
extracurricular activities, as well as the right to vote and hold office in college student governments. Id.

On April 22, 1969, the SEEK students, along with other Black and Latino students at City College,
commenced the Open Admissions Strike which would achieve the greatest integration of higher
education outside of the South in the history of this country. On that day several hundred Black and
Latino students, with tremendous support from their communities, chained the gates of City College’s
South Campus shut and renamed it the University of Harlem. They presented five demands to the
CUNY administration and the City leadership and their main demand called for admitting non-white
students in the same proportion as non-white graduates from New York City high schools.

As a result of the tremendous support for the City College student strike from New York’s Black and
Latino communities, CUNY agreed to immediately implement the policy of Open Admissions, which
guarantees all graduates of New York City’s high schools an opportunity to attend CUNY. Today,
open admissions has transformed CUNY into the university with the largest Black and Latino
enrollment of any university in the history of America.

Yet open admissions was only part of what the Black and Latino students fought for in 1969.
Ultimately the five demands encompassed three visions of what CUNY had to become to achieve its
historic purpose of providing educational opportunity for all the people of New York.

The first vision was to integrate the university. Although this goal was achieved through open
admissions, the university has suffered from a withdrawal of public funding and support since the
complexion of CUNY students began to darken.
It is no small irony that tuition was first charged in the same year that the majority of the freshman
class was non-white or that the funding disparity between CUNY and SUNY senior colleges and
graduate programs has increased as more Black and Latino students came to CUNY.

The second vision of the Open Admissions Strike was to forge a permanent link between the schools
of CUNY and the communities which their students come from. As the greatest urban university in
America, CUNY has an opportunity and a mission to make its resources available to the urban
community in which it exists.

Today, one of the glories of CUNY has been the extent to which many of its campuses have become
open to non-curricular activities by organizations in the communities as well as the unparalleled
opportunities CUNY offers its students and scholars to engage in work of direct relevance to the urban
communities which CUNY serves. Ironically, CUNY’s openness to the community, which has
historically been the source of CUNY’s commitment to its students and their education, is viewed with
dismay by many state legislators and even some CUNY administrators. The estrangement of
Chancellor Reynolds from the history and mission of CUNY is illustrated by her proposal to erect a
fence to separate City College from the Harlem community. The Chancellor’s security director has
also proposed guidelines which, if enacted, would severely curtail the tradition of many CUNY
institutions which have provided access to CUNY facilities for community organizations.
 7

In recent months, City College has required community groups to obtain million dollar liability
policies as a condition for using college facilities. The result has been to virtually end the ability of
grass roots groups to use City College for community functions.

The third vision of open admissions was to create at CUNY a place where scholars from non-white
communities would have the opportunity to study independently, and to develop a critical scholarship
which would raise questions relating to the history, culture, future, and continuing needs of the non-
white urban communities which still are grossly under-represented in the ranks of American academia.
It was anticipated that such scholars from the African and Latin diasporas would necessarily raise
questions which were provocative and advance theses which would be counter-intuitive to the
academic establishment in which their people were under-represented and their people’s experiences
undervalued. However, the vision of those who fought for open admissions was that, just as the
scholarship of the survivors of the Nazi genocide was indispensable to telling the story of the Nazi
Holocaust, the scholarship arising from the ancestors of the survivors of the genocide resulting from
the African Slave trade and the Columbus Encounter would be indispensable to understanding our
society’s past and present states as well as necessary to planning for our future. The progenitors of
open access recognized that the work of scholars of the African and Latin diasporas would be subject
to political, as well as scholarly attack, and the part of CUNY’s mission as an open access institution
was to support its scholars against such political attacks. In this context, the attacks on Leonard
Jeffreys and the concomitant effort to dismember the City College Black Studies Department are
nothing less than an a threat to the ability of non-white scholars to advocate controversial views in the
examination of the history of their people.

CUNY was founded in 1847 with the mission of providing an opportunity for higher education to the
poor who could not otherwise go to college. In 1969 New York’s Black and Latino communities acted
to remove CUNY’s 123 year-old blind spot regarding its mission by opening CUNY’s doors to all the
people of New York. The transfiguration of CUNY following the City College Open Admissions
Strike has engendered a unique urban institution incorporating the values of democracy and
multiculturalism to a degree unprecedented in American higher education. The legacy of the struggle
for open access has transformed CUNY into the greatest university in America.

Today, that legacy is at risk because CUNY is being ravaged by shortsighted politicians and
administrators who don’t appreciate or respect CUNY’s seminal importance to the future of our
society.

CUNY’s ADMINISTRATION FAILS TO MEET THE CRISIS

The current CUNY administration has failed to provide effective leadership as CUNY faces the
greatest crisis of its history. The racist policies reflected in state law and budget policy have been
exacerbated by policies of the new CUNY central administration under Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds.
The Chancellor’s policy initiatives call for imposing harsh new disciplinary codes, restrictive
admissions standards, curtailing community access to university facilities and removing student control
over student activity fees.

The Chancellor’s so-called College Preparatory Initiative (CPI) proposes increasing the number of
college preparatory credits required by high school graduates for admission to CUNY. While the
professed goal of strengthening high school academic offerings is laudatory, the New York City high
schools have never replaced the thousands of math and science teachers lost since the budget cuts of
 8

the mid-1970’s. There is simply no way that the full range of courses required by the CPI can be made
available to all New York city high school students planning to enroll at CUNY at the present time.
Consequently, rather than improving the caliber of New York City high schools, the CPI will simply
disqualify tens of thousands of mostly Black and Hispanic students from attending CUNY.

The Chancellor’s response to student protests is equally shortsighted. She has aligned herself and her
administration squarely against students and community activists who are fighting to preserve open
access at CUNY. She has repeatedly called for harsh penalties for those students who participated in
non-violent civil disobedience in protest against proposed budget cuts and tuition increases. Student
protests, such as those the Chancellor abhors, have played an integral role in the preservation of CUNY
as an open access university for many decades. In the 1930’s through the 1960’s CUNY students
regularly demonstrated in opposition to attempts to eliminate CUNY’s policy of free tuition. Open
admissions was achieved as a direct result of the strike by the Black and Latino students at City
College in 1969.

Chancellor Reynolds and her administration have aligned themselves squarely against student and
community activists who are fighting to save open access at CUNY. She has repeatedly called for
harsh penalties, including arrests, suspensions and expulsions for students who participated in peaceful
protests aimed at preventing further budget cuts and tuition increases last year. Chancellor Reynolds
has reportedly excoriated college presidents who refused to arrest or suspend student protectors during
the April 1991 protests. In an attempt to insure such Draconian penalties for future student protectors,
the Board of Trustees has enacted stringent new disciplinary procedures designed to forestall the
ability of the students to mount an effective defense at future disciplinary proceedings.

The anti-student backlash by the CUNY trustees goes beyond the enactment of the new disciplinary
code. In the past CUNY student governments have acted to vigorously defend CUNY as an open
access university by supporting lobbying efforts independent of the CUNY administration. At times,
student protests have had the support of elected student leaders. Chagrined by independent political
activity by CUNY students, the trustees amended the by-laws and enacted several resolutions in March
to remove student control over the allocation of student activity fees by requiring administrative
approval of all student expenditures. Ironically, at SUNY, where the students are predominantly white,
the administration exercises no control over the allocation of student fees by elected student
representatives.

The Board has also approved a so-called “security initiative’ proposed by the Chancellor which has
established a CUNY peace officer corps to replace the private security guards who heretofore have
been contracted by the individual CUNY colleges. The “peace-officers”, unlike the private security
guards, will be authorized to make arrests and to carry firearms. In conjunction with the security
initiative, CUNY has created the position of university security director and hired Jose Elique, the
former director of anti-terrorist operations at New York’s airports to fill that position.

Perhaps the most serious of the Chancellor’s recent attacks on the students and their communities is
her attempt to sever the links between the CUNY colleges and the communities from which CUNY’s
students come. Last summer the Chancellor was rebuffed when she proposed erecting a fence around
City College. however, the December 28th tragedy at which nine young people died at a celebrity
basketball game strengthened the Chancellor’s hand in demanding a review of policies relating to
community access to CUNY facilities. The result of the review has been to greatly restrict the access of
community organizations to CUNY facilities, although evidence indicates that the requirement that
 9

outside groups obtain million dollar insurance policies has been selectively enforced against non-white
student and community groups.

For example, administrators of City College ordered a room in the student center padlocked after the
Graduate Student Council reserved it to conduct a meeting regarding the removal of Professor Jeffreys
as chair of the Black Studies Department. At Lehman College, students had to go to court to after
college officials canceled a teach-in the students were planning to conduct on the proposed state
budget cuts. In court, attorneys representing CUNY vainly tried to convince the judge that the
cancellation was justified on security grounds because the students would not promise that they would
not invite Professor Jeffries to participate in the event.

Student protests, such as those the Chancellor abhors, have been an inteigral part of the preservation of
CUNY as an open access university Since the imposition of tuition, CUNY students have militantly
opposed further increases and those demonstrations have ameliorated proposed budget cuts which
would have necessitated even greater tuition increases than those which have occurred.

In fact, even before Open Access was won as a result of the 1969 strike by Black and Latino students
at City College, students at CUNY had a long history of demonstrating to protest against annual
attempts by conservative state legislators to impose tuition at CUNY. After open admissions was won,
CUNY students continued to resort to demonstrations to oppose the imposition of tuition or increases
in tuition after 1976. A proposed $500 tuition increase was averted in 1989 when thousands of CUNY
students took part in civil disobedience by non-violently occupying buildings on their campuses. The
1989 student strikers received amnesty, as had the Black and Puerto Rican students who won open
admissions twenty years earlier. Indeed, there has bee a tradition in CUNY of recognizing the
necessity of students to act in opposition to political forces aligned against the fulfillment of CUNY’s
mission.

Last year when CUNY students again resorted to civil disobedience after their lobbying and letter
writing efforts had been unavailing, the Chancellor publicly called for arrest or suspension of the
students involved. However, notwithstanding the Chancellor’s hard line, the academic communities
throughout CUNY acted to protect the students whose protest was nothing other than a desperate
attempt to saving the university. Faculty and community leaders came forward to demand amnesty for
the student protectors. Ultimately, only one of the nearly 200 students facing disciplinary charges was
suspended as a result of the 1991 protests.

THE FUTURE OF CUNY

The fundamental issue in the struggle to save open access at CUNY is racism, not fiscal policy. CUNY
is a unique institution, which was won as a result of popular struggles in the 1960’s and which
currently educates more Black and Latino students than any other institution in the United States.
Furthermore, the students of CUNY are drawn from poor urban households on a scale which is not
replicated in any other university in America.

The seminal importance of CUNY and its unique policy of open access has not been generally
appreciated in scholarly circles. Ironically, even the CUNY administration seems to have lost sight of
its role of stewarding the most far reaching experiment in democracy ever attempted in the history of
higher education.
 10

The progenitors of open access at CUNY deeply believed in the university as a transformational
institution, capable of imparting skills and resources necessary to the development of third world
communities in New York City. Beyond the obvious benefits of providing educational opportunities
for individual students who could not otherwise afford access to higher education, success of open
admissions will also be measured by the degree to which the skills CUNY imparts to individual
students impact on their communities and the nation. The motivation for open admissions was the
belief that the opening of CUNY to Black and Latino students from the poorest backgrounds would
ultimately empower the communities those students came from by giving people from those
communities access to the skills necessary to effectively participate in the political process, as well as
the professions. In other words, the ultimate dividend of open access to the non-white communities
will be that some of CUNY’s graduates will impart critical skills to the cause of the empowerment of
those communities and bend the university to commit its resources to the communities from which its
students come.

The potential impact of open access on the future of American society, as well as its Black and Latino
communities, can be appreciated in the context of the effect of City College’prior commitment to
providing access for Jewish students in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when American
colleges denied or severely restricted access by Jewish scholars. That commitment literally
transformed the intellectual landscape of twentieth century America by producing graduates of the
caliber of Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter, Jonas Salk and thousands of others who went on to
prominence in their professions and public life.

Open access challenges the notion that only a small elite is capable of benefitting from higher
education. This is more than a democratic ideal. The success of open access at CUNY will determine
the contours of the political economy of twentyfirst century America. The sun is setting on low skilled
manufacturing and construction jobs and it is clear that there will be little productive work in the
emerging American economy for people without significant post-high school skills. In this context, it
is ironic that educational policy makers are questioning the efficacy of providing accessible public
higher education. It seems that educational policy is sandwiched between a Reaganite vision of a large
pool of unskilled labor, who would presumably swell the ranks of the homeless, and a neo-liberal
vision which would provide some form of public welfare, including make-work at low skilled jobs for
such people. What unites the Reaganite and neo-liberal visions of the future is the belief in the
uneducability of the majority of people.

This debate is not new. There was a time when conservatives sincerely held that secondary education
was a waste of time because most people did not need it and were not capable of benefitting from it.
Indeed, the founding of the Free Academy was surrounded by a controversy which persists to this day
about the educability of poor people. Meaningful open access to four year and graduate14 education is
the extension of the debate which has raged about CUNY’s mission since its inception.

In a time when most politicians of all persuasions are afflicted with a pathological aversion to raising
taxes for any social program, advocates of open access have been challenged that funding for public
education should-not be any more sacrosanct than other areas which are being cut, elementary and
secondary education, public health and housing, libraries, etc. First, it is essential to oppose all of these
cuts and to advocate a tax program which will provide for the social services necessary to live in a
civilized society.
 11

However, there is another reason that support for open access a CUNY must be at the core of any long
term national or local strategy for reordering public fiscal priorities. The central fact about CUNY is
that more Black and Latino students attend CUNY than have ever attended any university in the
history of America. Further, these students are largely poor, one quarter support children, many are on
public assistance, many are homeless. In other words, CUNY students have deep roots and are part of
the communities which are feeling the brunt of the budget cuts. The second vision motivating open
access was to forge links between CUNY and the communities from which its students come. CUNY
students and graduates are acquiring the skills and access to resources which will enable them to be
effective advocates for the communities from which they come. Even if only a minority of CUNY
students and graduate recommit themselves to struggling on behalf of the communities they came
from, the skills they will bring back with them will be essential in giving voice to demands which have
largely been unheard.

Clearly, the ruin wrought by a decade of redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich can only be
addressed on a national basis. However, the students who have benefitted from open access at CUNY
collectively are uniquely qualified to provide leadership in the struggles to uplift their communities.

In conclusion, the integration of CUNY was a victory of historic proportions for the national civil
rights movement. The demise of open admissions would be nothing less than a tragedy for non-white
people and their communities, as well as economic democracy.

SOURCES & Endnotes

It is unfortunate that the literature regarding open access at CUNY is so sparse. Most of what has been
produced are in-house CUNY documents. However, there is a book and a dissertation which I have
utilized:

Conrad M. Dyer (Dissertation) The Politics of Open Admissions: The Impact of the Black and Puerto
Rican Students’ Community (Of City College) (1990).

David Lavin, Richard Alba and Richard Silberstein, Right versus Privilege: The Open Admissions
Experiment At The City University of New York (1981).

1. In the mid 1960’s the Amsterdam News dubbed City College “the White Rhodesia in Harlem” when
a study disclosed that its student body was 92% white and less than 2% Black. Other CUNY schools
were even more lily white.

2. The City University of New York Data Book 1986,Table VI-A at 139.

3. James Murtha et al. Update on Student Persistence: A Report on the 1978 and 1980 Cohorts,
(CUNY Office of Instructional Research and Analysis, April 1989) at iv.

4. The 1992-93 Chancellor’s Budget Request (CUNY).

5. James Murtha et al., Report of the University Task Force on Student Retention and Academic
Performance, (CUNY Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, Spring 1984) at 11.
 12

6. SEEK and College Discovery students are eligible for an additional year of TAP assistance.

7. §§6304 and 6310.

8. N.Y. State Education Law §6304 (5)

9. Only Vermont ranked lower than New York in its ratio of state and local tax revenues allocated for
public higher education to public enrollment per capita. Chronicle of Higher Education, November 6,
1991.

10. Based on research by members of CUNY Concerned Faculty and Staff as reported in Verified
Complaint in Weinbaum et al. v. Cuomo, Index No, 5306-92 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty.). 67 at 24.

11. Of 17,613 baccalaureate degrees awarded by City College between 1960 and 1965, only 196 (1.11)
were awarded to Black students. Conrad M. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions: The
Impact of the Black and Puerto Rican Students’ Community (Of City College) [dissertation] 1990 at
64.

12. The impetus for the SEEK program came largely from the great Black political scientist, Allen
Ballard, who was an assistant dean at City College in the early 1960’s. Dyer, Dissertation at 71. One of
Dr. Ballard’s colleagues at City College in the 1960’s was Kenneth Clark, the great Black educational
psychologist whose empirical work proving that racially segregated education was inherently inferior
was the underpinnings of Brown v. Board of Education.

13. Dyer, dissertation at 73.

14. Indeed, open access to graduate and professional education may be the final frontier of educational
democracy. Approximately 70% of the graduate students at CUNY and almost 80% of the students at
the Graduate Center are still white. The advent of a post-industrial economy will eliminate most
opportunities for productive non-creative work. The viability of democracy in such a society ultimately
hinges on the accessibility of training for professional and creative work.

About the author

Ronald McGuire is a former City College student who participated in the open admissions strike in
1969. He was active in radical social movements throughout the 1970s and 80s, and is currently an
activist lawyer who is dedicated to defending CUNY student activists and fighting the CUNY
administration’s attempts to cut programs and dismantle open admissions. He is currently involved in
lawsuits defending York College students who were not allowed to bring controversial speakers to
campus for Black Solidarity Day; defending Hostos College students who’s graduation requirements
were changed 5 days before graduation and were not allowed to graduate if they failed a writing test;
defending the City College Black Studies Department against its slated dismantling; and more.

This article was printed as a mass newspaper by the CUNY Student Liberation Action Movement
(SLAM) in 1997. A copy is available online at http://leftspot.com/blog/?q=cunystruggle.