Thank you to everyone who showed up to (or submitted testimony for) the December 5 Board of Trustees Budget Hearing. The audience was composed primarily of angry PSC members, and the tone of the testimonies ranged from frustrated to defiant. We recorded two members’ statements. Here are the videos (click the pictures to play).

The Board of Trustees, unsurprisingly, offered no response to the demands and accusations of the CUNY community. When another speaker, Jane Guskin (PhD student at the GC and adjunct at Queens College–where she is the PSC chapter cochair) asked the audience if everyone in NYC deserved a free quality education, the crowd responded vivaciously in the affirmative with calls for a free CUNY. When she asked the Trustees the same question, they sat in absolute silence. The crowd responded with shouts of “Shame!” Still another speaker, Rebecca Smart (who teaches Psychology courses as an adjunct at multiple CUNY campuses) confronted Chancellor Matos Rodríguez, asking why he makes thirteen times her annual income when she teaches eleven courses a year at CUNY. She teaches three hundred students annually and also talks to them about personal issues such as whether or not to leave an abusive relationship or what to do if they become pregnant. How many students do the Board of Trustees even interact with at all in a year, she asked.

Showing up to this meeting and speaking truth to power is a good first step towards creating the CUNY we want and deserve. The crowd’s rowdy demands to “chop from the top,” alluding to exorbitant administrative salaries, demonstrated the militant posture we must all adopt against austerity and pattern bargaining. Now we all must join the fight to win a just contract and a free CUNY in 2023!

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