Blog 8

1. 1. During the “retrenchment period” at CUNY, there were almost 5000 layoffs of faculty and staff causing newly won ethic study classes to close and threats to close CUNY’s like Hostos and Medgar because of the Fall 1976 Tuition policy. Tuition increased and there were budget cuts to the state. These cuts and tuition increases resulted in an increase in neoliberalism and supports the idea that CUNY’s need to have tuition and by doing so creates many borders for people who can not afford to pay these amounts to a college. The massive budget cuts also resulted in staff being laid off, so not only were students not able to continue their education but people lost their jobs. With Covid-19 the economic downfall caused 3000 adjuncts to lose their jobs and hundreds lost their healthcare coverage. Also terminating other campus workers for Fall 2020. These two situations both impacted CUNY in a negative direction but in both cases, students and faculty suffered the most. They lost their jobs, their availability to go to school and their assurance to be healthy. 
   2. Reed uses the term “death cult” in the context that taking away CUNY from students who come from minority communities is beneficial to the people at the top, people with money. Students go to CUNY because it is affordable and it is an opportunity for someone to continue going to school. By making Cuny expensive, the cuny system is killing the hopes of many people and converting it to a system that cares more about the money than people. While this is happening, it was undoing the work of protestors in wanting to keep CUNY free and available for the most part. Death Cult is referring to neoliberalism taking away once again. 
   3. The Fall 2019 Latinx Student Alliance 

   Students wrote “to see themselves in their classes, to see themselves as possible authors of their own texts” 

    In summation, the letter stated that the students want more Latinx and African American literature added to the core requirements. Lehman is 50% made up of Hispanic or Latino students and they want more diversity in their literature. Lehman only had British-focussed Literature and the students didn’t resonate  and connect with that type of literature. Because Lehman was the first institution to form cultural studies in CUNY, it is only fair to diversify these studies for everyone. All in all, students want to increase different cultural studies in Lehman because history can not only be seen in a specific way and they want their education to be broad and diverse from history that erased people from its texts.

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1AQLnQRAGEEKkq6w3vholPPFTBsviRoGKvb5YD01x684/edit?usp=sharing