M BUILDING CRUMBLES

Monday, December 10: Boiler broken,
no heat in M Building all day.
Evening classes cancelled.

Thursday, December 13: Fire alarm
system being installed, to be
operational "within 4 weeks."
When asked what we would do if
there was a fire before that,
installer said, "What have you
done for the last 3 years?"

Monday, December 17: Boiler broken

manhattan community college

vol. 3 no. 3

ADJUNCTS LOSE JOBS-

again, no heat in the M Building.
Afternoon and evening classes
cancelled,

Thursday, December 20: At approxi-
mately 2pm, all lights in the en-
tire M Building began to flicker
like strobe lighting, causing imme-
diate eyestrain, headache, and
general pandemonium. Some classes
dismissed before the problem was
corrected, Cont'd p. 3

jan. 1974

STUDENTS LOSE OUT

EVEN THOUGH 1700 students and facul-
ty signed a petition in protest, the
administration is dead set on firing
many of MCC"s part-time teachers (ad=
juncts). Such a move spells disaster
for Open Admissions--packed classes,
cancelled courses, and long lines of
angry students closed out of required
subjects at registration.

The Speech Department, for example,
has fourteen adjuncts this semester
teaching 25 classes; next semester
there are positions for only four,
teaching five classes. Fewer adjun-
cts means seventeen fewer sections
of Fundamentals of Speech, a sub-
ject necessary for graduation. Once
again, students come out the losers.

English, another department hard-
hit by the firings, is cutting its
part-time staff from 39 teachers to
19. With fewer adjuncts to teach
courses in basic skills, the depart-
ment plans to drop the number of 091
sections from 45 to 35 while project-
ing a still heavier cutback in Comp
I classes.

Classes are already much too large
this semester. English 091 sections
currently average 20 students per
class, five more than the maximum a-
greed on by the faculty union (Pro-
fessional Staff Congress) and the
Board of Higher Education. To sat~
isfy the 15-student limit, the col-
lege should have added fifteen 091
sections. Instead, it is dropping
ten sections next semester.

When part-time teachers organ-
ized to win back their jobs, the ad-
ministration responded with a month
of evasions, delaying tactics, phony
promises, and outright lies.

First, in an unsuccessful attempt
to stop a union picket line in front
of the M and B buildings on December
6, President Draper promised more
mgney to hire adjuncts. The talk of
more dollars was just that--talk.

On December 18, a union committee
of adjuncts met with George Fowler,
Draper's man in charge of labor rela-

tions. He offered to arrange a con-
ference with President Draper on Wed-

nesday, January 2. When the adjuncts
went as scheduled to Draper's office,
his secretary told them that there

was no such meeting. Then,after set-
ting them up for a phony.appointment,

THE FACUL

Fowler had the gall to send the ad-
juncts a memo telling that they had
not arranged the meeting through
channels!

Adjuncts are angry and are meet-
ing this week to plan the next step
in the fight to save their jobs. The
rest of us, students and faculty,
have an important stake in support-
ing them.

TY UNION organized an informational picket line in front of the

"B" building on Thursday, December 6, to protest the firing of adjuncts.



. but not to a specific advisor.

PAGE TWO

U.S. THE

THE U.S. ROLE IN PUERTO RICO has
been exposed in the United Nations.
An overwhelming majority of the Gen-
eral Assembly has declared that the
U.S. operates as a colonial power

on the island.

The 104-5 vote came on a resolu-
tion of the U.N. Decolonization Com-
mittee reaffirming the "inalienable
right of the people of Puerto Rico
to self-determination and independ-
ence."" The resolution called for
the U.S. government to cease any ac-
tivity that interferes with the pol-
itical, social and economic rights
of the Puerto Rican people.

For years the U.S. and its puppets
in Puerto Rico have been claiming the
island is a "free associated state"
living under U.S. rule voluntarily.
But the evidence gathered by the De-
colonization Committee uncovered the
role of the U.S. in assuring the el-
ection of governments friendly to
its interests, repressing pro-indep-
endence activities, exploiting the
island's wealth for the benefit of
U.S. investors, squashing workers'
struggles, and taking over land for
U.S. military bases.

The Decolonization Committee's
report showed that the role of the
U.S. in Puerto Rico is no different
from Portugal's colonial oppression
in Angola and Mozambique.

But news of the important vote
and its meaning hasn't reached peo-
ple in the U.S. Newspapers and TV
maintained a near-total blackout on
the question, and on recent pro-in-
dependence actions in Puerto Rico.

Why the blackout? If scandals
like Watergate, Nixon's tax dodges,
and the dairy industry's bribe to
get White House approval of a hike
in milk prices make the front pages,
why is there a conspiracy of silence
about the U.N. vote on U.S. imper-
ialism in Puerto Rico?

Could it be that the unmasking of
U.S. control of Puerto Rico is a big-

Ea

ger threat to ruling-class power than
all the dirt rolling out of the White

House?
Watergate court actions and even

impeachment moves remain inside the
structure of things-as-they-are; a
Gerald Ford administration would be
as useful a tool for the big corpor-
ations as the Nixon crew--perhaps
even more useful, since it would
start out "cleaner." And the expos-
ure of Nixon is itself turned around
and offered as proof of the "health
of the system."

The question of Puerto Rican in-
dependence is a different matter.
It can't be whitewashed. The UN
vote in effect said, "U.S. out of
Puerto Rico, now!" But the giant

“TIGER PAPER

PRO-INDEPENDENCE DEMONSTRATION, WASHINGTON, OCT. 30, 1973

corporations, which determine U.S.
government policy, and also control
the media, do not want to give up
their fifth largest market, and a
key source of cheap labor. And they
don't want to strengthen pro-indep-
endence forces in both Puerto Rico
and this country by publicizing the
fact that 104 nations in the world
have branded the U.S. government as
the enemy of the Puerto Rican people.

That's why the U.N. vote was more
"sensitive" news than the Nixon
scandals. The ruling-class media
can fearlessly call for a govern-
ment clean-up after Watergate, but
they are not about to promote the
break-up of the U.S. imperialist
system.

REGISTRATION’S HERE AGAIN

ONCE AGAIN, it looks like registra-
tion is going to be a mess.

At the very last minute, just a
few days before Christmas recess, the
administration set up a system of
pre-registration advisement that was
guaranteed to produce total chaos.
And it did.

Students were informed by mail
that they could not register unless
they had a special form signed by a
faculty advisor before January 11.
They were referred to a department,
Fa-
culty, in turn, had not been briefed
about advisement. Many did not know
which students they had been assign-
€a to counsel, or lacked addresses,
which meant that they could not no-
tify students about appointments.

An even more disastrous aspect of
this plan to "help" students was that
the administration took no steps to
prepare faculty to do proper advise-
meat. Most faculty don't know the

details of curriculum and graduation
requirements in fieldsoutside of
their own. And no wonder. School
catalogues are published infrequent-
ly, are always in short supply, and
are quickly outdated anyway. And no
one knows where to get current in-
formation.

Faced with this incredible foul-
up, the faculty union called a meet-
ing of department chairmen on Jan-
uary 2, and their united opposition
forced the administration to scrap
its unworkable advisement plan.

And now there is more confusion
than ever. Many students still think
that to register, they need the spe-
cial forms signed by a faculty advi-
sor. They don't. Those students,
however, who already have an appoint-
ment with an advisor, can get coun-
seling and should.

But what about the rest of the
students - the majority? They can
now only get advisement at registra-

tion. Does this mean more endless
lines, or will the administration

see to it that the academic advise-
ment department provides for speedy
and competent counseling, as it shou-
1d have in the first place?

As. always, it is the students who
suffer the most from the unbelievable
incompetence of many of MCC's admin-
istrators.

One night student, who took time
off from work to keep an afternoon
appointment with a faculty advisor,
exploded when he was told that he no
longer needed a special form to reg-
ister. His comment summed it all up:
"They treat the animals in the zoo
better than they treat students in
this damn place."

Registration doesn't have to be a
horror - even this one. There is
still time for the administration to
forsee and prevent some of the worst
problems that students will face,

They can do it. Will they?


TIGER PAPER

PAGE 3

M CONDITIONS WORSEN

cont'd. from p.1

Friday, December 21st: Heavy rain
caused severe flooding on the 1Gh
floor of M Building, with seepage
as far as four floors below. On
the 6th floor water was seeping
through the outside walls of some
classrooms and cracks appeared in
the ceilings. Afternoon classes
were cancelled,

Monday, January 2: No heat in M
Building all day - reading lab
temperatures approached Antartica.
Elevators out of service for the
evening classes.

Caught between a crumbling building,

angry faculty members and students,

and public exposure on NBC News and

WPIX-Channel 11, the MCC administra-

tion seems to be trying to play

Nixon's game of "lay low and keep

cool." For example, nothing has yet

been heard of Dean Willis' "profes-
sional analysis of the M Building to
determine the advisability of any
action by the College." (from Draper's

letter of November 5.)

What are they waiting for?

For the old Board of Higher Education

to go out of office so they can claim

inability to do anything and continue
to pass the buck? For the present
group of students to move on into new
classes next term and eliminate the
present threat of student unity in the

STUDENTS TO FIGHT CUTBACKS, a newly
formed group at MCC, has taken its
first successful action.

After a "visit" to the MCC admin-
istration, the anti-cutback group
won the following demands:

1- Three more payment windows
to be installed in the office where
checks are handed out, to shorten
waiting time.

2- More staff to be assigned to
handle check distribution,

3- Nursing students' checks to
be available on Wednesdays instead
of on hospital-assignment days.

4- Students not to be penalized
for missing classes on check days.
(Instructors should already have re-
ceived a letter from the administra-
tion on this point.)

5- Loan repayments to be arranged
with students through the financial
aid office (previously the whole of.
a loan might be deducted from an aid
check, leaving a student without e-
nough to live on for the next two
weeks,

With these gains, students can
now focus on the main problem--more
money for more students,

Because of inadequate financial
-aid--or none at all--many students
are forced to drop out of school;
others are forced to miss classes or
fall behind for lack of carfare and

M Building (over 1000 names were col-
lected on an M Building petition)? For
M Building faculty to be distracted by
the academic responsibilities and
pressures of the end of this term and
the beginning of another one?

Such delaying tactics will not work.
The demand made at the beginning of the
semester was to close the M Building
as an "educational" facility of MCC and
to provide good, comfortable, adequate
facilities, That demand still stands,

WEIL LOOK INTo
iT,iIN 4 WEEKs,

THE BAthrooms
Don’t Work Any
Students ARE Mad é

CUTBAGKS GROUP WINS VICTORY —
STRUGGLE CONTINU

book money or because their jobs in-
terfere with their schoolwork. In-
creasing inflation is biting deeper
every month into checks that were too
small to begin with.

Open Admissions is empty rhetoric
without adequate financial aid. Even
administrators at MCC and throughout
CUNY will agree to that. Yet they
keep putting out the rhetoric and not
doing a damn thing about financial
aid. Why?

The administration's unwillingness
to act is part of an emerging nation-
wide policy to keep higher education
and better jobs out of reach of most
Third World and working-class stu-
dents, Financial aid cutbacks are
simply part of a conscious and delib-
erate plan that calls for:

--Four-year higher education for
some, two-year "post-secondary" train-
ing (mainly deadend vocational and
manual training) for the majority.

--Tuition hikes at four-year state
colleges to raise costs to the level
of elite schools like Harvard and
Columbia and put four-year college
degrees out of reach of most Third
World and working-class students,

--Cutbacks on special programs
for Third World and working-class
students,

--Imposing tuition at free colleges
like CUNY.

and it will not be satisfied by promis-
es that "space" (what space??) will be
provided in the A or E buildings, or

in the Uris Building for the library
(just what everyone needs, two libraries
downtown).

The MCC administration really has no
choice. It must close the M Building--
or it willbe closed for them--and find
a decent location suitable for classes.

NOTE: Still no fire alarm system
as paper goes to press,

WEN Fix EVERTHNG
iN SO YEARS,

Tr's a Fine
TRAP, AND FAlline

--Administration of aid funds di-
rect from Washington rather than via
the colleges themselves, to better
control who gets into, and stays in,
what kind of schools.

This strategy is already being
applied. Aid has been cut back, and
is being controlled from Washington;
Third World Studies and special aid
programs have been dropped or reduced
(see October Tiger Paper); tuition at
state schools is going up; and tuition
at CUNY is a yearly threat. And this
spring three Rockefeller men will be
sitting on the new Board of Higher Ed
that will decide such questions.

It is obvious that students, es-
pecially at MCC where so many people
need aid to survive in school, have
got to move on the problem themselves.
The only way to stop this strategy is
through organized and militant opposi-
tion to it. At MCC, Students to Fight
Cutbacks can be the form for organiz-
ing effective action. It has already
won some victories, but it must grow
bigger to deal with the MCC and CUNY
administrations. Every student who
needs aid to survive in school should
take an active part in the fight against
cutbacks, At MCC that's a lot of
people and a lot of power.

Watch for notices of Students to
Fight Cutbacks meetings at the begin-
ning of the second semester,


PAGE 4

CHILD GARE DIRECTOR

FIRED WITH

THIS SEPTEMBER THE MCC Child Care
Center was moved to the "M" build-
ing--a building known by everyone

to be a fire-trap, with faulty heat-
ing and plumbing.

Also in September, David Miller,
"acting" director of the Child Care
Center,appeared on the scene. Doro-
thy Randall, director of the Center,
and her assistant, Jeanette Williams,
worked for the next three months un-
der the assumption that their con-
tracts would be renewed :David,sup-
posedly, was to handle the "busi-
ness" while they continued working
with the children.

In December they were fired,with-
out reason or notice.

The Child Care Center is adminis-
tered by the Student Government As-
sociation. David Miller, now dir-
ector of the Center with a salary
of $10,000, was the campaign mana-
ger for Students for a Better Gov-
ernment last Spring.

"I expected a smooth transition,"
he told one of the parents whose
child goes to the center. How was
his "transition" carried out? This
is what one of the parents had to
say in an interview with Tiger
Raper:
| “On Tuesday, Dec.4, in the even-
ing,David told Dorothy and Jeanette
that two teachers were coming in
‘the next day to replace them. He
‘told them not to try to enter the
building, or he would call guards
and have them barred from the build-
ing.

‘"The next morning they came anyway.
The threat couldn't be carried out
because there was no one there but
the kids. After David came in late,
a meeting was called, and they were

OUT CAUSE

told they'd have to see President
Draper. Then the locks on the doors
to the Center were changed, and
their keys were taken away from
then.

"Dorothy and Jeanette were vic-
tims of a campaign to make them
seem incompetent. Since September,
while David was there 'handling the
business,' they've ordered supplies,
but the requisitions were always
lost, or not signed. A plumber
was supposed to hook up the sink in
the kitchen, but he waited for three
hours and David didn't show up. Now
David can sit back and say,'they
didn't keep up equipment, or order
supplies.'

"The whole thing was totally under-
handed and degrading all the way
down the line. Dorothy and Jeanette
were used for three months while
plans were carried through to get
rid of them.

"The scene up there now is poor.
Parents stopped bringing their child-
ren for a while, and this is very
bad. It looks like we don't need
the center--but we do!

"We feel there was no reason to
fire Dorothy and Jeanette. They
were there for two and a half years
with no complaints. We question
David's capability and his status
there. He's not qualified for the
job--he only has an Associate de-
gree and doesn't really relate to
the children at all.

"And we, as parents, have the right
to know why Dorothy and Jeanette
were fired. We also have the right
to interview candidates for the jobs
they had. They're our children,
not pieces of furniture.

"The whole thing has been very up-
setting for the children. They

TIGER PAPER

were fond of Dorothy and Jeanette,
and it's traumatic. for this to
happen in the middle of the semes-
ter 2"

Another parent said that it was
affecting her school work. "With
Dorothy and Jan there I used to go
to classes knowing my kids were be-
ing taken care of. Now I'm worrying
about them, and can't really pay “~
attention in classes."

The MCC administration has never
wanted the Child Care Center to ex-
ist. It was one of the demands ag-
reed to in 1969 after mass student
action. After months of foot-
dragging and faced with almost daily
confrontations by students, the ad-
ministration finally agreed to al-
locate the space for the Center in
1970.

Now once again, the functioning of
the center is being undermined. Stu-
dents for Better Government, along
with the administration that was so
anxious to see them elected, is try-
ing to make it seem that the Center
is unnecessary--by throwing the
place into such confusion that par-
ents say "who needs this?"

But we do need the center. We
need better facilities for the chil-
dren, and qualified people to take
care of them.

This is yet another example of
how Open Admissions is being attack-
ed: not openly, but by hitting the
services without which it cannot be
a reality--like adequate day care
and financial aid.

ho Ow

A hearing date was set for Dorothy ,
and Jeanette for Dec. 21 before the
Board of Directors, to appeal the
Student Government's action. The
meeting was cancelled when Student
Government failed to show up. The
meeting has been rescheduled for
Jan. 11. People concerned about
the Child Care Center can contact
Tiger Paper, c/o Naomi Woronov, H343.

IS IT THE new MCC campus?
stration evidently thinks that it is.
It frequently hires expensive ballrooms
for meetings in posh hotels and then ton.
claims that it has no money for finan-

The admini- cial aid or to rehire part-time tea-

chers. Pictured above is a faculty
meeting in the Sutton Room at the Hil