#nysrtour

3/19 - 3:00 pm at SUNY Purchase- SUNY Board of Trustees Public Hearing

I did not come here as Bob Marley would say, "to fight flesh and blood but spiritual wickedness in high and low places".  I speak now against the wickedness and unjust detachment that leaves our society chilled for a higher profits.

 Education is the only way to a future for the youth of New York State, that is unless your parents are rich.  But that is by far not the majority of New York State students.  Students see less and less reason to go to school as prices for it rise higher and higher.  We are seeing our dreams slip out of reach, the promises of a nation of equality and a fair chance seem dim notions in these trying times.

Our SUNY system is in great danger.  Students are losing faith in those that administer the system.  Why? 

$17,000 bar tabs by Nancy Zimpher.  Zimpher's bar tab shows high levels of corruption and the inability to see the ramifications of her own actions. 

All over the SUNY system- Albany, New Paltz, Buffalo, Stony Brook, and more, there is less and less diversity in the faculty. StonyBrook just got rid of the only full time professor of Asian decent in the Asian Studies Program. The students are more than upset.

Students are being repressed and physically harassed. New Paltz has had multiple racist and transphobic signs up on campus throughout the past year.  There has been no closing of the school or canceling of classes.  Recently the administration there had said (repeatedly) that it was a myth that students of color were decreasing on campus, which is a direct and conscious misuse of data and statistics.

SUNY needs a change; SUNY needs real and meaningful leadership.

We don't need finance and business people pushing for technology and engineering making decisions about our lives, our futures, our very dreams. Unrestricted growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Where are your priorities at with a track record like this?

Our board has chosen to increase our tuition each year for the next four years, while knowing that New Yorkers have less and less to pay for education. What are we going to do to get New York students to trust SUNY again?

The administrators in this "public" system are taking a disproportionate share of the "public" dollar. SUNY ends up with a type of caste system- where those on the bottom have no meaningful way to exert our influence over the movers and the shakers.  And I bet you all like it that way.  You become the new royalty, entitled to benefits and privileges that the rest of us hardly know exists.  And all this as if we students are supposed to put down our jackets for you to cross a puddle.

Let me close with a quotation from William Butler Yeats:

 I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

"It is not enough to rest on the lofty liberal reputation we have crafted for ourselves and then spit in its face when supporting the social change isn’t trendy any more. Social change takes work. True progress requires us to take a consistent stand against bigotry in the myriad of small opportunities we are presented with.

It is not enough to have a supportive attitude, you need to couple that with supportive action. How can we call ourselves supportive when basic human dignity is thrown into the wind and the well being of so many parts of our campus is threatened?"

The introduction of a letter written by SUNY New Paltz students, a collaboration between student senators and the larger student body, that was sent to the college president. The 13 page letter outlines issues and concerns these students feel are not being discussed, as well as "immediate steps that can be taken on this campus and by your administration". The letter has sections on the international student movement, women's studies, gender neutral housing, decline in PoC admissions (as well as in the faculty), the campus marijuana policy, sustainability, local foods, class size and adjuncts, and transparency from the administration.

Here's the updated and most recent schedule for New York Students Rising's statewide tour:

1 SUNY Purchase 3/11 at 7 pm

2 Albany (Capital Building) 3/12 for Education Lobby Day

3 SUNY Stony Brook 3/13 at 7 pm

4 SUNY New Paltz 3/14 at 7 pm

5 SUNY Board of Trustees Meeting (SUNY Purchase) 3/19 at 3 pm

6 Medgar Evers College 3/20 at 11:30 am

7 City Collgee 3/21 at 12:30 pm

8 SUNY Buffalo 3/25 or 3/26

9 SUNY Cortland 3/27 at 7 pm