- Reed is making connections between the 1978-1992 “retrenchment period” at CUNY and the Covid-19 pandemic by showing the cutting of budgets and termination of workers in both situations. In 1976, CUNY decided to charge tuitions after the desegregation of the university admission and laid off about 5000 faculties. The excuses they used to justify these actions were the“1973 international oil crisis and 1975 U.S. military defeat in Vietnam”. In 2020, we saw another budget cut that resulted in the laid-off of faculties, and students suffered “increased unemployment and danger of eviction.” The city claimed that they don’t have enough funds to support every service when in reality they hoarded the federal CARES Act money and “New York City historically has one of the wealthiest tax bases”.
- Reed uses the term “death cult” to show the negative effects of the privatization of CUNY as it resulted in multiple injustices. The implementation of tuition costs in 1976 right after the degradation of university admission infringed the opportunities of minorities who were supposed to attend CUNY for free. The city also cut budgets that led to the laid-off the thousands of faculties in 2020 resulting in increased unemployment. Students were also facing financial struggles as a result of the pandemic of food and housing insecurities. Instead of helping the people, the city claimed they don’t have enough funds when they were totally capable of helping these individuals.
- After reading the campaign to decolonize the Lehman College English Curriculum, I realized that the students in this organization want to diversify the materials that are taught in the English courses. The students want fewer materials that are focused on British literature and more courses on Latinx and African American literature. The Lehman College is made up of mostly 53% Latinx and 30.3% African Americans students and they want to see “a reflection” of themselves in their education. Another goal they want to achieve through this campaign is also diversifying the faculty in the college as there is only one Latino tenure track faculty and no African American tenure track faculty in the department.
3 thoughts on “Blog 8”
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It’s so unfortunate that the city could’ve helped so many people who were struggling but decided not to..
I definitely think Lehman college should diversify its literature programs because much of the school population includes minorities, teaching British literature makes no sense.
I think you bring up an interesting point where Lehman college students want more courses on Latinx and African American literature and I think they should diversify that became many of their students are minorities