Press Area

""

As you make your way down Convent Avenue, you overhear a few reporters who are there covering the protest. They are chatting with one another about the recent events at CUNY. You listen in as they talk.

“Did you hear about the protests at Queens College, and the sit-in at the president’s office there?” One of the reporters asks the others. “I heard that ended in a big arrest.” Indeed, 42 students at Queens College had been arrested while they were peacefully occupying a campus building:

typewriter-written page reading "42 Q.C. Students Arrested on Campus"
Ad Hoc Committee to End Political Suppression, “42 QC Students Arrested on Campus,” CUNY Digital History Archive,  cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/5792.
View a statement about the arrests

“There was also a protest at another CUNY College about what’s going on in Vietnam,” another remarks, referencing The United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. The draft and the perils of war were heavy on the minds of young college students at the time:

Photo of students marching. In foreground one student is holding a poster that reads "End the Draft: Support Draft Resisters"
Photo of Queensborough Community College students marching to protest the Vietnam War. “Stop The War Now,” CUNY Digital History Archive, cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/4.

It was then that one of the reporters mentioned the cost of attending CUNY, an issue endemic to all CUNY students: “Or how about that CUNY may no longer be free anymore?” the reporter asked the others. He went on to describe an article recently published in the Bronx Community College student newspaper, The Communicator:

excerpt of original Communicator newspaper page, March 27 1969
Bronx Community College, “The Communicator, March 27, 1969” (1969). CUNY Academic Works.
academicworks.cuny.edu/bx_arch_communicator/79.
Read The Communicator issue describing CUNY’s challenges
❮ Return to Convent Avenue