Protests returned to the City University of New York’s Baruch College on Monday, as about a thousand students, faculty members, and sympathetic supporters spent three hours marching and chanting in a spirited and peaceful show of opposition against a tuition increase that CUNY’s Board of Trustees, meeting at Baruch, approved that afternoon.
Many said they were also marching in support of affordable higher education.
“There has to be another way than putting this on the poor workers of New York City,” said Matthew Bissen, a graduate student in earth and environmental studies at the CUNY Graduate Center who said he joined the rally as a participant and marshal to “help change our education system for the better.”
Some of those at the rally were former CUNY students, like Robert Hill. “During the last economic crisis, when I got laid off I was able to go back and get a master’s degree for $10,000,” he said, as he quietly joined in with some of the chanting students gathered in a cordoned-off area near the entrance to Baruch’s main building, the William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus, on East 25th Street, where the trustees were meeting on the 14th floor.
Mr. Hill, who now works as a technical writer on Wall Street, said he got his master’s—in labor studies—through CUNY’s Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, which is named for a former CUNY chancellor. “I benefited from his work. These kids should too.”
Despite a very visible police presence—including at one point dozens of helmeted officers lining the street opposite the Vertical Campus entrance with plastic handcuffs at the ready—Monday’s protest was less tense than the one of a week ago, at which students have said the police used unnecessary force to control the crowd inside and outside the building.
Some of the students and faculty members attending Monday’s rally said they came because they were upset about the university’s response to last week’s events. Among them were several hundred members of the Professional Staff Congress, the faculty union at CUNY. “We are proud to be here in solidarity with students,” declared Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, as she addressed the faculty who picketed for about an hour in front of the entrance. “We are opposed to the attempt to crush student protests at CUNY.”
Others said they understood the financial complexities but believed the student movement deserved their support. “We’re at a moment when it’s important to take a stand,” said Joshua Wilner, a professor of English at Baruch who was greeted warmly by several of his students at the protest.
During their meeting, trustees briefly discussed last week’s confrontation between campus security officers and protesters, which ended in 15 arrests, and called for improving officers’ responses in the future. While Monday’s rally did not result in any similar rough encounters, one professor was ejected from the trustees’ meeting after he tried to cross a barrier inside the conference room, and four people were arrested by New York City police officers during the march outside. It was unclear whether any of those arrested were students.
In anticipation of Monday’s protest, Baruch administrators canceled all classes after 3 p.m. at the Vertical Campus building.
On Monday, there was even a makeshift band—musicians called the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, who at times stirred the crowd with klezmer-style melodies, “We Shall Overcome,” and a rhythmic backbeat for chants like “They say cut back, we say fight back” and “Education is a right. Fight, fight, fight.”
Unlike the impromptu protest last week, Monday’s was a more organized event, beginning with a small gathering in Madison Square Park, a few blocks from Baruch, where students using the Occupy Wall Street “human microphone” system began preparing protesters for the march toward Baruch with personal stories about their own student debt. Fred Bastone, a former student at CUNY’s Hunter College who said he had to leave school and begin working in construction because he could no longer afford college, waved a letter from his lender, calling his student debt “handcuffs on my future.” He later lit the paper on fire, prompting a rush of attention from the news photographers at the scene.
Then, to the chant of “They say tuition hike, we say student strike,” the throng of a few hundred protesters made their way across Fifth Avenue toward Baruch, where hundreds more poured in from other directions.
Students who attend or attended other colleges also joined the procession, including a group of history graduate students carrying “NYU for OWS” signs. The signs referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Participants said some New York University trustees sit on advisory boards for government agencies that could be doing more to help support higher education. “Members of our Board of Trustees are directly influencing how state and city funds are allocated,” said Christy Thornton, a third-year Ph.D. student there.
Aron Fischer, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at CUNY, said his university’s own board is out of touch with its students. “None of the students feel represented by the board,” he said, recalling his experience of appearing before it a week ago. “I was testifying. They were sitting there nodding off.”
He carried a one-by-two-foot erasable white board, which he called his “multipurpose nonviolent protest sign.” At one point, its message was: “I didn’t vote for the Board of Trustees. No one did.” Two hours later, after he had joined with other protesters in a chanting march down Lexington Avenue and back up Third Avenue, accompanied by dozens of police officers, he changed the message to read: “No pepper spray today, please” - a reference to the police treatment of peaceful student protesters at the University of California at Davis 10 days ago.
The long-term tuition plan that trustees considered on Monday, authorized by the State Legislature in June, will increase costs by $300 annually for five years, with the first year’s increase already in effect.
As night fell and word spread that the trustees had indeed approved the plan, the marchers walked to the rear of the Vertical Campus building, with many chanting “Abolish the Board of Trustees” and “Hey hey, ho ho, CUNY Board has got to go.” But it was not clear if any of the trustees were there to hear that, or if they were present as the group marched back to the front of the building.
“Today was an incredible day,” shouted a woman leading one of the last human-microphone messages of the evening. “We stood together. We walked together. This is just the beginning.”
The students said they would continue organizing over the winter and planned to “hit the ground running” with more protests in the spring.
