Following the enactment of CUNY’s open admissions policy, Hostos Community College first opened in the fall of 1970 in the South Bronx to meet the demands of increased enrollment. Located in the middle of a primarily Spanish-speaking community, Hostos sought to better serve these students by becoming the first and only bilingual college in New York City. This hopeful beginning, however, was cut short by the approaching financial crisis. To cut CUNY’s budget, the city proposed Hostos merge with Bronx Community College, and what followed was one of the most successful mass movements in New York City’s history.¹

Hostos students, staff, faculty, as well as residents of the South Bronx joined together to mobilize against this proposed merger. Two main protest groups emerged: the Save Hostos Committee (SHC) and the Community Coalition to Save Hostos (CCSH). The SHC focused on working with the administration to protect Hostos and emphasized letter-writing, petitions, voting, and community outreach. The CCSH, on the other hand, led by Ramón Jiménez, stressed the importance of direct action and demonstrations to affect change. Though, protests broke out across CUNY at the announcement of the city’s plans, “nowhere was the protest more intense than at Hostos, where the organizing efforts engaged many students and professors.”² Despite community opposition, the Board of Higher Education finalized the merger in April 1976.³ In response, the CCSCH created and distributed the flier below to protesters marching from Spanish Harlem to the EFCB offices on May 10, 1976.

With three-thousand people in attendance, “No other event had ever so visibly demonstrated the breadth of concern for Hostos in the Latino and other communities. The takeover, despite all of its negative consequences, had forced the story of Hostos into the press, thereby creating enough publicity to bring about this unprecedented turnout for the May 10th march.”⁴

Following the tireless work of the Hostos Administration and the student activists, on June 18, 1976, the New York State legislature passed the Landes Higher Education Act, which granted CUNY an addition $3 million to the 1976-77 budget -the exact amount of money Chancellor Kibbee expected CUNY to save by eliminating Hostos Community College. In response, the Board of Higher Education rescinded its decision to merge Hostos with Bronx Community College.⁵

For more information and resources concerning the Save Hostos Movement, visit CUNY Digital History Archive.

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1. “Save Hostos!,” CUNY Digital History Archive. ↩︎
2. Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2017: 248.  ↩︎
3. William Casari, “La Lucha: The Struggle to Save Hostos in the South Bronx, 1975-76,” Metropolitan Archivist, October 29, 2020. ↩︎
4. Gerald Meyer, “Save Hostos: Politics and Community Mobilization to Save a College in the Bronx, 1973-1978,” Centro Journal 15, no. 1, 2003: 87. ↩︎
5. Meyer, “Save Hostos: Politics and Community Mobilization to Save a College in the Bronx, 1973-1978,” 87. ↩︎