Know I think she wanted I think she wanted to get started
Hello everyone I want to note that I'll be doing a brief introduction and Executive Vice Chancellor Chancellor Hansel will give us some thoughts for about 10 minutes and then we'll just open it up to q&a and we have two microphones on either side in the aisle. And if you'd like to ask a question or make a statement, just line up and we'll we'll alternate between the two different sides. Let me begin by saying we were really fortunate to have Wendy Hensel as our new Executive Vice Chancellor. She was professor and dean at Georgia State University Law School where she was a specialist in disability and employment law so she knows a lot about disputes and how to resolve them. She was both she was the Provost and the executive vice chancellor at Georgia State which is a large outstanding urban public university with a strong Urban Studies Institute and the Andrew Young School of Public Policy. So I think she's completely sympathetic with the idea that graduate programs in located in the center of a dynamic complex city should be reviewing the problems exploring the problems trying to solve the problems of setting and now instead of having to deal with a Republican governor and state legislatures, she's hopefully in more friendly territory in a state with a Democratic governor and majority in the legislature, many of whom are CUNY graduates, and hopefully will be supportive of us. But before turning to Executive Vice Chancellor Hensel I'd like to say a few brief words about why you have me as the moderator here and what my take is on the challenges that are facing the Graduate Center. I'm not here in any official cap capacity, I managed to avoid any administrative service after my initial initial years as the Deputy CEO and the political science program and one term on the doctoral faculty policy committee. And before I accepted this well, I asked the event organizers to choose a faculty member with an official position to do so. Somehow that that did not happen your I Am. I accepted the role because I've been at the Graduate Center since September 1981. And may be the longest serving Central line faculty member presently still serving here and as you do I care deeply about our beloved institution and see it as a labor of love as as I know many of you do as well. We've gone through many difficult times in my 42 years here at the Graduate Center, including severe recessions, the budget cuts that come with them the 911 attacks, and now the COVID endemic and the associated wounds over the last three years. And we at the Graduate Center. I personally lost two close friends who are urban studies professors and one of our favorite graduate students early in the pandemic and we really haven't had a chance to mourn the loss is to recognize the losses that we've suffered through and I think we're in a kind of recovery mode where we're trying to pretend it didn't all didn't all happen, but it's going to take us take us time to recover from that. But at the same time over these 42 years, the Graduate Center has evolved and advanced in many positive ways. We renew the high intellectual, scholarly standing of our faculty despite the retirement of the giants of public thought and debate who were part of our founding faculty. People like Irving Hanel, Herbert Guttman, Alfred Kazan, Kurt, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Arthur Schlessinger Jr, Jr. We shifted from being a quasi open admissions for part time student programs to a system of funded fellowships for a smaller number of students without sacrificing our commitment to educate and advanced minority and immigrant and women and gay students, which we feared might happen and moving to the new system. We moved to our new building here. And we have sustained our commitment to lift up people who might not be accepted to peer institutions. Many of us dedicated our work to understanding and overcoming the deep rooted structures of inequality in our city. That makes us very special and very unusual. For doctoral programs anywhere in the country. But let me say I think the Graduate Center today is in the worst position. That is has been at any time and that this four decades that I've been here, our central line faculty has diminished from about 140 people to about 120. The number of students we can admit and support is declined. Our fellowship support is not competitive with peer institutions. So even even people that very much want to come study with us and can't square that when they have word remunerative and supportive offers from other other places. And while many college faculty and administrators understand what that we make important, even crucial contributions to CUNY as a whole, many do not and I think we in this central faculty bear some responsive responsibility for the negative light that that some passed on us. So we're in an existential moment. And in my view, we are critical to CUNY being a cohesive and integrated and intellectual enterprise. And we have a chance today, both to hear from Executive Vice Chancellor handsel and to let her know why CUNY should, could and must provide the conditions for the Graduate Center to flourish and now let me turn it over to the Executive Vice Chancellor.
Thank you, John. So first, let me start by thanking all of you for being here today. It is important that we have conversations. It is especially important in times that are hard that we have open conversations. So thank you for taking the time today to be part of that dialogue. It really is a pleasure to be here and I'm excited for what comes next. You know, the Graduate Center is the center of intellectual excellence at CUNY and it has been fun for me today to speak with your faculty and students about what is truly distinctive about the programs here and also what is challenging, but let's start with what's exciting. I've been really impressed with the breadth of the interdisciplinary public scholarship. Of this faculty across so many different fields, the strong connections to the community, meaningful connections to the community that are committed to advancing equity and justice and the quality of life. And as I told the faculty it is incredibly impressive. To me looking at your background, your commitment and your passion for students. It is one of the first things I looked at when a recruiter reached out to me about coming to CUNY because I believe the institution is defined by its faculty and I was impressed and I continue to grow more impressed the more of you that I meet and the more that I learn about what you're engaged in. And what my visit today has revealed that in many respects is maybe even more important to me than your traditions of excellence is that you really care about CUNY about the Graduate Center and about each other. And even when we are talking about difficult things, and there are very, there are plenty of difficult things to talk about in these times. In the background is the desire and the hope and the expectation that things will get better and that we will work together to make them so and that kind of commitment is incredibly important and speaks volumes about who you are as a community and also the trajectory that we can expect in the future. So leadership in many respects, is about character, and it's about vision. And so let me tell you a little bit about mine, and then talk just about a few initiatives that are going on and how they impact the Graduate Center and then I'll take any questions that you'd like to ask. I began my professional career as an attorney focused on labor and employment and I left that practice for what I thought would be a very short period of time to teach at the College of Law at Georgia State University. And instead of a short term gig, I did what I suspect many people in this room have done as well. I totally fell in love with the students that our students at Georgia State are very similar to the students here overwhelmingly, first generation extraordinarily diverse people who deserve the very best that life can give but often haven't gotten a fair shake and the ability to touch not only the life in front of me to help that person reach their goals, but then to turn around and most likely affect generations of that person's family. For the better was just an incredible privilege and something that I was beyond excited about and got me up every single day and thus the career began. I transferred over to the tenure track sudden became a full professor. And John already told you about some of the positions that I held there. I now am beyond privileged truly to be the chief academic officer of CUNY and I'm always I always start by saying that because people often don't know exactly what the role is that I play. Everything that relates to students to curriculum to student life is within my portfolio. And I take that extraordinarily seriously. It's an incredible responsibility. And in this role, I hope that I act as a strategic innovator, while at the same time respecting your traditions of excellence, and employing sophisticated data to investigate the conventional wisdom to question the status quo, and most importantly, I think in these times, to anticipate change I think John said it correctly. And it's not just for the Graduate Center. I expect that we will see more changes in the next 510 15 years than potentially we've seen in the last 200 and it is absolutely behooves us to pay attention to that. So change especially disruptive change can be daunting. It can be frightening and intimidating, but it also can be incredibly exciting and invigorating. And that is what I see here despite all the challenges on our horizon. So let me just tell you about a few of these as it relates to our graduate students, and then we'll go from there. So I'll start with the students because I think everything that we do, everything is about the students. They're the reason we're here. their well being and success should be at literally the center of every single conversation. That we have. And I believe strongly as I believe you do, based on the conversations that I've heard today, that students success is a moral imperative, not just our job, a moral imperative. It is our job to identify every single barrier that exists between our students and their success and eradicate them in the different institutions that I've been in in the work that we all are engaged in. I've heard so many excuses for why students don't succeed and reach their goals. And overwhelmingly the blame is placed on the student that they come from a poor background, low socio economic background that they had poor K through 12 training, maybe possibly their parents weren't engaged. Take your pick. There are myriad reasons why we blame the students, but the evidence is absolutely overwhelming. At this point. We can eliminate all achievement and entry matriculation gaps if we look at ourselves, and we intentionally remove systemic barriers that the university has unintentionally erected that keep them from succeeding our new strategic plan specifically discusses ways to increase the diversity and equity of our graduate school. Our population of students through mentoring and early research opportunities, and equity and participation will remain elusive. We all know this. If we cannot secure more funding for our graduate students. I said this today in both sessions that I attended, I'll say it again. We know that our stipends and fellowships are not competitive. That has to change if we care about equity, and we are working hard to do that. And I'm hopeful that there may be some change on the horizon. And I'm happy to talk to you about that in the q&a. All universities also have a key challenge on the horizon and that's enrollment. We have been in this for a while. I recognize the graduate schools in a slightly graduate centers in a slightly different position but what affects CUNY affects the Graduate Center, both as a pipeline into your programs but also our overall economic health. And it is critical to the long term health of the university to change the direction of enrollment. We have tremendous excellence across the 25 campuses that benefit from the very distinctive approaches and programs that are unique to different places. Graduate Center obviously is a great example of that. However, there is also the potential to use the resources and scale of the central office to create efficiencies to foster innovation, and remove structural barriers between the campuses that get in our way. Things like barriers to transfer technology that doesn't work collaboratively and outdated policies. Also as it relates to the grant Graduate Center how we allocate funding has huge implications for how we do staffing, and how we foster collaboration rather than competition across our campuses. Graduate Schools experienced surges of enrollments and some declines. And in part as I just said that enrollment depends on the resources that we provide to ensure we are able to attract research active faculty with sufficient startup packages and stipends for our students that are competitive. It's also critical that we advertise CUNY not just as a place where we secure degrees without debt. I'm really proud of that fact. But it is equally important to acknowledge that we host world renowned faculty and programs that could be anywhere nationally or internationally. The List of awards of the folks who are here is stunning. And we are not telling that story loud enough and I hope that we will change that while I'm sitting in this position.
The university also has to anticipate and evolve as students themselves are changing as a result of COVID-19 The days of a student being totally in person or totally online are probably over fact I was just at a conference this last weekend with AC E and they are predicting that 85% of our students will take a mix of modalities in their coursework whether their graduate students were in person students. Importantly, there are also very talented students across New York City and beyond, who simply can't access what we have to offer in the current way that we offer it. Those students have families, they have full time jobs, they have commuting issues, and the only way that they can access our high quality programs is through online modalities. With CUNY online now as part of Academic Affairs, that was one of the first things that I did to be clear, online education is not a side gig. It is what we do. We are partnering faculty with faculty in the driver's seat to identify where there's interest where there is demand from students unmet demand, and where we can move the needle by providing resources to help you identify strategic areas of growth, especially for things that don't even exist yet you know, we are moving into a century where people have a continuum of education. You know, we're really only educating people for the first job because technology is evolving so quickly and the Graduate Center in particular, is well situated to serve as a continuing place of education across the lifetime, especially if we can create online programs of uniquely high quality. Faculty and Staff also have to have an environment that includes equitable workload distribution and salaries, opportunities for advancement and mentorship across the board. That requires ongoing conversations at the highest level and a desire for continual improvement in things like appreciation and service workloads, recognition for teaching and belongingness. You know, these are not incidental aspects of employment and we know this. These are critical and central to our community and they deserve our full attention. I want you to know that they are front and center in the new strategic plan, which I'm happy to talk to you about as we continue to try and create a community that you are proud to be a part of and you're excited to come to work every day. And finally, I'll say that we can do everything right to create a dynamic environment. But if the campus climate is not welcoming of all students, faculty and staff, regardless of background our efforts are just doomed to fail. A foundational component of my leadership has always been building equitable, inclusive environments of genuine belongingness for everyone on campus. And it's no secret that New York City like everywhere else has had its challenges in this space. I have felt very welcomed on my visit today. Thank you so much. But we all know and I see signs in the audience that there are some voices at CUNY, who at times feel unsafe, who at times feel unheard, and feel like something less than a full member of this community. And I'm here to say that we have to change that. And we can change that with intentional dialogue and plans of action. For the last two years, this has been a focus of my leadership, advancing faculty diversity in hiring and retention, the building of intentional community and accountability structures that track our progress. Overwhelmingly, though, it starts with a willingness to have difficult conversations about things that make us uncomfortable. And so I thank you today for coming here because I suspect that we will have some of those conversations shortly. It is much more important that we sit together in the same room and actually listen to each other and try to move toward a collaborative position than it is to stay away in a protest that no one is hearing what you're saying. So thank you so much for being here. We're not always going to get it right we're not always going to understand each other or agree on what we can do. But you deserve a system that works tirelessly for you and with you. To establish a relationship of trust and understanding with you. We have to take meaningful and timely action when harm occurs. And most importantly, to do the work necessary to keep the harm from occurring in the first place. So to conclude, we're facing an incredible moment of change. I appreciate that introduction because it really sets that up. Incredible change for the Graduate Center for CUNY for the entire world of higher education. I am pleased to be here today. I'm excited to work with you toward that change. And I look forward to your questions. Thank you
this is a little bit awkward for everybody. Want to use the microphone as the aisle here, and that way people can also step up and please the metamodel yourself for all of us and ask
the executive vice chancellor has such a full and frank and honest conversation. She's really here to listen and learn. So a big advantage.
Hi, I'm Mark Kagan, I'm just finishing up as a doctoral student in the history department. So let's talk about student funding. Currently. Someone that comes in with a five year package in the humanities comes in at a little more than $27,000. And after an in the last semester of their fifth year, they're still making under $30,000 as science is a little more but not much more Rutgers just signed an agreement with their faculty graduate student union, raising, raising the base rate for graduate student workers to $40,000 in July 2025. And they also guaranteed that every graduate student worker will have full funding. We currently have over 300 graduate students here that want full funding, but do not get it and therefore have to scramble around and work as adjuncts to fill that gap. So, oh, and I should say that, that in the New York Times the a member of the Rutgers bargaining committee was was explained that that $40,000 was necessary because of the cost of living in New Brunswick. So what are you going to do about this disgraceful gap that has that has festered and now grown incredibly and and address these concerns at the Graduate Center?
Yeah, first, thank you for your question. And you know, hold your banner higher, because we all agree with that. There's nothing that you said that isn't true, or doesn't need to be fixed. Right. And the thing is, we are both working for those ends. The chancellor has been working for the last two years and I can tell you that I made it the centerpiece of the Office of Academic Affairs budget requests to the state to increase stipends for graduate students. We are all in alignment they are not sufficient. They wouldn't be sufficient in you know, the middle of nowhere. They're not they're clearly not sufficient in New York City. It's something that we are working on. I'm hearing some good rumblings. And I'm hopeful that there may be some good news coming soon. I can't guarantee that but I'm certainly hopeful. What I can tell you is there has been tremendous advocacy on this, both by me personally in front of the legislature, but also by your faculty who has been engaged with this conversation and ISSG Institute for State and Local Government. We have been pushing this issue really hard as a centerpiece of the budget request. So you know, my hope is that we will both get what we are looking for there. At the same time I want to I'd like to just set the parameters of the conversation, because your questions suggest that there's somebody who doesn't agree with you, in the administration that somehow the administration is standing between this issue and its resolution. The reality is and it is not a pleasant reality, that this system is now facing what, as of yesterday, I saw was $193 million structural deficit before we go into a bargaining session, and before the COVID-19 federal dollars expire. That is a serious state of affairs. We cannot make up overnight what we all think, I think in this room, our years of underfunding for higher education, that's what's gotten us here. We know that we create tremendous value for New York City and for New York. That is not funded at a level can measure it with the return on investment, both for the individuals who go through our system, but also for the state that benefits and we are powerfully making that argument. You know one way that we've tried to make the argument the budget that came out from the state originally had $700 million for Sunni with zero corresponding and strategic dollars for CUNY, typically cuneus funded at 40% of the model of Sunni because we also have city dollars that come into it. In some ways. I was actually happy that it was that stark, because it makes a powerful argument of inequity. And the logic that we were told for the difference is that SUNY has research powerhouses in it's our ones. And so you know what our answer was, You are our powerhouse research entity. That's our one the Graduate Center is the equivalent and should receive the equivalent treatment. So we have been saying this up, down and sideways to anyone that would listen, I know my colleagues in the PSC have been doing that as well. I just I say that only to stress we are all on the same side on this issue and we all have to work together to get to the finish line but I'm hopeful that that advocacy will pay off.
If if I could just add a point here. One reason we have such a large structural deficit is that when the last contract was settled, the governor didn't put money into the uni budget to fund it, but said you've got to fund it. yourself, which which meant, in effect, substantial cuts. And we've had substantial cuts for a number of years under previous previous budgets. So we have to make our case with the governor and the two houses of the state legislature and the Democratic majorities in both of them that they're very good reasons to advance funding for CUNY and for the Graduate Center alongside all of the other major forces driving up the federal the state budget like like Medicaid and Medicare and, and K 12. Education, which is what the biggest part of the state budgets are around. So we've got to get out there there. New York City has a third of the statewide vote in general elections. It has half the vote in Democratic primaries statewide. We have many, many members of the two houses who come from New York City, many of them are CUNY graduates. These are all people who would be very, you know, the governor, in fact needs our votes if if she's going to prevail in reelection and in future years. So we need to go out there and talk to every single one of them and the case needs to be made not not just to the executive vice chancellor in our chancellor, but to people that represent us. Well, legislature
legislators have been very responsive and receptive. Yeah. And their their budget in response to the governor's budget has been very much more favorable to CUNY. So we're waiting for the reconciliation of that, which I'm told should happen shortly.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for that question. I'm, oh,
next next time we'll get to you. I'm sorry. I said we were going to alternate but do you mind if we go with this one?
I was just gonna say respectfully, you shouldn't tell us who to vote for.
I'm not telling you who to vote for. I'm telling you who to make your case to. Okay.
Um, I'm Noelle. I'm a second. Year urban ed student and I was a second and third grade teacher in the DOE for years. And like you were saying, the DOE is also facing huge cuts and I came to CUNY because it's central to public education as a public good and also because it's an institution that says public education is a public good and there were a bunch of early childhood workers who wanted to organize a day of people's early education. And they asked me, okay, no, well, can we use the GC? Because it's central because there's a lot of space. And I was like, of course, this aligns with our values perfectly. And I reached out to so many people who are super helpful, but all of the quotes that I got for using the space for between $800.10 $1,000 which both of those prices are prohibitive. And so my two questions are what are we doing to empower and support students in reserving the physical space, especially in a city where space is such a scarce commodity? And to what is our commitment as an institution to realize the materially that education is a public good, that belongs to the public in the building and out of the building, and not in a way that asks the question like, kind of what you were talking about with the budget like oh, what can be done, but rather, what will we let be done? And how will we leverage our resources to make sure this isn't done? So those are my questions. Thank you.
So to your first question, space is not an issue just to be clear that I have control over and space issues are determined at the campus level. So it's less of a central issue than it is on your campus. But obviously, our space exists to serve the students and so those are issues that can be discussed. If it turns out it's unduly difficult to reserve space and things of that nature. But I can't give you a specific answer because I'm not specifically in that space. You know, there is no institution in the country. And I think I can say that pretty confidently. That is more in meshed in equity for the community and moving the conversation along, not just on behalf of the internal community, but the external community. That's part of the reason that I was attracted to CUNY. It is a public good it is committed to the public good. At the same time, that doesn't mean we're all things to all people, you know it we still have to run efficiently. So in the abstract, I agree with you. There is there should be as much integration within the community as possible. And I think that we do that, especially with our research and our service activities. Specifically. I couldn't respond beyond that if there are instances where we're falling short of that, but I do know that's article
Hi, my name is Kristen Lynn Jude, I'm a first year student and I just first of all would like to say thank you for having this opportunity to speak. As you were saying, this is very important, and I'm very grateful for this opportunity. I just wanted to bring up something relative to the purview of space also. But this is this revolves around housing. I'm currently a resident at the grad Center Student Housing, where rent is going up, despite the fact that our stipend is remaining stagnant as of now I understand that you have those conversations. However, that is not acceptable for many people. More than half our rent I just did the numbers briefly. It's around 63%, at least for me and I live in a three bedroom. There's people who live in a studio who have higher rents to pay are going towards housing. New York City defines housing affordable housing as around 30% of income. And so, by the end, the housing provided is afford is described as affordable. So there is mixed messaging going in, people aren't aware of 100% of what's happening. And as a result, people are suffering. People are skipping meals. It's not affordable for many, many people in many, many ways. And I think it's very important that we recognize students being the full self and that includes having shelter, housing, and then also being able to afford the food and all that requires with it and I just wanted to bring this to your attention and ask, is there any possibility or is there a way that we can freeze the rent in order so that the students aren't having to lift themselves up? out of poverty as a result of this?
Thanks for that question is such an important question. And it's such a hard question. Right? Because we are in a city that is extraordinarily expensive, I think. We just identified as number one in the world, most expensive place to live and so housing becomes an absolute dilemma across the board. I am not in charge of housing and I don't say that to alleviate myself or the blame but because I don't have great specificity for you. In terms of the answer. What I do know is that most of our dorms are operated as private or public private partnerships, where we don't necessarily control the determination of what the expense is. I'm sure your point would be because I feel the same way. Well, then we have to figure out how to provide affordable housing and we are having those conversations, but I'm not sure how to solve those in ways that New York City is not solving. It is another example where we are in a microcosm of an urban environment that brings incredibly challenging things. One thing that we are working on, it's not specific to the Graduate Center, but it's something that I'm really excited about is a pilot in the Bronx called CUNY cares, which recognizes that we cannot expect our students to succeed if their essential needs aren't being met thing you know if they're housing insecure, if their food insecure, and there are state and federal benefits that many of our students if not most qualify for that they're not getting, and because it's complicated, and it's hard, and it requires time to invest, understand and work through all of the red tape, and so what we're doing is facilitating these essentially one stop centers that create that connection between our students and all of the benefits that they're entitled to. It's a pilot right now, but the hope is to scale it across the CUNY campuses, specifically to address things like that. There are also some campuses that have been able to secure private philanthropy for housing insecure students. I'm really excited about that. I think that's an area where people would be very interested in investing with us to try and create opportunities for our most vulnerable students. So your point is extraordinarily well taken. It's totally valid and it's just really hard. And if you have ideas, I'd love to hear them as well from anyone in the audience of how we can continue to do better in this space.
Hello, my name is Connor Tomas Reed. I'm a graduate center staff member and also an alumnus of this institution. I have one comment and two questions. So I want to just take a moment and honor the exceptional accomplishments by people here in this institution, Graduate Center students, faculty staff this semester in this academic year. In ways that drempt Beyond surpassed circumvented and outorganized, President Burrell, Provost Everett and the upper administration. Together we created the Reclaim the commons campaign and the People's Pantry. We successfully pressured GC management to reopen the cafeteria. And establish a permanent Food Pantry by fall 2023. So I invite you to read our continued demands that we passed out upon entering the space to be able to look at how that could be imagined with direct input by people who are students, faculty and staff of this institution. Instead of these decisions being made. Behind closed doors. During this academic year. We also highlighted across the DGSE, the Executive Council, the PSC between colleagues and array of concerns that are still unmet, including over 800 people voting no confidence in the grad center upgrade administration. The need to expand childcare center hours and affordability, the need to fix the budget office to freeze rent and utilities costs as our comrade had said for GCU student and faculty housing for fair and fully funded union contracts for CUNY for abortion rights demands to be met. So I just want to name that we have taken a leap in collective governance by reaching towards each other to focus on how to improve our working learning and living conditions. And to not allow these unelected, unaccountable and grossly over compensated strangers to CUNY dictate the terms of how this building operates. During the summer, they will attempt to constrain the democratic flourishing and reassert their vague visions for the future of the GC, but we must not let that happen. Executive Vice Chancellor Wendy Hensel also represents this strange power dynamic on a larger level, having been hired at CUNY in July of 2022. And as we're seeing already dodging some pretty significant questions about our well being, why does CUNY continue to appoint people at the top who have no longtime immersive connection to our university ecosystem? We have the most diverse chancellery and college presidents in our university's history, but they're provided and they're presiding over continued tuition increases, budget cuts, stalling on negotiating our labor contracts, windowing, ethnic and gender studies of its radical originary intentions and otherwise not meeting our needs. That grad Center is a pivotal place as we know of study and scholarship, but it must be desegregated, so that its demographics match the rest of our university and city. It must be decolonized. So that all of this talk of the life of the mind and the public good, be socialized and rerouted to meet the needs of our university and city and ultimately the Graduate Center must be transformed from roots to branch in this time of incredible austerity, ecological devastation, reckonings with power through popular uprisings. Will we remember this time as when we went along with the status quo? Or will we up end business as usual and create a truly people's University? I welcome us to dream and act together to create the ladder. And I have two questions for executive vice chancellor Hensel. So as you may or may not have been informed by the CUNY administration, many of the Graduate Center staff and CUNY staff have been feeling workload creep for years with hiring freezes. We expect this to get even worse. How will the CUNY administration ensure that current workers won't be taking on the loads of colleagues who have left and who now cannot be replaced? And I had also heard you speak about this question. Where will we get the money we all know that the CUNY administration Chancellor presidents are paid sometimes three quarters of a million sometimes half a million dollars? So my second question is what is your salary?
You know, I was trained in advocacy. My background is advocacy. I have a tremendous respect for advocacy. Advocacy, in order to be effective, has to be informed by the actual facts on the ground by the actual reality of how things operate, and the actual implementation of those things. So well,
I
I'd like to point out that your I'd like to point out that your comments started by saying that I could not possibly be an advocate because I'm outside of q&a. That's that's a fairly condescending statement to start with. Right. So let, I'm simply saying, there are realities in play here. I already told you about $193 million and your point was exactly correct. That's not from fiscal mismanagement, that's from collective bargaining increases and inflation and things that have not been funded by the state. I'm not your enemy. No one on this stage is your enemy. The enemy is a lack of recognition of the public good that we represent in this room. And it behooves me doing anything won't solve the problem. us collectively raising that consciousness will. And you know, as you talk about being an insider or an outsider, the question is, what are we doing? To make a difference and we are doing a lot to make a difference. I am confident I am hopeful. I expect to see a significantly better budget based on the advocacy that this leadership team has engaged in. I am here to talk to you about things that aren't working, and to find solutions and to hear your ideas. Simply saying things like give back your salary, not a very realistic conclusion to a very, very complex situation. Respectfully, it's not I could give it back. It'd be a drop in the bucket. And then you would have no strategic leadership sitting here either. So my only point is, we are colleagues. We are colleagues. We are not enemies. And by working together, we can move the agenda forward. The thing I would want more than anything, for someone who doesn't want to pay people in this room what their deserve is for us to blame each other and go at each other in a competitive way. Because that takes the actual people who can change the situation out of the analysis. And that's the people who you elect, whether they're Republicans or they're Democrats I've worked for both. Both are equally hard to convince of the value of public education. That's what we have to do together. And I appreciate that you're here today to speak truth to power and advocate for your point of view. But that advocacy does require a realistic assessment of the on the ground conditions and then let's figure out how to move the agenda forward.
Are there more? Got everything out on the table that you would like to get out? So let's, let's hear more if there are other things that you want to
Okay, sure. Hi, my name is Zoey who I am the chair of the PSE GC chapter here. Thank you for being here for giving us the opportunity to come ask questions. I am really heartened to hear you say that you don't think the current salary that we make is enough $27,000 which is the average Not, not the salary that all graduate students are given, some are given nothing by the Graduate Center. It is not enough. And I know there are so many people in this room who have been longtime advocates of students who are faculty or staff who have been in the building for decades who really agree with that and want to see that change. They might not agree with me here when I say this, but respectfully. We are not on the same side. I am on the side of labor and you are on the side of management. That's just how it breaks down. definitionally we are not the same. We are not on the same side. I'm a worker. You are on the side of management. And that becomes apparent when we go to bargaining when we bargain for the PSCs new contract with Yuning. And my question, because bargaining is the opportunity and the time for those wages to change is when will CUNY come to the table? Our contract has been expired since the end of February. I know Pam silverblatt has retired. But Kuni management has not yet come to the table. And we need you need to come to the table for our salaries to change and our working conditions to change. So do you have a timeline? Do you know when bargaining can be expected to start? These are important questions and I hope you had some clear answers. Thank you.
Yeah, what I can say is I was in the room with the PSE leadership six folks yesterday. having this conversation. I don't lead the timeline in terms of of having that but literally we were in the same room yesterday, having a conversation about how to move forward, so I expect that it's imminent.
I'm gonna sign Hi, yes, my name is Stacy Hartman. I'm a Heo. And I direct the public's lab here at the Graduate Center. I was really glad to hear you mentioned the extraordinary public scholarship that takes place in this building. It really is an amazing institution. And it's been my my pleasure for the last five years. To support some of that work through the public's Lab, which was funded by the Mellon Foundation in 2018. One of the big challenges to my work has been the extremely dense bureaucracy which has thickened every year that I have been here and it has been incredibly difficult to move resources around in a way that is necessity that is necessitated by public scholarship. If you do scholarship with and for communities. You have to be able to move resources you have to be able to pay people and my ability to pay people has gotten less and less and less and harder and harder and harder with every year that I have been here. And some of that is because of things coming from kidney central that have that has made it that just stick into the bureaucracy at every level. And so I understand that this might not be your purview. As in your particular job. But I would love to know that that one CUNY central understands that this is a problem and that something is being done to address it because it really ties our hands when we go to do the type of public scholarship that so many people in this building want to do.
Just just to understand
to understand you better. Can you give an example of something that is a struggle for you?
I mean, it has it just it has gotten slower when I first got to the main
like the procurement process or whatever
is is the purchasing process is very slow. I mean, I have been trying to use soft funds from Mellon to buy a piano for a music professor for the last seven weeks. And it has moved nowhere. So that is an immediate problem. But it also is you know, I mean, we've we've had people who've come in and they're only getting paid 500 bucks, and they're getting paid, paid on a soft onesie. We're not even tax levy dollars, and they wait two months to get paid. And you know and they get back to me and they say Why hasn't this arrived yet? And I have to say I'm sorry, are we like the wheels turn slowly? And it just like the amount of time that I spend apologizing for CUNY systems. It's really bad for relationships.
So this is an interesting place where someone from outside the system can also see something different and have a different experience. One of the things I've been most frustrated by or concerned I guess is a better way to put it. Our technology is really old. It is not super effective. It doesn't talk to each other. And it ends up with folks like you who should be spending your time doing the research, having to engage in a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of work that's extremely burdensome. One of the things that is front and center in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish, and is actually a centerpiece of the new strategic plan is to modernize the enterprise as it relates to the systems. So specifically the payment. I know there's a new system that's coming for that. I'm working closely on the academic side about being able to track your students and identify and proactively engage and correct mistakes. You know, when they sign not so relevant for graduate students, but sign up for something that turns out it doesn't count toward their major and things like that. So there are tremendous technology projects that are going on right now. More importantly, what I've seen as an outsider is we have not invested in the training that goes with these technology systems. And so even when we acquire really sophisticated stuff, we don't train people in how to use it and so they never actually get the benefit of that additional investment. So what I'm seeing and what I put forward is actually creating, in my space, a new Office of Academic Technology that sits at the intersection of CIS and academic affairs, and that's with operations and all of the pieces that you're talking about, so that we are much more engaged in helping facilitate the stuff that's just way too hard. And frankly, way too basic. You know, when I'm looking at things and writing on paper, and seeing manual entry for some of these things, my first thought is what a waste of resources, you know, we need, that's what I meant by investment strategy. We need to invest in things that get us out of this place so that you can spend your time doing the work that really matters and not apologizing. And for the record, I apologize just like you do because it's this I experienced the same thing. So it is very much on the radar and it very much will see major changes I'm hopeful actually in the next six months to 18 months.
I just one more thing. The GC has not had a functional system for tracking paid time off for staff members in three years. Yeah, so change show how much annual leave I have. I have to write to HR and then someone calculates it by hand which is an enormous waste of resource. It makes
no sense whatsoever. I totally agree with you and that is something we received $40 million this year in one time strategic funds from the state in this last cycle. And I was fortunate enough to be able to prioritize different areas. And I prioritize technology that would route nice things that are taking enormous amounts of time that almost everybody else 10 or 15 years ago got rid of so I really am hopeful that we have some progress in that space for you.
Let's stick with this sign for another one since we've Oh,
I just showed up.
I've been waiting. Yeah. My name is Evan Rothman. I'm a third year in the history PhD program. I'm also one of the grievance of the grievance counselors for the PSC for the grad center. And I want to talk about something that you know, we've been hearing a lot about things that aren't in your wheelhouse, but I want to talk about something that is and that's CUNY online. You know, it's very nice to hear all these beautiful, flowery ideas about what CUNY online is going to mean for the university. I hope they all come true. But I have to say from experience that I'm fairly sceptic skeptical. As a grievance counselor, I don't only represent the grad center but also a number of schools in Midtown, including the School of Professional Studies, School of Public Health, a couple of others. And nowhere no single place has produced more grievances in my time as a grievance counselor within the School of Professional Studies. Now what distinguishes the School of Professional Studies is the fact that they are on the leading edge of online learning in the university. Over 90% of the faculty, there are adjuncts, right, tenured tenure track professors. They've essentially been shunted into the role of managing adjuncts. And so I have to say and this is without even going into all of the ways in which administration SPS have trampled on the collective bargaining agreement acted as if it doesn't exist. So I have a couple of questions for you about CUNY online because if this is the way that it's going to go for the university as a whole, we're going to have a lot of issues. Can you commit to faculty having the final word on any pedagogical changes that come about because of CUNY online? Can you commit to increasing the number of tenure and tenure track faculty? Right because the way that it works right now with this online system is essentially turning classes into piecework right templates. Excuse me, let me finish please. Turning horses into piecework and can you commit to decreasing the number of adjuncts so that right this isn't even a temptation? Thank you.
Look, I think you're confusing correlation with causation. There may be issues with the way SPH runs. It has nothing to do with what SPSS SPSS is running, has nothing to do with CUNY. Online CUNY online is simply a facilitator for campus faculty to make decisions with faculty in the driver's seat about courses. Look, things that happened during the pandemic involve students who didn't want to be there. didn't opt into that format taught by teachers who were not trained to teach in that format. And likewise, didn't want to teach in that format. That is not equivalent to what we are talking about which should be applauded, which is putting significant resources into faculty training to ensure that faculty led courses are high quality and meet the needs of an entire population of people in New York City who cannot access our education. This is Mission centric. It is Aqua driven, and it is faculty driven. We have not told anyone to do anything. We have identified opportunities. What we did was a national marketing study to identify where there were where there was student demand in certain areas. We then did a gap analysis and CUNY to see where students could not access courses where there was demand and then we came to the campuses who had those programs and said, Would you like to produce this in an online format? Some of the faculty said yes, some of them said no, this doesn't change anything about the way campuses operate. We are we are actually paying faculty to develop these courses and faculty have the final say about what goes into these courses. So it is absolutely not what you are describing. And faculty are very much in the driver's seat with us. So, to me, I think we're missing the issue of all of those adult students who can't come down to one of our campuses. And I hear from students every single day. And some of the most powerful stories I've heard including one just last week from a student in a wheelchair at BMCC who said You know, I never thought I could access education again, but because there was an online program, and she comes down to campus, but she can't do it in a way that's regular for a particular time period. And so this flexibility allows people who cannot do traditional things to access and get ahead, so I'm not I don't share your concern. In fact, I'm extraordinarily excited about the equity implore our students, and our faculty get to say yes or no, and many, many, many of them are very excited about this.
So this will be well, I guess, I asked you questions. This gentleman's been waiting patiently. So then we'll turn to you and let's hear what you would like to say.
I am also a resident of GC housing. I wanted to follow up on the previous conversation that happened earlier you said you were unaware of what's the in regards to the GCH wheelhouse that might not be particularly something you know about so I wanted to make sure you know, we've had a rent increase four times over the last six years. So not really paint you in a bad way. But this I've heard this framing as if COVID is the giant issue and all the funding issues kind of sampling this but prior to COVID we were getting our rent increase to the site but of course the state's dive in and that's really the biggest issue that we can't afford the rent increases. But also during recently, when we tried to push back against this rent increase, we were given a slew of dishonest messages. The first was that we legally only had 14 days to consider the new lease agreement and the application from the various reminders we got from the Brodsky management company that CUNY uses was assigned this or you're out and most of the building is international students. So of course this is a very powerful threat. But okay move from the first place ever lived in in the US to some other random part of New York. Also, there's just a giant issue that every year there's again, just to reiterate the point precarity that this 27k stipend which is definitely not for everybody that people aren't even less is so hard to navigate that when I was a first year student, I would pay rent behind. Like I literally ran into the nicest staff in the world who work there, and they allowed me to pay rent behind and that's why I still am here the fifth year I was done with this thing. It wasn't because of administrators finding solutions. It was because the staffers in the building. And there's even just to make this more than just the housing issue or even the stipend issue. This is a skepticism that I want to voice that I think a lot of other students especially in our building are getting around to is that we've heard a lot of we're thinking about it, or thank you for telling us but this kind of idea that and I think earlier we had the point that it seemed as if you're really not on our side because there's so many issues in CUNY that don't become issues until we say they are when McKinsey was offered as a solution to make a COVID reopening plan like a very terrible idea. And that wasn't something that the administrators said oh this is a bad idea. Let's not do it. It was the student body was the faculty saying this is a bad idea. Don't do it. You know actually having ventilation PPE and in classrooms this was again, the Union it was a faculty it was it was students it wasn't from the administrators. Had we said nothing it would have never been there. And so it's hard to really think that you're going to do anything this time. Because again, conversations in life but money is what we need to have their money as well. A lot of administrators that plenty of I guess it really have two questions. One the follow up again, one can you commit not to raise our rent again, and to even outside of these rent increases to consider GC housing and acts as an actual public good to subsidize it because if we live there as GC employees, and we're also paying rent, every rent increase is a wage cut. And that really is I think, just a tiny bit of a frustration that I have and a lot of students have, because it's just been promises that year after year, and really no solutions that help us to actually do anything. I had to get four jobs last winter to make sure I could afford to stay there. And I'm not an international student, so I can do that. But if you have international student restrictions, you can't do nearly as much work and so community gives you almost nothing to work with. And legally you can't work more to actually make up that deficit. So really what are you going to do?
I can only repeat what I said, which is that we are committed to finding solutions to this. If this were easy, there would be no homeless people. And there would be no housing crisis in New York City. We have not raised tuition since 2013. So I heard there was I think one of the comments was you keep raising tuition. We have not raised tuition since 2013. My point being the money has to come from some where it's either tuition or it's the government. The government is what we're lobbying for. We are working for I agree with you. I would love, love love and I think it's critically important because it does affect your you shouldn't have to have four jobs. It's ridiculous, right? We both agree but where is the funding coming from? It has to come from somewhere. And so we have to work together to try and raise that funding. That's my only point not that no one thinks it's important, but that it's extraordinarily expensive in terms of money and money has to come from somewhere. And so we need to keep working to increase our resources in that space. There's no real answer other than that, as we work toward finding solutions that I could I am so sorry. Just follow up on that regarding the money
I just I think
it's important to say this I've been reviewing the accounting documents for the JC housing fairly religiously over the past few days. The rent increases have resulted in that $200,000 towards CUNY well, and then however, the the the expenses give given to it has decreased by 200,000. So $200,000 Less has been spent
we don't get on the door. I know I have a private partnership that we don't control the rent or the profits. This is what I'm saying. I appreciate what you're saying but I have no knowledge and no control. And it's really the Chief Operating Officer. And
I just wanted to say that because this is a dialogue and I think despite the fact that you have no control over this situation and it impacts the people who you do have a lot of control over and it hurts. It really does. And I and I understand that you understand where you're at and what you can control and I don't mean to come at this antagonistically however, the people are really that we came to educate ourselves to further ourselves and we are being pushed further into poverty and pain because of it. And that's not okay. And I just I'm okay to tell you. I'm just saying you need to know now when you go to bed, that there are people like me, who can't do anything about all this who have absolutely no power even though you say you have no power I have less and impacts that and I think it's really important for you to know that and I'm not trying to tell you do this right now because obviously you can't because of contracts and whatever. No, I mean, I never heard you.
It is a terrible situation. I get up every single day working for you and the other students in this room, whether that's a parent or not. And I have been in front of every single funder, making these arguments so I'm, I've I feel your pain. I really do I care deeply about it and I'm doing everything in my power to fix that. But it is not. It would be remiss of me to pretend that this was simple or easily fixable. That's when you start to think people are lying to you. I could tell you that and walk off and this would be over. These are not things that are easily fixed and we all have an obligation to lobby for these funds. That's the only way it's going to change.
Hi, my name is Emily Dubinsky. I work in a library here and I know we're past time, and so I appreciate it. And I appreciate that you're
a problem solver. I
can hear that in your voice. And I'm a problem solver also. But I wanted to ask if you could give some perspective from Central from your role there about what's happening at the Graduate Center like you can feel the tension in this room. Right? And I'd felt it and it's getting in the way of most of us who want to do our academic work. I study the politics of cataloguing and classification and I'm not able to do that because of the mishegoss as my partner would say so the institution is facing this no confidence vote that even though it doesn't comply with the bylaws, etc. You can see that some of our most esteemed faculty have demonstrated that they have no competence in the local leadership here. It's hard for me to imagine how we're going to get past that when you've even got the last Dean of Academic Affairs on the sort of signatory list on that. So how does central think about that sort of local conflict here? And do you have ideas about how we can move past it in a way that's productive? Because what I you know the obfuscating emails about how the bylaws didn't work, haven't instill confidence in us. And it's getting in the way of the mission that all of us have. And I don't I don't mean to like, it's not an attack, but I think like, legitimately, what's the administrative response to the collapse that's happened here.
Thanks for everything you do in the library as well. I was just thanking Emily for everything that she does for the grid.
Yeah. So look, I can't comment on personnel actions, and it would be inappropriate for me to do that in this forum. What I want to say to this community is I'm here today, right? I didn't have to be here today. This is part of my commitment to coming to every single campus and listening to what you have to say, because the only way we move forward that's it is I understanding and identifying and grappling with very, very difficult conditions, both at the graduates but across CUNY and across society, for that matter. It's tough time to be in higher education when it's not recognized as the public good that it is. So what I would say is as we identify issues that we can work on collaboratively, I'm here to be your partner in problem solving. We care I care deeply about the success of the Graduate Center. We are working now, to follow up on the recommendations of the Graduate Education taskforce that completed its work about six months ago or a year ago, I guess, can't be a year. I haven't been here a whole year. Looking at how we can identify new funding models to ensure that the excellence of what you do is allowed to continue and grow and be even better instead of feeling the frustration and the tension that obviously is in this room. So the only way we can do that is being vulnerable, being willing, frankly to be yelled at for things that I can't control but the more effective way is for you to identify with specificity what we can do, actions that we can take to make this better. And this is the first conversation for that end, not the last and I hope you will look at me as a resource as I continue to talk to you about the work that we can do together to really make the promise that this place is and there is tremendous promise here a reality. So thank you for being here with me. today. I appreciate it.