Chancellor Goldstein attended with Vice Chancellor Frederick Schaffer. Other CUNY faculty attending were Robert Lapides, Syd Lefkoe, Dina Miraglia, and Peter Ranis.

REPORTS AND DELIBERATIONS

OF THE THREE HUNDRED AND TENTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

March 8, 2005

Chair O’Malley: I think we should start even though our numbers are not great. The Chancellor is at a search committee meeting for the President of the Graduate School and he should be here shortly. So I’m going to start the meeting, then the Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs will say a few words or we can just fire questions at him; he’s willing to do either. / Vice Chancellor Schaffer – I came understanding that people had follow-up questions for me. / Chair O’Malley – OK, we will ask questions. Then I’ll do the Chair’s report and by that time the Chancellor will arrive.

Professor Bill Crain (Psychology, City College) – I need to speak. / Chair O’Malley – Yes, you may. / Professor Crain – I’d like to add to the agenda under B, New Business, the Resolution on the Senate Forum Listserv. The resolution asks for the reinstatement of an expelled…/ Chair O’Malley – Is it at the back of the room? It is. / Professor Crain – It is but it’s not under the…/ Chair O’Malley – So let’s add it at that point. The resolution is at the back of the room. / Professor Crain – Thank you.

Chair O’Malley – The agenda is OK? All right. Any questions about the minutes? People have actually read the minutes and made corrections, and we’ve changed them. The minutes are all right? All right.

I’m going to start the meeting in a slightly different way. Last month a previous member of the Faculty Senate died. She’s from LaGuardia Community College; her name is Janet Cyril. For those of you who have been in the Faculty Senate a long time, you will remember Janet as someone who was extremely articulate and would stand up and take on anybody in the most courageous, articulate, and intelligent way. Janet suffered from Sickle Cell her whole life, and she died a month ago from it. I went to her memorial service, at which Kathleen Cleaver presided; it was amazing. So for Janet Cyril and her articulateness and her early demise, I’d like to have a moment of silence.

Now, people who have questions for Vice Chancellor Schaffer, you could line up at the mike. Are you all ready? I hope so.

C. Vice Chancellor for Legal Affair Frederick Schaffer – I was asked to come back to answer more questions, so here I am. I won’t take up any more of your time and if there aren’t too many questions, I won’t be too disappointed.

Professor Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate School and University Center)- Here is the issue: some faculty members at some colleges, primarily community colleges as I now understand, are complaining about the requirement laid on them to be required to submit several names to their Administration for appointment. For an opening, they have to submit multiple names, from which the Administration may choose one or may reject them all, for an appointment. The P&B recommends somebody for employment, but they’re requiring them to put forth multiple candidates. A couple of colleges report that this is not the case yet for them, and what I want to know is what is the policy and why are the policies different. / Vice Chancellor Schaffer – I think for the most part the process is governed by the governance plans of each individual college. The procedures for appointment and reappointment, promotion and tenure are contained in governance plans. I know that because I reviewed every one of them in the summer looking just at that because I was curious as to how different they were from college to college. But on this specific issue I don’t recall the governance plans speaking one way or the other as to how many names would be put forward. This is the first time I’m hearing about the issue. / Professor Baumrin – That’s good. It’s an issue de novo. / Vice Chancellor – I’d be happy to go back and research it further for you. / Professor Baumrin – If I haven’t read all the governance plans in the University, I’ve read enough to know it’s not in the governance. Reappointment is, generally, either in the bylaws of the University or in the plan of a particular institution, and certainly tenure and promotion. With appointment it just says we’re going to appoint people. And the tradition is, and it’s a very old tradition here, that the Appointments Committee at City College and the P&B Committees at the other units will recommend to the Administration the appointment of so and so. Even though it makes some sense for the Administration to be able to turn down a recommendation, typically that doesn’t happen. It’s the switch in some institutions to the requirement that multiple candidates be put forth by the Appointments Committee or the P&B Committee in a department for an opening that has raised considerable heat, and I was hoping you’d shed some light on it, but not yet, right? / Vice Chancellor – Not yet. I’ll try to find out as best I can why this is happening. It strikes me just off the top of my head that the governance plan doesn’t really speak to it one way or the other, but I’ll try to find out for you why this is happening and whether it’s consistent with the governance plans. Stefan, if you could e-mail me the names of the colleges where to your knowledge this is taking place it would be helpful. / Chair – I have the list.

Professor Bill Crain (Psychology, City College) – "To follow up on the question we asked you before, several of us, Larry Rushing and Laraine Fergenson, raised questions the Miguel Malo case and we raised questions about the Yousry case. I think there’s no doubt that we’re going through a period that’s moving more and more toward McCarthyism, and we have cases: Susan Rosenberg was let go from this college; there’s the case of Ward Churchill, the case of a professor at Columbia; there are reports of people who’ve been detained with no representation, and we’re going through a hard time; we had doubts before whether we were in a period of McCarthyism. Police are also getting a little overzealous; even when we demonstrated two weeks ago at City College they forced faculty on our campus in the pens. In any case, given the atmosphere shouldn’t CUNY take a step towards academic freedom and make a gesture in the cases of Rosenberg and Malo? Wouldn’t it be appropriate, given the climate now is becoming clear? Isn’t it time for the University to step up and make a gesture saying that we want to stand on behalf of free speech and freedom in a time that is looking increasingly repressive? / Vice Chancellor Schaffer – Well, we obviously have some disagreement about the premise of your question, but let me come back to that in a second and let me start by saying that I think this University does stand for free speech and academic freedom. It hasn’t always been consistent in its long history but I think that has been true in recent years and I think it is the commitment of this Chancellor and this Chairperson of the Board to uphold academic freedom and free speech. As to the specific cases that you mentioned, I’d rather not comment at the moment about the Susan Rosenberg case because I believe President Travis has been having conversations with his faculty, I think there’s a forum planned on this coming up, and I think in the first instance it would be best for him to address it. And with respect to Mr. Malo, Bill, you know my views on it. It is not something that’s really within the University’s control. The two peace officers who alleged that they were attacked swore out a criminal complaint; the Bronx DA’s office is prosecuting it. It has, I’m sure we can both agree, gone on way too long, and it’s not a good advertisement for the criminal justice system that it hasn’t been resolved yet. As I said the last time, if it had been a professor who claimed to have been attacked, I think you would be more understanding. Whatever went on before the events in question, the narrow charge that is in the criminal process now is a charge of assault. I’d like to see it resolved one way or the other as soon as possible as I know you would, but I don’t view it as a case of academic freedom or free speech. Now that’s because what I understand the facts to be and you understand them to be perhaps different, and I guess the trial will resolve that, but on its face to me it is a simple assault case, that’s all."

Chair Susan O’Malley – "I’m asking a question or bringing a situation on behalf of the Hostos faculty, and if I get this wrong I hope that they help me. I received in the mail several strange forms. If Hostos faculty want to leave the state, I was told, any time between August 31 and whenever the academic term is over, they must get the signature of their Chair, the Provost, and the President. The way it was before was that if you were going to a conference and you were going to miss a class, obviously you had to talk to your Chair and get your course covered. That was the procedure at Hostos, as it is in all of the other colleges. Suddenly a faculty member was giving a paper in a conference in India, and he was called and told he couldn’t go. He went anyway, I must say. He had the permission of his Chair, but he hadn’t gotten the signature of the Provost and the President. Are you aware of this and isn’t this a little extreme? / Vice Chancellor Schaffer – I am aware of it; I’ve seen the document. I’m not sure what its intent was and I’m in the process of asking some questions to determine what the scope of this policy is and at the moment that’s all I can say. / Chair – And when you decide you’ll get back to us. / Vice Chancellor – My understanding is that there’s already or there’s about to be a grievance filed about this and I’m sure we’ll have fairly prompt conversations. / Chair – It would be nice to get a change before the grievance. / Vice Chancellor – It would be although when I suggested that the person from the Union who told me about it said, "Don’t bother, the grievance is going to be filed anyway," so I said, "OK." But I will look into it as fast as I can. I only first heard about this late Friday and I was in Albany all day yesterday, so I just haven’t had a chance to follow up. / Chair – Thank you."

Professor Brijraj Singh (Hostos Community College) – "Contrary to the impression that may have been created by Professor O’Malley’s question, I was not the person who wanted to go back to India. I lived there all the time. This is India, nor am I out of it. But the point that I wanted to make, seriously, was that I understand that the PSC chapter of my college has been in touch with the President’s Office and I’m told that the form is going to be revised. When I saw the form I knew immediately that it was a stupid form. As I used the word, I would like to just say that there are other people on the Administration who have used the same exact word to me in private conversations off the record in describing the form. I don’t know who created the form, or how the form came into existence. I can understand the purpose is to ensure that everybody meets their professional obligations when they are traveling elsewhere, when they’ve gone somewhere to give a paper or attend a conference, that a proper arrangement for the classes is made, but that was not the way in which the form was created and we have simply decided to treat the form in the way it ought to be treated. We have five forms if we wish to go and have dinner in New Jersey, we have five forms if we desire to go to Long Island or whatever and to meet a friend, and I hope that the President’s Office will realize after a while that the amount of work that it generates is not worth the effort. So I just wanted to say that the matter is already being discussed by the Union and the President, and I think that there will be a revision to the form."

Professor Lenore Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – "Apparently on the CUNY website the University policy on academic freedom has been revised. There is something that appears on it which keeps three of the main paragraphs from the AAUP statement but removes the preamble, several paragraphs. It states, "The Board of Trustees subscribes" -- ‘subscribes’ is an uncertain word -- "to the concepts of academic freedom expressed by the AAUP as follows," and then ends with a paragraph "In addition," this is, remember, the University policy on academic freedom, "staff members should be familiar with a resolution in regard to the maintenance of public order, which was passed by the BHE in June 1969 and which is published in this bulletin." So this is a rather strange document. I wonder what you can tell us about it? For instance, what happened to the preamble? I’d like to see it back. And what is this paragraph about maintenance of public order doing in a policy on academic freedom? Could you just give us some freedom on the provenance of this? / Vice Chancellor Schaffer – I can’t, but thank you for bringing it to my attention. The last time I looked what was up on the website was word for word the policy on academic freedom as adopted by the Council of Presidents, and this is the first time I’ve seen this.

Chair O’Malley – Thank you. Chancellor Goldstein is here.

B. Chancellor Goldstein – Let me just give you some information that is just a few hours old having to do with the processes that we’re going through in trying to get a budget for the University. Yesterday, we had a Board trip. I led the delegation of some Trustees and a number of Presidents and members of the Chancellery who met with a number of the leaders that obviously are instrumental in constructing the Operating and Capital budgets for both SUNY and CUNY. The people we met with, some met with in a group, others I met with individually, included Ron Canestrari, who chairs the Higher Education Committee for the House, Ken LaValle, who chairs the equivalent committee on the Senate side, Sheldon Silver, Joe Bruno; those were private meetings; Jeff Lovell and one of the new people in the Governor’s Office, whose name I believe is Steve Williams, a very affable fellow.

I think I have shared with this body a concern that I have had for some time, which I have metaphorically described as a fugue that just rears its ugly head year in and year out. It’s a delicate issue and I’m of two minds around this delicate issue, but in some ways, in some very significant ways, and as time goes on, this issue I think has disadvantaged both CUNY and SUNY in very noticeable and significant ways, and it goes back probably close to 50 years ago when a voucher program was started in the State of New York that was largely advanced not by the public sector but by the private sector, and it eventually became known as the TAP program. The TAP program now is a billion dollar program. It is by far the richest financial aid program of any state in the union, and it’s a program, obviously, that for many of our students is a safety-net that if that net was not there they would fall and not be able to attend CUNY and SUNY. It is more of a safety net for some of the private institutions. If the TAP program were reduced in size, I would submit that there would be a not insignificant number of private institutions that would no longer exist. They basically live on the capacity to enroll students by virtue of that revenue stream called TAP, and certainly many of the proprietary institutions would be in that same position. Now why am I mentioning TAP? I’m mentioning it because, and this is a point that I have been driving forcefully but I’m not really sure it’s a problem that is solvable, TAP is, as I just said, the most generous financial aid mechanism that we have in the United States, but at the same time there’s another component of support for the University and that is our Operating Budget. And when you look at the disjunction between the richness of TAP and the paucity of dollars that support our Operating Budget, it is very striking. So much so that, and I don’t have the precise data but I’m pretty close to being accurate here, if one were to list New York State as number one in financial aid, it’s probably about 48 or 49 on the ladder for state universities with respect to Operating Budgets. And until there is an equilibrium to a great extent from what it is today, we’re going to have the same kind of discussion year in and year out.

There has been no investment of any consequence over decades for both SUNY and CUNY outside of the Capital Program and outside of what I would call off the balance sheet. The core of the dollars that support the University has not had an infusion of investment for a very long time. And as time goes by and expenses are increasing, we as a university become more and more disadvantaged. That I think is fairly clear, but why is this so unsolvable or intractable? I don’t know if it’s unsolvable -- right now it seems to me intractable. It’s intractable because Governors, both Democratic and Republican, have played the same scenario over and over again; that’s why I call it an ugly fugue. They assault TAP and the Legislature puts in a tremendous amount of effort, not so much because of CUNY’s or SUNY’s outrage but because of our partners in this regard, meaning the independent sector. So there is a barrage of political activism that goes into fixing TAP. And when TAP is fixed, and it is always more or less fixed, the Legislature says, "OK, we’ve taken care of CUNY and SUNY. It’s time for us to go on to something else." And that is a very serious problem, and until we uncouple ourselves from this kind of play that has been repeated over and over again, we are going to find ourselves always in a disadvantaged position. I’ve made that point to the Governor, to Sheldon Silver over and over again, to Joe Bruno over and over again, and they agree. I’m not getting any pushback but they look at me as I’m looking at you and they say, "I don’t know how to do it. How do we fix this?" It’s going to be a very difficult thing to fix and I think we all have to, one, acknowledge that this is a serious problem, and find a way over time. And I don’t think it’s going to be fixed this year. TAP was really assaulted this year in a very invidious way, and you know the Governor’s program, but we know right from the get-go that this was an opening condition that was going to be fixed by the Legislature. We had that information months ago, and sure enough that’s probably what’s going to happen here with some additional enhancements that would come through special programs, SEEK, perhaps some additional state aid for community colleges -- even that piece I’m not totally convince will happen. So that’s sort of the gestalt in how we look at this budget process that has continued to play itself over time.

Complicating all of these discussions this year is of course the Court of Appeals case, which basically affirmed what the state constitution says, that the Governor is the responsible party for bringing forth a budget and that the Legislature can either add money to programs, take some money away, or veto a program, and then they take an action and the Governor has an opposite action of the same kind of consequence ….[tape turned over] ….speaking very forcefully in a very quiet and non-political way, they are deeply frustrated by their inability to do the things that they have been doing for the past few years, which the Governor really encouraged, which was basically to come forward with their own budget bills and make swaps accordingly. So that’s not going to happen this year. There is agreement, which we were quite surprised about, on revenue. The Governor proposed his Executive Budget, I think it was the third week in January; the revenue projections form the basis for a $105 billion recommendation for the Executive Budget. Since that time, and close to two months have gone by, revenues have increased statewide, mainly here in the city, mainly because of the financial services industry, and couple of days ago that revenue was increased by about a billion dollars. The Governor has said that he wants to take about half of that billion and create a reserve for next year, and the other $500 million would be used for enhancements that the Legislature could propose, and if agreed upon by the Governor would become law; and I think that number is even a little higher now than a billion dollars. But think about what that means. The TAP program itself to be fixed from what the Governor has proposed, is going to eat up a good part of that $500 million, and that’s just higher education; that $500 million is statewide for a whole bunch of things that are out there. So I’m not terribly optimistic that something magical is going to happen here, and I was really struck for the first time, and I’ve been doing this for a while, not only in this position as Chancellor but when I was at Baruch where I was doing my own lobbying and had relationships with a lot of people in the Legislature, by a real sense of despairing about the situation, a sense of not having the degrees of freedom, and that debt service is escalating to proportions not seen before in the State of New York. These are very serious issues that are being played out with the MTA, the infrastructure on our rails and subways are in serious condition, Medicaid is in serious trouble, across the United States, here in the city certainly as well; a Governor who is not persuaded that increasing taxes is the way to go, and we haven’t really seen a pullback in expenses. So there are a lot of players now that want to jump on whatever the amount of revenue is beyond what the Governor has proposed and, unless there’s a lot more money, there’s just not enough to really go around and fix the kinds of things that we have been talking about.

I think fundamental to our problem has been the history of the imbalance between financial aid and operating aid. It is just so far out of equilibrium you can’t be number 1 and number 48 and expect to have a system that is without some kind of disruptiveness. On the capital side, because of the way in which Capital Budgets are financed, the amount of cash flow or operating aid that you need just sort of dribbles in. It’s really nothing more than debt service, because these bonds that are offloaded to support capital projects that pay it over a long time, rarely are those bonds put to bed; they are just retired and other bonds come in; it’s the same kind of game that is played. The one thing that has been helpful is that the interest rate environment has been very low now for several years and the new bonds that are being floated have much more favorable debt service. The Governor and the Legislature have been a little more receptive to being somewhat aggressive in supporting capital programs. Now our needs across the University are quite substantial. At the end of the day, I estimate that we’ll have over the next five years about a billion and a half dollars to spend on capital needs. A good part of that is going to be devoted to enhancing our ability to do science across this University. When I met with the Executive Officers again I think I told them that we expect to spend certainly $400 million and perhaps more when we get some of the matching money. That sounds like a lot of money but when you start spreading it across a number of campuses that have really legitimate needs it’s not a lot of money at all. In fact our legitimate needs, in our capital program probably is on the order of magnitude of $4-5 billion, not $1.5 billion, although this will be the largest capital budget that the University has ever received.

So that’s the environment that we’re in. I think everybody wants to see an early budget. People were speculating whether there will be a budget by April 1. I don’t know whether that will happen as well. The Senate is going to, by the end of the week, have a whole bunch of budget bills printed. The Governor has been encouraging them. Sheldon Silver and his conference is not going to be doing that by the end of the week. So there is obviously a lot of negotiations going on. At times it’s very tense and at times it’s a little nasty. The process of opening up a lot of these negotiations I think is a good thing. It is in the sunlight. There are actual cameras and press seen at the deliberations that are going on among the leadership. And they are serious negotiations, but there are serious issues that are separating in particular the Assembly from the Senate and the Executive branch. So we’ll see where we go. There’s a lot of good will for the University, and I think it’s genuine good will. I think people genuinely care. I think there is just a sense of great frustration on the part of elected officials on how to deal with the problems that are fiscally defined in the state, and they are serious problems and are not getting any easier.

One of the things that I in part worry about is debt service. Debt service is growing at an alarming rate in the state, which means that when you open the books on the start of a fiscal year immediately you have an encumbrance of what it is that you can spend because of the obligation. The first people to get paid are bondholders, and that’s what happens. The people who have first dibs on revenue are going to be bondholders, and that particular level is escalating. And it’s not just state authorities; there are all of these stealth organizations out there known as public authorities that are floating lots and lots of paper and supporting that is a burden as well on the State of New York. And in fact the Governor just signed an executive order where all of the board of public authorities are going to have to essentially go to school to learn about good corporate governance, and we’ve been chosen to do that for a fee, which is going to be used to support graduate students at the City University of New York. Part of a sort of an entrepreneurial approach to finding ways to support graduate students is through our School of Professional Studies; they’re floating those dollars through. So those are some of the things that have been keeping me busy.

We, as I said when I first started these remarks, expect to appoint a new President of the Graduate School. I’m just delighted to tell you that the pool is extraordinary; we have a very impressive pool of women and men who have expressed interest in this position, and I think it’s a great tribute to all of us that we’re able to attract women and men of this stature. Scientists, humanists, social scientists are in that pool, and I think at the end of the day we will be successful in appointing a very fine President. / Chair O’Malley – When do you think that will happen? Just curious. / Chancellor – I would say probably by the end of April, maybe May, we should be able to appoint a President. That’s what my expectation is.

Professor Don Davidson (Computer Science, LaGuardia Community College) – "I very rarely ask questions of the Chancellor. However, if you look around the room you see a lot of our colleagues are wearing stickers on their clothes with 1.5% with a line drawn through it. Can you share with us any possible progress in taking the faculty to new heights and resolving our differences and not having to have people rally in front of the Board offices and all of the other …/ Chair O’Malley – This is the Senate but if…/ Professor Davidson – I know it’s the Senate. / Chancellor Goldstein – I’m very happy to answer. I won a terrific contract for the faculty. The sensitive nature of my own particular discussion with top officials in the city and the state precludes me from talking about certain things. It is in all of our interests to try to get the best possible contract for the faculty. Why? One, you deserve it, and, secondly, you need it. You as individuals need a good contract. You certainly have demonstrated the kind of work that would say that you deserve a good contract and we need to grow the faculty so that we have to have competitive salaries, and that’s something that I am committed to do. The 1% is a very initial offer that I’d like to see off the table immediately but we have to come back with a negotiation. We’re not going to settle on 1.5%, and we’re not going to settle on 3% or 4 or 5%. We’re going to try to get a good contract for the faculty but there has to be a negotiation. I just want, and I’ve sent a couple of e-mails, all of you to know that I and the Board do not have the authority to set those numbers; we don’t. We have to take guidance, and it’s more than guidance. I’ve used this metaphor -- we are surrounded by two book ends: one is the state, and we have to deal with the Governor’s Office and the Office of Employee Relations, and then on the other book end we have to deal with the Mayor and OMB. So we have two masters here that both have to be satisfied. What I would love to do is to be able to get the best blend of both of those worlds, and that’s what we are attempting to do, but the Mayor has made it very clear, and unless we have a contract that he signs off on we’re not going to get a contract. So what we are doing is trying quietly and not so quietly to convince people of the need to move forward here, and I’m hopeful that at the end of the process we will get a contract but it’s going to require certain movements on behalf of the PSC. I’m not in a position to talk about that; that’s for them and the negotiating team to talk about, but this has to be a collectively bargained contract. There are two parties to this but in terms of money, which is really all the State and the City are focused on, we know what they’re saying, and I can’t argue and say we deserve more than anybody else; we’re just not going to get that kind of reception. But we’re doing the best that we can. We settled with DC 37 and their union will be voting on it and some other unions in addition to DC37, and we’re hoping to get this one done as quickly as possible because it’s in all of our interests to get the best possible contract for you, and that’s what we’re working towards."

Professor Alfred Levine (Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island) – "First of all, I’d like to thank you for meeting with the Science Executive Officers; I understand the meeting went very well and it was very constructive; I hope it’s the first of many such constructive meetings, but that’s not what I want to ask about. I want to ask about the issue of the balance between TAP and the Operating Budget. It’s been very hard for us to know the facts. We don’t know what portion of the $1 billion State Budget is coming to SUNY and CUNY and what portion is going to the privates. / Chancellor Goldstein – The TAP you’re talking about? / Professor Levine – The TAP, and how these numbers have changed over the years. One particular interest that we all have is when we raised tuition, as we did two years ago, how much of that tuition rise was reflecting an increase in TAP coming to CUNY. Without this information we can’t even discuss with anyone a way out of the scissors that you described. / Chancellor – I don’t have it in my head, but I can get my hands on that data pretty quickly, and I would be happy to provide all of that information to you. / Professor Levine – Thank you. / Chancellor – Let me just say, and I have said it over and over again, I said it in the speech I gave yesterday in Albany, I said it to all of the people that I talked to, for me there is a moral imperative here, and it’s very simple, and that is if there are any students that wish to study at this University that are prevented from doing so because of financial exigency, that is wrong. We cannot tolerate that. That was the whole point in the whole effort in the mid 19^th century to establish land grant colleges and opportunities for working class people in particular to get a higher education. Unfortunately we’re seeing that very basic founding principle being further eroded over time because right now half of every dollar of operation is coming on the backs of students, and I think that’s wrong, and the pattern is very wrong. We have all of that data to show. It’s close to $1 billion that I believe is going to be spent this year on TAP. We can show you, and I don’t have the numbers exactly myself, but we can sort of trisect that, SUNY, CUNY, and the independent proprietary sector. Part of the problem that I’m experiencing now, and it’s a hard thing to fight politically, is that there is a movement to enhance the upper ranges of TAP, upper range income. Somebody’s family is making $90,000 a year -- you come to your own conclusion. / Professor Levine – This data would be very helpful at the UFS Conference discussing the privatization of the University. / Chancellor – I will ask Vice Chancellor Malave to get all of that data for you. I think the more you’re educated about these matters the better it is."

Professor Anne Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "I want to go back to the issue of this horrendous situation that we continue to be in with the operating budget, and when you remind us of that statistic, that we’re 49^th in the country, it’s just incredible, it is unconscionable. I am not an economist, I’m not a businesswoman, I’m not a mathematician, but I’m sure that your analysis of this discrepancy between the TAP and the Operating Budget is an issue. But the real issue to me, and I may be simplistic here, is what you could barely say, though you did say it, and that is taxes. The Governor just won’t have a conversation about raising taxes but I don’t think we can leave it at that. I’m not saying that you do. If I’m getting you correctly there’s no magical answer, we feel despair, we feel dismay, we don’t know what to do…/ Chancellor – Those are the Legislators. / Professor Friedman – And then when I hear you say, this may be your opinion, that the Legislators have good will toward us, well, good will means putting your money where your mouth is, and in this country taxes on the people who should be paying them because they’re able to pay them, and that it is their moral responsibility to support public institutions. Our Legislators are not going to come out or have not come out, to my knowledge, to talk about raising taxes because they’re more interested in getting reelected and somehow the public has fallen into this mindset that I don’t think is held anywhere else in the world, certainly not in Europe. So my point is, and it may be a plea, first place I think we need to be angry and not just dismayed and figuring out. The other thing is I’m wondering if the University can begin to think about talking about raising taxes and educating the public about what that means, because I think we’ll be here in another ten years having the same conversation about lack of money until we can raise that money, and it should be raised from where it should be raised and not our Presidents having to go out and beg for private funds. So I don’t know if you think you could maybe help open that conversation. / Chancellor – When I think about our students spending more money to pay for a bus or subway ride, when I think of our students paying exorbitant sums just to get hovels to live in… I went around with my younger son a few month ago and he showed me apartments and the rents of those apartments; I don’t know how young people are doing it today; I ran away from those apartments fifty years ago. Maybe higher tuition, higher taxes that are being paid -- we’re not calling them taxes but fees that people are now being forced to pay, surcharges, it’s a very serious issue. I don’t disagree with you, Anne. I don’t if we could affect tax policy certainly in the City, the State, or the Federal Governments. PELL Grants, you’re getting me going, which is what you want me to do, there’s a whole movement to change the tax code now and the effect of that is going to be to eliminate the deductibility of state and local income taxes from federal filing, which is the litmus test that our student use for eligibility for Pell. So when you don’t allow the deductibility of state and local income taxes from federal filing, what does that do? It inflates your gross income, which says you may not be eligible for as much as PELL. So all of this stuff is played out. What we need to do, I say, and let’s get angry, is to try to get a bigger piece of the pie for public higher education, and my point is we’re getting a big piece of the pie on financial aid, which I think is a good thing, especially for those students who are in harm’s way, but we’re not getting a piece of the pie at all on the operating side, and that imbalance I think is a very serious problem."

Professor Bill Crain (Psychology, City College) – "Once again, congratulations and thanks for the words about the neediest students. You said the last time that raising tuition would be a last step and I was gratified to hear it, and then during the week I had a nagging thought that I need to ask again. You said that there are different ways of raising tuition even if we do and the Governor has proposed differential undergraduate tuition. That would be, in my opinion, a terrible thing to do, because then you would end up having rich, better off students in one college and poor students in another college. I hope we’re not going that route. / Chancellor Goldstein – Bill, I am delighted to stand among your peers and mine and say I agree with you. That may sound like an event of measure zero. I think it would be a terrible mistake to have differential tuition between campuses for undergraduate students. Where I do support differential tuition is on some graduate programs, in particular where I think there may be some competitiveness, there may be price elasticity. Let’s just play this out for one second. If we are forced, and I don’t know if we will and we’re going to fight like hell to prevent this, but if we are forced to raise tuition, and let me not even call it tuition, raise revenue, I want to do it in a way that keeps the most vulnerable students out of harm’s way. I think that’s the only responsible thing to do. Sheldon Silver, and I’m sharing a private conversation with you but I think it’s important, he’s someone that I know for a long time and have high regard for, said to me, "Do you want to do tuition," and I said, "No, I don’t want to do tuition at all, but at the end of this process I don’t know where we’re going to be, and if I am forced in a position to come up with a business plan to allocate revenue, I want to do it in a responsible way, which means I have to have a degree of freedom to develop that; and if I don’t then it’s going to be the most vulnerable students, and I think that’s wrong. / Professor Crain – Just a quick follow-up. More and more of our students want to go on and pursue graduate degrees. We have not made much progress in having low income and people of color going on and moving forward and getting PhDs, and if we increase tuition there we’re repeating the mistakes and posing the burdens and hurdles that we’ve been trying to overcome at the graduate level. / Chancellor – I agree with you -- I want to avoid tuition increases. I think everybody in this room feels the same way. I just don’t know if we’re going to be able to do that, and that’s something that’s not in your hands or my hands unless we are heard. I was pretty forceful yesterday, and some people were not happy with that particular approach, but I think it’s the responsible thing."

Professor Bill Freidheim (Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "…[ tape turned over] program at BMCC integrating technology into the classroom. A number of the people in that program no longer use Blackboard. The number is not the Blackboard server, that’s centrally located at 57 Street and it’s generally been pretty robust, the problem is the portal. Students, to enroll in Blackboard, have to go through the portal. The portal, to put it charitably, is unstable, is constantly down. I know millions of dollars have been spent on it. I have two students in my classes, sixth week of the semester, who cannot get into Blackboard, even though they’ve gone to the help desk, they have user names, they have passwords; the system still will not accept them. What is being done about this? Who’s accountable? If you don’t have the answer, can you get us the answer? / Chancellor Goldstein – I’ve been made aware of some of these problems in the last two or three weeks. I know that Allan Dobrin has technology as part of his portfolio, Brian Cohen being our Chief Technology Officer. I would ask that you bring him here. I think Brian is a smart, straight guy who’ll give you a straight answer. I can’t give you a technical answer; I’m just not well versed to speak intelligently enough to satisfy that question, but I think a guy like Brian would be, and he is a responsible party. You ought to get him here and ask him to explain what the problem is. / Professor Freidheim – I would like to hear what the answer is but the urgency is getting it. / Chancellor – And I know that they are trying but I don’t know where they are and what the technical ramifications are. They’re not sitting around idly; they’re trying to get this fixed. Get him in here. / Chair O’Malley – You might also send me e-mails of problems, because every time anyone does that I forward them to Allan and he has actually gotten some improvements. So get your students to e-mail me or you e-mail me and we’ll just barrage Vice Chancellor Dobrin with these complaints, and he does listen.

Professor Tolga Morawski (Brooklyn College) –" I just wanted to comment on the tax issue that Anne brought up. While I agree that we need to get a little creative with revenue, I don’t think that pushing for tax increases, not to get in the tax policy or economics, but I think New York already has some of the highest taxes in the country as far as state income taxes, and being from upstate I know that it’s really unreasonable to consider more. I think that debt service and other things are the issues where we have so much that’s already encumbered in thirty years that we need to deal with those problems as opposed to just continually raising taxes."

Chancellor Goldstein – Thank you all.

Chair O’Malley – Thank you so much. A couple of things. Susan Price, would you like to say something about the grant-writing workshop?

Professor Susan Price – There’s a filer on the back table; you’ve probably seen it. On March 18^th the Community College Caucus in collaboration with the University Dean for Research is sponsoring a grant-writing workshop for community college faculty. We’ll be bringing recent grant award winners to talk about what they’ve done to potential award writers. We’ve had a really good response and if you are at a community college or you know somebody at a community college who could benefit from this, please ask them to attend. It’s here at the Graduate Center on the 9^th floor, 10-12 on Friday the 18^th.

A. Chair O’Malley – UFS Spring Conference. There’s a flier on the back table, Friday April 22, at the Graduate School: "Recapturing the Public in Public Higher Education." It’s had many titles. This is, I think, the one that’s going to stick. I cannot think of any more important issue than the erosion of public support for public higher education and what is happening to us. Yesterday Jennifer Washburn just agreed to speak. She is the author of The University Incorporated, Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. Our very own Larry Hanley is going to speak and there’s a list of other speakers. I hope you’ll come. It’s co-sponsored with the CUNY Academy. It should be very interesting. Correction to the flier: It’s April 22 and it’s "Recapturing the Public in Public Higher Education." We will have a revised flier and we’ll e-mail it to you and to all of the FGLs and Senators so that you can put it out on your campus. This was a last minute thing that we put together today.

Once again, research is essential to the life of the University. Sign up to chair panels for the PSC CUNY Research Award; that flier is also in the back; Biology, Creative Writing and English, Classics, Interdisciplinary Studies, Political Science, Philosophy, Physics, and Urban Studies.

My Chair’s Report is on the back table. I thought we could do a little silent reading. I don’t know if we’re good at that at this hour of night. Maybe the most important one is the faculty experience survey. Dean, do you want to say anything about that? It’s finally happening.

Dean Savage (Sociology, Queens) [off mike] – We cut it down to something that’s probably still a little bit too long….We’re now doing it without the Chancellor… / Chair O’Malley – And with the Chancellery’s blessing. He said go do it yourself and you can take off my questions, which we did. / Dean Savage – Faculty governance leaders and Senators from each campus will need to give a little push to have people fill this thing out and get it back. / Chair – This will be like the student experience survey. The results will be tabulated this summer. We found a little money here and there. / Dean Savage – One of the things to say about this is that a very large number of the questions were borrowed from a large nationally represented survey of US faculty for the post-secondary faculty. And that will give us the opportunity to compare ourselves with what we might call some of our sister institutions.

Professor Tolga Morawski (Brooklyn College) – As a representative for adjuncts and CLTs, I wanted to make the point, and I got a lot of feedback from adjuncts and CLTs at Brooklyn College, that because of our contact time with the Administration and the fact that as of now adjuncts are teaching 60% of classes, I think it’s important that it’s a holistic survey and that it’s not just limited to one group, full-timers. And Susan had said, "Maybe we’ll do the faculty and then later we’ll do adjuncts," but there are monetary issues; I don’t want it to get sidelined and then forgotten about. / Dean Savage [off mike] – I think that […] is time, cost, effort, and I’m planning on doing a […] survey of as many part-time faculty as I can. Would you be willing to, one, send me the list of the part-time faculty at Brooklyn College, and then administer the survey that I would…/ Chair O’Malley – It’s hard to get lists. But if we could do a partial, start working with the adjuncts, it would be nice. It’s hard for me to be in contact with representatives […] Part-time isn’t easy. / Chair – I’m not sure we can do it because this has to go out in a week or two, but we are interested in seeing if we can start doing at least a sample of adjuncts and we’d love to work with you to see what we can do. I need to get permission of the body for Syd to speak. Do I have permission? Yes. / Professor Morawski – I’ve got a question about this yet. You said a week or two. Is that the schedule for the survey? / Chair – We hope so. I got it today, the reformatted ones. Stasia’s going to work on it, and we’re trying to get the University to pay for franking. We hope it will be sent in a week or two, as fast as we can do it. / Unidentified – Is this paper or Web? / Chair – I’m afraid it’s paper. / Unidentified – You can’t do the Web and have any response rate. That simply will not do it. / Chair – And it’s privacy too. Syd, is it on this issue? Yes. So we have permission? Anyone object to Sid speaking? Everyone for it. OK, so speak.

Ms. Syd Lefkoe – Two part question. What’s your mailing list? / Chair O’Malley – It’s what we use for the Senate Digest. It will be the full-time faculty. / Ms. Lefkoe – Are administrators included in that? / Chair – No. / / Dean Savage [off mike] – The PSC had done a survey, including a […] survey for part-timers, which is in the can. […] they never quite got the permission […]. The survey that I’ve been talking about is the current version of the national survey for post-secondary faculty, which is in the field right now. […] to administrators, because a good number of administrators are faculty too, and they just ask what we’re doing now.

Chair O’Malley – The next issue is lobbying. We do have enough faculty; if someone else wants to come, we could have one more. Distinguished Professors, you can just read that on your own if you have any questions on that. Conference update, I’ve done that. Master Plan hearing: We fought hard for this Master Plan hearing. This is on April 5^th. I’ve contacted a lot of you and you signed up, but if you still want to sign up let me know and I think I can get you on the list. We did give you the faculty recommendations to the Master Plan that we crafted last year; it’s on the back table, so particularly if you want to address any of those, or whatever you want to address, but we need to be there because we really pushed the Regents for this hearing. I also found out in Albany yesterday that Carol Bellamy is going to be a new Regent, which I think is quite nice. Faculty development: There has been some concern expressed by Michael Barnhart and also Linda Grasso at York about the changes made by VC Botman. Take a look at that to see if you want to discuss it. Any question on faculty development? All right. The next thing on the agenda is the Resolution on Federal Support for Higher Education, which you have in front of you. I don’t think we have a quorum. However, should we just take a look to see if anyone has any input on this and refer it back to the Executive Committee? I think it’s extraordinarily important because it addresses Pell Grants. / Unidentified – If we were to ask the Executive Committee…? / Chair – They would look at it and they can forward it. / Unidentified – Why don’t you just refer to…/ Chair – We don’t have a quorum so we can’t vote on this, but it can be referred back to the Executive Committee. I don’t know what else we can do. Do we have a quorum, Parliamentarian? We’re 22 short. We haven’t voted on anything. So we’ll have to bring this back next time. I would just like to get it sent out but maybe we can’t. We cannot vote on it. / Unidentified – But the Executive Committee could vote and issue if from the Executive Committee. / Chair – Yes. But it will say approved by the Executive Committee, not by the plenary, because we don’t have a quorum given the snow. I’m not sure quite how to handle the next thing that Bill Crain put on. Let’s hear the issue. It’s in the back of the room, Resolution on the Senate Forum.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I’d like to get the sense of the body because the request is referred back to the Executive Committee anyway, with direction though. [Hew reads the resolution.] / Chair O’Malley – Do I have a second? We can’t have a second, but people can speak to it. Professor Baumrin - We’re not going to have the sense of the meeting unless everybody bespeaks themselves. I’m going to speak against it, but I would rather not speak to the Senate when most of the members are absent. So I think a sense of the meeting would be inappropriate to be gleaned from the discussion. / Chair – The Parliamentarian is right here, and she’s saying there’s no quorum and we should end it all. / Unidentified – Why don’t we let people say what we want to say? / Chair – Why don’t we have ten minutes or so just getting some things out, and then if there’s a quorum next time, we could vote. If I look at the list of who is on the Senate Forum, very few people from the UFS at on the Senate Forum, but that’s another issue; so they’re voting on something they don’t know anything about, which is curious.

Professor Lawrence Rushing (LaGuardia Community College) – I’d just like to urge the Senate to pass this resolution. I know that the Senate is vitally interested in the free speech and it just seems to me, given the concern of this body, that we ought to set an example for the faculty of this University that we can as faculty have an open dialogue on issues of great concern and even issues that are very emotional, and even issues that upset people, and even issues that are offensive maybe to us, but I think that is the price of open dialogue and democratic speech. And I don’t think the answer to offensive speech is less speech. I think the answer is more speech and more critical and open dialogue. / Chair O’Malley – Does anyone want to speak from the Academic Freedom Committee? Lenore?

Professor Lenore Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – I am Academic Freedom Committee liaison and Executive Committee Secretary. This issue is not an issue of academic freedom, as is often stated, because academic freedom relates to teaching and publication, and this is not such an issue. This is not an issue of free speech because the Senate Forum was established under certain rules that frame the issues of higher education and CUNY-related. I am on other listservs that function very well under the guidelines that have been established. There are many other venues on the Internet that allow people to discuss other issues that you want to discuss. There are also questions of appropriateness, of personal attacks. I know that we haven’t been as consistent in applying those rules as we should have been. I hope we will do better, but I don’t think that that’s a reason to widen the rules out the way that you want; I’m sorry. / Chair O’Malley – The list as it is now constituted belongs to the Executive Committee, for better or for worse, and they have decided they want a list that’s based on higher education. This has taken up more of my time as Chair of the Faculty Senate, but in some ways this discussion is out of order. What I am willing to do, and I started to talk to people in technology, is to start another list. But this list belongs to the Executive Committee; it has certain rules. What happened last summer is I had enough votes to close the list down, and I decided I wouldn’t do it even though I had the votes; some people felt very strongly not to close it down, but half of my Executive Committee wanted it shut down immediately. So I decided no, I wouldn’t do it, I would keep it open, but I would say the rules once again and see if we could follow them. And it’s true that on the listserv there’s a group of people who don’t want to follow the rules and don’t agree with the rules; they think the rules are wrong. So here I am supposedly running a listserv in which there are rules that about fifteen people think are wrong; it’s an impossible situation; I don’t quite know what to do. So I could start a whole other listserv in which people could talk about anything, and I’m willing to do that, but this listserv belongs to the Executive Committee and has rules, which is the discussion of higher education and we don’t attack each other, and there are a couple of other rules, copyright, things like that. OK, this is Peter Ranis. First I have to get permission from the body. Is it OK for Peter Ranis to speak? Yes. He’s an old friend of mine who disagrees with me so vigorously on this issue, I can barely go out in public when he’s there without him attacking me, but he’s still my friend.

Peter Ranis – Susan, I’ve never attacked you in public, only in private. / Chair O’Malley – You said that at a last meeting at the Graduate School. / Peter Ranis – But not in public; I spoke to you. I want to respond to Lenore. She makes the point, and I’ve hear her make it before, and it seems the persuasive point that the CUNY Senate Forum is provided for a specific purpose and if people want a real open forum they should go somewhere else. The point is that people like Lapides and me and Bill and a lot of people in this room want exactly this list because they want to exchange information with other people from CUNY; that’s the whole point. We don’t want to discuss with elementary school teachers in Alaska. The point is CUNY faculty and staff; that’s why we stay on this list. Now you mentioned the point that only twenty people from the governance are on this list, but the point is the list is beyond governance, is about the community of faculty and staff at CUNY. / Chair – Do you know how many people have called my office so upset with the list when it gets out of hand? There are a lot of people who are not as vocal on the list who want the list supervised. So I’m in a great bind. / Peter Ranis – I would just appeal to you for more of the [nine] attitude and let the flow freely. Now if there’s a real attack, and, frankly, I believe Lapides’ attack was more in the area of intellectual debate rather than a personal attack; right now there’s a business between Parikh and Lemisch that’s much worse than that; and then I see things by Andrew Beveridge; any time he publishes something it’s on the list. / Chair – He’s been told not to. / Peter Ranis – But he hasn’t been thrown off the list. / Chair – Not yet. / Peter Ranis – So there’s an arbitrariness about the list that I find. And then the other night you were at this conference on academic freedom. You know how David Horowitz with his academic bill of rights…We have a new student for the academic freedom list. If you look at their website is scary. It’s like a little Hitler youth movement to try to out teachers. / Chair – How do I find it? / Peter Ranis – Students for Academic Freedom. It’s probably been stimulated by Horowitz. And in this climate I think we should do our best to keep this alive as a forum.

Chair O’Malley – We have to get permission of the body for Bob Lapides to speak. I must say, and I shouldn’t say it, but my last communication from Bob Lapides was [an obscenity]. / Bob Lapides – Yes, I said [an obscenity], but that was in a moment of anger when I was so impolitely dropped, expelled permanently from the list, and I have to say it is really a pleasure to be here tonight and see all of you, and, Susan, I always thought of you as a friend; I’ve known you for 35 years and we’ve been friendly at a distance. / Chair – And you’ve written some nice articles. / Bob Lapides – Even though I actually have warm personal regard Susan I disagree with you on so many things and I’ve taken as my task on the Senate Forum to offer you a lot of criticism. For example tonight when you tried to stop somebody from raising the issue of the salaries with the Chancellor, I would have just popped right up and said, Susan, it’s appropriate to challenge the Chancellor, and that’s what I was doing for months and months. And I don’t believe the real reason that I was kicked off the list is because I said somebody was dishonest about his characterization of his intellectual opponents…[tape turned over]…

Professor Stefan Baumrin - The previous list, CUNY Talk, was abandoned by the Executive Committee because of that pattern of attempting to hijack the list for other purposes. Here we had to draw a line and said either we give up this list or we throw people off. I would be perfectly willing to throw off anyone else as they arise who think that this forum is to be used for politics, for pornography, or for personal glory.

Chair O’Malley – OK, so now we go home, right. Meeting adjourned. So moved.