Items

• Pataki: Anti-Budget Cuts Sticker

  A two-color sticker with an image of Pataki with "devil" horns. The sticker explains that the estimated projected tax savings for a family earning $50,000/year would be $20, while programs for students, the elderly and the poor would be cut. Activists put this sticker on subway cars and public surfaces all over the city to build on the popular outrage against the budget cuts, which went beyond the cuts to CUNY and allowed for broad coalition work between many constituencies.
• Open Admissions Protest Flier, October 1997

  This Halloween themed flier, from October 1997, calls for participation in an October 26th protest at CUNY’s administrative offices at 535 E. 80th Street. Depicted are Rudolph Giuliani, New York’s mayor, and Herman Badillo, the Vice-Chair of CUNY’s Board of Trustees. Both men were vocal critics of CUNY’s policy of open enrollment and consequently received much of the ire from those in support of the policy. In May 1998, Giuliani and Badillo would get their wish however when the Board of Trustees voted to revise admission standards at CUNY’s senior colleges, in so doing they eliminated the nearly thirty year old practice of Open Admissions and removed remedial education from the university’s four year schools.
• "Students Leave Classes to Rally Against Budget"

  This front-page, above-the-fold New York Times coverage of the CUNY Coalition's March 23, 1995 protest reports that thousands of students walked out of class to protest the proposed state and city budget cuts to CUNY. The article relies mainly on perspectives from police leadership, Mayor Giuliani, and Governor Pataki on the protest, which leaves the reader with a sense that unruly and ungrateful students took the streets to wreak havoc for very little reason.
• "Time to Rethink the Tax Cuts"

  Spring 1995 New York Times editorial sympathetic to student protests against budget cuts and tuition hikes: "The current wave of protests represents the rebellion of reasonable minds. The reductions in health care, social services and education have hit the outer limits of conscience..."
• New York Times: "CUNY To Tighten Admissions Policy At 4-Year Schools," May 27, 1998

  This article from The New York Times reviews the decision made by CUNY’s Board of Trustees on May 26, 1998 to end the nearly three decade-long open admissions standards that had shaped the university system since 1970. The new plan, to shift remedial education away from the system’s senior colleges to its community colleges and to raise admissions standards, pleased many of the university’s critics, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who had long sought changes to CUNY’s enrollment practices. The decision made by the trustees was not one supported by all however, and the article considers many of the concerns of those opposed to the changes that were set to be phased in over three years.
• Newsday: "Enemies List?"

  In this pair of articles from the Long Island, NY based Newsday, writer Graham Rayman details the efforts of CUNY officials to track and document the activities of student activists during the budget protests of 1995. Rayman's first article considers both how CUNY compiled the information on their students and what they attempted to do with it. His second story focuses on the experiences of one CCNY student whose name appeared on one of CUNY’s “enemies lists,” as they were referred to by the university’s critics.
• Love and Rage: Special Anti-Cop Issue

  This special issue of Love and Rage, written and published by anarchist CUNY students active in the CUNY Coalition Against the Cuts, covers police repression of student activism at CUNY and police brutality in New York City neighborhoods. One article focuses on an incident at York College on Nov. 6, 1995, in which riot police were called in to stop a Black Solidarity Day event. The back page calls for a campaign against police repression at CUNY and details how to start a Copwatch program.
• "New York Budget Cuts Spark Militant Mass Movement"

  This May 1995 article in Love and Rage newspaper written by Christopher Day (Gunderson), a leader in the CUNY Coalition Against the Cuts, emphasizes the confrontational protest tactics that emerged from "rank-and-file" students, giving student activist leaders the choice of moving with this militancy or trying to subdue it.
• Infusion: "CUNY's War on CUNY," October 1998

  In this October 1998 edition of Infusion, the circumstances surrounding CUNY’s recent ending of Open Admissions are given national attention. The publication, created by The Center for Campus Organizing, an outlet for “progressive student activists,” considers the larger implications of the demise of open enrollment, likening the measure to the introduction of “apartheid.” Another article covers the surveillance of a CCNY student activist.In May 1998, CUNY's Board of Trustees had voted to end the decades-long practice of Open Admissions throughout the university system. The vote, encouraged by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was met with strong resistance from many in and outside of CUNY.
• "Bad Man Badillo: Butcher of CUNY"

  This article by SLAM! member Sandra Barros for the Hunter Envoy investigates the role of CUNY Board of Trustees Vice Chair Herman Badillo in the plan to end open admissions at CUNY. This issue of the Envoy also includes an article about Hunter's childcare center, an interview with mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger, and an editorial about the mayoral election by SLAM! member Jed Brandt.
• "Building a Movement"

  This is a photocopied Village Voice article that was used to promote a citywide demonstration on April 25, 1995 that united groups fighting for education, jobs, housing, health care and AIDS care. They also called for an end to police brutality and racial and homophobic violence, and timed it to coincide with the city's budget debates during a time of deep cuts. The article begins with a description of a scene from a CUNY Coalition protest at CCNY.
• "SLAM! Street Fair"

  This article in the Hunter College Envoy covers the street fair organized by SLAM! in the fall semester of 2000. Featuring performances by members of clubs from diverse cultures along with informational tables offering resources, the street fair was one way that SLAM! sought to serve the student body while in office as student government.
• Tips for Giving Class Presentations

  This flier was used by activists to prepare for giving short presentations—"class raps"—in classrooms to promote the March 23, 1995 demonstration at City Hall. It includes details about the planned tuition hike and cuts to financial aid, and the expected impact of the budget cuts on campuses.
• CUNY Coalition Against The Cuts - Statement of Purpose

  This statement of purpose was collectively written in an open meeting by participants in the CUNY Coalition Against the Cuts. It reflects the radical vision and tactics of the coalition.
• "CUNY Task Force Chief Accused of 'Ethnic Cleansing'"

  This New York Post article reports on a City Council Committee on Higher Education hearing at which council members remarked on the racism inherent in the effort of Mayor Giuliani's task force on CUNY to end open admissions.
• Save Open Admissions Teach-in - Cultural Festival

  This flier by Brooklyn College SLAM! members promoted an event on campus celebrating the diversity of the student body with a cultural festival and teach-in about open admissions. The event was planned to mobilize and educate students on campus and to draw students for a rally later that afternoon outside the Board of Trustees meeting at which a major decision on open admissions would be made.
• The Banner, March 30, 1995

  Student newspaper from College of Staten Island, with coverage of March 23, 1995 CUNY Coalition protest at City Hall.
• "Citibank: The Pawnbroker"

  This article in the Spheric newspaper from Hunter College investigates the potential exploitation of students and campuses by the proposed CUNY Card. Citibank would get fees from students as part of this proposed ID card that would also be an ATM card, and CUNY would pay for the production and administration of the cards.
• "Student Protest Turns Violent"

  This Daily News article covers the March 23, 1995 protest, focusing on the views of Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, who blamed CUNY faculty and administration for the large turnout of students to the protest.
• "Students Rally Against the Cuts"

  This front page article in the Hunter College Envoy covers a march and rally organized by SLAM! on March 21, 1996 against that year's proposed budget cuts to CUNY. The paper estimates about 800 Hunter students, faculty and staff attended.
• The Campus, May 1, 1995

  Selections from the CCNY Campus newspaper, covering the student hunger strike against the budget cuts and tuition hike in April, 1995. CCNY President Yolanda Moses brought in the NYPD to arrest 47 students. Includes an interview with President Moses and student viewpoints.
• Voice of the Voiceless, April 20, 1998

  In this issue of the BMCC student newspaper, Voice of the Voiceless, the topic of Open Admissions is given full focus with more than twenty articles contributed on the subject from students across the CUNY system. The topic was given special consideration in this April 20, 1998 edition of the paper as CUNY’s Board of Trustees was scheduled to decide on the future of Open Admissions in a vote on April 27th. In January, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had issued an indictment of the system's effectiveness in his State of the City Address, calling open enrollment "a mistake [that] should be changed." Many of the students' submissions in this paper are directed at Giuliani's criticisms.Additional articles found in this paper also cover the “freshman admissions requirements” across CUNY’s senior colleges, as well as a breakdown of the use of “student activity fees” at BMCC.
• Queens College Civil Rights Archives

  The Queens College Civil Rights Archive collects published and unpublished works relating to civil rights activities such as personal papers, community materials, organizational records, non-print materials, and artifacts. The archive, housed at Queens College, is particularly strong in materials documenting civil rights work by Queens College students during the early to mid 1960s. The digital presence of the civil rights archive comprises only a small selection of our materials. Digitization projects and online exhibits are created by Special Collections staff and fellows.
• Graduate student support for CUNY-wide student actions

  Graduate student Steven Duncombe speaks about the CUNY student occupation protesting the budget cuts and the tuition increases of 1991. This video was originally recorded for the monthly cable TV labor program, Labor at the Crossroads (or Labor X), which was produced under the auspices of the American Social History Project from 1989 into the mid-1990s.
• Student Voices: Brooklyn College Oral Histories on WW2 and the McCarthy Era — Civil Liberties 

  This website was a 2004 collaboration between the American Social History Project and Brooklyn College. Redesigned in 2015 it chronicles student experiences with the college newspaper, the Vanguard, during a period in which civil liberties were threatened on college campuses around the country. These student journalists, some of whom were WWII veterans, were involved with the Vanguard when President Harry Gideonse of Brooklyn College shut it down and suspended several of its writers and editors. The closure was the culmination of an ongoing struggle over the newspaper's content. Vanguard journalists, an eclectic group of civil libertarians with a range of political orientations, asserted that the president closed the paper in order to squelch student opinions that did not conform to those of the administration. Gideonse, they charged, had brought the Cold War to the college.