Student Affairs

By Derek Stadler The Borough of Manhattan Community College’s (BMCC) Urban Male Leadership Academy (UMLA) is a CUNY Black Male Initiative (BMI) Program.  Its goal is to increase the enrollment, retention, and graduation rates of students from groups that are severely underrepresented in higher education, particularly men of color.  However, UMLA is not restrictive, all […]

By Hugo Fernandez I host a weekly show called “It’s On” at WLGR LaGuardia CC Radio.  Last week the show featured a discussion about CUNY student activity fee policies with guests Smitha Varghese and Blair Horner of the New York Public Research Interest Group (NYPIRG).  Ms. Varghese, a student at Queens College, is the Chairperson […]

By Bill Crain Last Monday, April 30, I testified before the CUNY Board of Trustees on two agenda items:  the proposed revisions to the CUNY Bylaws related to Student Activity Fees; and the authorization of Excellence Fees and Differential Tuition for various CUNY Graduate programs.  My testimony on these agenda items is given below: Concern […]

By Emily S. Tai, Hugo Fernandez, and Kimora As many on the CUNY Faculty may be aware, controversy currently swirls around a Board of Trustees resolution, charging the Vice-Chancellor of Legal Affairs to examine current practice with regard to Student Activities Fees across the campuses of City University. Over 200 people have signed up to […]

By Hugo Fernandez and Emily Tai The Office of Interim Vice-Chancellor Student Affairs Christopher Rosa has established an information and Commentary site for the proposed revisions on Student Activity Fees. The website features a wide range of relevant documents, including the legal background for viewpoint neutrality, from the 2000 Supreme Court decision Wisconsin vs. Southworth […]

By Emily S. Tai As CUNY’s Citizenship Now continues to offer information sessions across the City University of New York, the fate of thousands of student dreamers—that is, students brought as minors to the United States by undocumented parents, and therefor eligible for protection under proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM […]

By Philip Pecorino Hate Speech is “speech that is intended to insult, offend, or intimidate a person because of some trait (as race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability)”.    Such speech upsets many but Hate Speech is speech and as such to be accorded all the protections as for any other forms of […]

By Kerin E. Coughlin As Profs. Emily Tai and Hugo Fernandez recently explained in their excellent post, Taking the Measure of Student Fees (Feb. 16, 2018), the CUNY Board of Trustees is considering revising procedures for allocating Student Activity Fees (SAF).  Currently, students at each campus have primary control over SAF through their student government […]

By Emily Tai This Sunday’s New York Times included a piece on “vaping” (electronic cigarettes) in which veteran columnist Gina Bellafonte joked that, “among affluent teenagers in and around Manhattan, particularly those in the private school world…insurrection has largely meant coming home from college night and telling your parents that you are thinking about a […]

By Hugo Fernandez and Emily Tai Last fall, the CUNY Board of Trustees convened a Task Force to examine the structure of Student Activity Fees at the City University of New York.  The rationale for convening this Task Force, which is in the process of reviewing both Article XVI of the CUNY Bylaws (which concern […]