Open Letter to Chancellor Goldstein Regarding the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act - CUNY Graduate Center Advocate Staff

Although it comes as no sur­prise to those of us who are famil­iar with the machi­na­tions of the CUNY hier­ar­chy, your recent and very pub­lic sup­port for Gov­er­nor David Paterson’s pro­posed and cyn­i­cally titled Higher Edu­ca­tion Empow­er­ment and Inno­va­tion Act, does not serve the needs or ease the bur­dens of the stu­dents and fac­ulty who work and teach at the City Uni­ver­sity of New York. On the con­trary, your sup­port for Gov­er­nor Paterson’s bill actively threat­ens the wel­fare of these stake­hold­ers, who, should the bill pass, would be sub­ject to unprece­dented cuts, lay­offs, tuition hikes, and dif­fer­en­tial tuition changes that would effec­tively price out many of the under­priv­i­leged poor and work­ing class stu­dents whom CUNY has his­tor­i­cally sworn to help, while threat­en­ing the job secu­rity of the pro­fes­sors and lec­tur­ers who serve those students.