Draft: Subject to Senate
Approval
MINUTES OF THE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH
PLENARY SESSION
OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE
OF THE CITY
UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
May 16, 2006
The meeting was called to order by UFS Chair O’Malley at 6:35 p.m. in
Room 9205/6/7 at the Graduate School and University
Center. 88 voting members of 118 were present.
Baruch: Present – Dumas, Freedman, Hill, Martell, Pollard,
and Vora. Absent – Albright,
and Smith. Vacancies – 1. BMCC: Present – Agwu, Belknap,
Friedman, Martinez-Lopez, Niyazov, Persaud, Rani, and Roy. Bronx
CC: Present – Alozie, and Alternate Ismail. Absent – Asimakopoulos,
and Durante. Vacant—2. Brooklyn: Present –
Antoniello, Bell,
Jacobson, Morawski, Shapiro, Tobey, and Alternate Wasser (F). Absent– Bloomfield, Cherukupalli, Rodman,
Viscusi, and Wills. CCNY: Present
– Crain, Daglish, Khalil, Lascar, and Sank.
Absent – Habib, and Leonard. Vacancies – 2. CSI:
Present – Cooper, Klibaner, Levine, Petratos, Yousef, and Alternates
Stearns and Zimmerman. Absent – Foleno, and Jayatilleke. CUNY
Law School:
Present – McArdle. Absent – Copelon. Graduate School:
Present – Baumrin, Cross, Lerner, Nolan and Orenstein. Absent – Matthews-Salazar,
and Nolan. Hostos CC:
Present – Bernardini, and Pimentel. Absent –Falcon. Vacancies - 1. Hunter:
Present – Palanda, Splitter, St. Hill and Alternate Tronto. Absent –Friedman,
Guzzetta, Kaye, Krishnamachari, McCormick, Sherrill, and Wimberly. Vacancies – 1. John
Jay: Present – Caldwell,
Crossman, Kaplowitz, King-Tobler, Kubic, Pascoe, and Alternates Chaffie,
Petraco, and Soto-Fernandez. Absent –Romero. Kingsborough CC: Present – Barnhart,
O’Malley, Ruoff, and Wood. Absent – Galvin, and Hume. LaGuardia CC: Present – Beaky, Lerman,
Mettler, Rushing, and Shean. Absent – Davidson. Lehman: Present – Jervis, Mineka, Philipp,
and Alternate Chaikin. Absent –
Aronowitz, Kolb, and Marianetti. Medgar
Evers: Present – Hastick and Stewart. Absent – Daly, Simmons, and Sparrow. NYCCT:
Present – Cermele, Dreyer, Horelick, Hounion, Richardson, and Alternate
McManus, Paynayotakis, and Matloff. Absent – Karthikeyan.
Queens: Present – Bird, Gonzalez, Moore,
Savage and Zevin. Absent – Brody, Casco, Habib, and
Tse. Vacancies – 2. Queensborough CC: Present –
Barbanel, Iconis, Jacobowitz, Pecorino and Alternates Burleson, and
Dahbany-Miraglia. Absent
– Hest. Vacancies – 1. York: Present – Frank, and Lewis. Absent— Divale and Rosenthal.
Governance Leaders present: Baurmin (GS), Cooper (CSI),
Dreyer (NYCTC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Martell (Baruch), Mettler
(LaGuardia), Pecorino (QCC), Savage (Queens), Tobey (Brooklyn) and Tronto
(Hunter). Zoe Cohen (Brooklyn), Susan
Farrell (KCC), Mona Hadler (Brooklyn), Syd Lefkoe (Queens), and Maya Sharma (Hostos), attended. Parliamentarian Andrea McArdle, Executive
Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were
also present.
I. Approval of
the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.
II. Approval of
the Minutes of April 2006: Minutes
were approved as distributed.
III.
Reports (Recorded
in Reports & Deliberations)
A.
Chair
IV. Election of
Officers and Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee: Professor Sally Mettler (English, LaGuardia),
chair of the Elections Committee, presided over elections. A full account is recorded in the Reports and
Deliberations.
The following Senators were elected:
Manfred Philipp (Lehman College),
Chair
Lenore Beaky (LaGuardia Community College),
Vice Chair
Martha Bell (Brooklyn College),
Secretary
Karen Kaplowitz (John Jay
College), Treasurer (continues on next page.)
Members-at-Large:
Stefan Baumrin (Graduate
School)
Sandi Cooper (College of Staten
Island)
Anne Friedman (BMCC)
Alfred Levine (College of Staten Island)
Philip Pecorino (Queensborough Community College)
Susan O’Malley (Kingsborough Community College), ex-officio
V. New Business:
A. Discussion on
CUNY Task Force on Retention. See
Reports & Deliberations.
B. Resolution to Honor Outgoing Chair Susan G.
O’Malley: Senator Kaplowitz presented
the following resolution on behalf of the Executive Committee. It was
unanimously adopted with much applause.
Whereas, Susan
O'Malley has had a long career dedicated to governance both at Kingsborough and
at the University-wide level, having been the elected Chair of the University
Faculty Senate since 2002, and
Whereas, She is one of CUNY's
foremost advocates for combining high academic standards with
accessibility to higher education for all CUNY students, and
Whereas, For decades she has not just talked about these goals
but has worked diligently and efficaciously towards accomplishing them, and
Whereas, She has
exemplified great humanity and intelligence in negotiating the political
maelstrom that often challenges the attainment of both goals, and
Whereas, She has
continued to publish and to maintain the life of the mind even during her time
as Chair, and
Whereas, She
has ably represented the Senate before the Board of Trustees on important
issues such as academic freedom, the integrity of degree programs, and the
prerogatives of faculty to determine academic policy, and
Whereas, She has seen through to completion
such important initiatives as the Faculty Experience Survey, and has organized
splendid conferences,
Therefore, Be It Resolved, That the
University Faculty Senate expresses its heartfelt appreciation to Susan
O'Malley for putting her many talents at its disposal for four years, and
Be It Further Resolved, That
the University Faculty Senate looks forward to her future contributions, and
Be It Finally
Resolved, That the University Faculty Senate acclaims Susan O'Malley
as its worthy and eminent leader emerita.
C. Resolution on
Brooklyn College Arts Exhibit: The
following resolution was presented by Tolga Morawski
of Brooklyn College for endorsement by the UFS. It was passed without dissent. A full
discussion is in the Reports & Deliberations.
Be it Resolved that (the University
Faculty Senate) and the Brooklyn College faculty, deplore that students’ artwork
was recently removed by the Brooklyn College administration, and we deplore
this act of censorship of artwork on the part of the Parks Department, and we
affirm students’ rights to be involved in any decisions or actions related to
their artwork.
There being no
further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:00 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Bill Phipps
Executive Director
OF THE CITY
UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
May 16, 2006
III. Reports:
Chair O’Malley - This marks the end of my four years as chair of the
University Faculty Senate. I’m most proud of: our Faculty Experience Survey,
the Conferences we held on the University and the Patriot Act and the blurring
of the Public and Private in Higher Education, our FGL-UFS Listserv that allows
us instantaneously to share information, our involvement in the establishment
of the School of Journalism, and the writing of the Master Plan, the
well-attended and lively monthly plenaries, our lobbying in Albany and our
carefully formulated collective response to OLBA. Concurrently the Perez decision has strengthened faculty
governance by stating unequivocally that college governance is the policy
making body on each campus. But I am also disturbed at what I see as the
erosion of faculty rights and responsibilities as higher education moves closer
to a corporate model and faculty become simply employees. Recently, when I was
having dinner with an old friend, a professor of Architectural Engineering at Drexel University,
he asked, “Do you ever say in your position that the University used to be
ours?” My friend, who has served both as a department chair and dean, was
speaking as a faculty member, alarmed at the corporate move in higher
education. We spoke of what I see as the clash of faculty collegiality with
administration hierarchy in the formulation of academic policy. Faculty, who
are not always collegial in their behavior, but who value good discussion, are
used to full consideration of ideas in the directives before policy is
formulated, but too often the CUNY central administration transmits directives
to the faculty with little or no faculty input. How many times has the UFS
requested that the central administration include consultation in their
directives to the campuses? And how rarely has that occurred? How many times
have policies been drafted by the central administration without any UFS input?
Even though the Board bylaws 8.13 (which if you don’t know it yet, you’ll hear
it repeated over and over again) states that there shall be a University
Faculty Senate responsible, subject to the Board, for the formulation of policy
relating to university level educational and instructional matters. A recent
example is the draft of the retention policy report, that
I happened to hear about at a meeting on another topic. The report would have been more accurate and
persuasive, and I trust less condescending to faculty, if faculty and faculty
governance had been involved in its preparation from its inception. It’s been a
rewarding and sometimes difficult four years. I’ve learned much about CUNY and
higher education, about which I plan to write during my spring sabbatical. In
some respects I believe the UFS has become stronger in the last four years but
in other respects I have felt as if I had my finger in the dike, stanching the
corporate rush or the transformation from a time when the university used to be
ours to a more hierarchical model in which faculty are employees responding to
the directives of university administrators, most of whom would not define
themselves as academics, having spent little or no time teaching or conducting
research. It is at these times that I worry about the future of the academic
integrity of higher education.
IV. Nominations &
Election for Officers and Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee: Candidates’ speeches:
Professor Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy,
Graduate School
and University Center) – I’ve actually prepared a
speech, but I can’t see it. So a little later, I’ll pick it up to read you the
better parts. I have been told not to say anything amusing. Please hold your
laughter for someone else. Since November 17th when the Perez decision was handed down by the
Court of Appeals of the State of New
York, Justice Kaye delivering the opinion, the
attitude of the central administration has slowly evolved into one of marginal
respect, bordering on a revolution. And it of course occurs to all of you on
your campuses, but also in the Senate, where reluctantly they’re taking us more
and more seriously. I serve, as most of you know, on the Budget Advisory
Committee chaired by Al Levine, and there I think our opinions are taken very
seriously. The Vice-Chancellor for Legal Affairs reluctantly talks to us now.
Possibly they’re finding it difficult to deal with a resurgent faculty. We’ll
find out about that as time goes on. One word about Perez, because I think it’s sort of important. If you empower your
faculties to resist the central administration, it will abort the process of
dean-ification of your Presidents. I joined our Faculty in 1967. I joined this
Senate in 1973. It has been since the center of my consciousness. What you get
with me is my uncontrollable passion for academic life and this University.
Thank you.
Professor Thomas Bird
(Russian, Queens College) – Susan told us that it was going to be a challenging
year, serving on our Albany lobbying team, acting as Liaison with our Academic
Policy Committee under Michael Barnhart’s leadership, as a member of this very
high-powered Executive Committee in this very exciting year of OLBA and Perez.
I ask for your vote, and solicit your suggestions and ideas so that I
can continue to work for you, for effective articulation between our community
colleges and our senior colleges and for campus-based faculty governance that
is under siege, as Stefan has indicated, for the welfare of our adjunct and junior
faculty colleagues, and for a more visible and stronger and better funded City
University. I will appreciate your vote. Thank you.
Professor Sandi Cooper
(History, College
of Staten Island) –I
guess I differ slightly with Stefan about the positive effects visible thus far
from Perez. I also came in 1967 and
joined the Executive Committee of this body in 1978. But in the past few years,
it seems to me that the disrespect for the elected representatives of the
faculty, exemplified by the academic policy initiatives of the central
administration, has gone beyond anything one ever experienced in the years I
have been on this Committee. Armed with the politically inspired Schmidt
report, largely written by the Manhattan Institute, the Goldstein administration
has chosen to bypass the University’s academic programs and mission with the
aid of cherry-picked faculty collaborators. It is their view that most of us
are tiresome hacks, defending old turf, concerned with personal privilege,
boring governance proprieties, and that we ignore the greater good which they
seem to see from their heights. This Executive Committee in the next year must
devote its energy to reversing this trend, and taking it back where it belongs.
We need to focus on the OpEd pages of The
New York Times again. We have to demonstrate, and I think it’s easy to do,
that the centrally driven proposals and programs have lowered standards in this
University, while the rhetoric has claimed to raise them. We have to return to
the political fray not as adjuncts of the Chancellor, merely going up for
money, but to go and persuade politicians, but perhaps more important the Board
of Regents, the State Department of Education, and yes, Middle States, that it
is the Faculty that should drive curriculum and not some fantasy of what
somebody read in a handout from the American Council on Education. The
Chancellor tries to divert us each year with a lullaby that the State is no
longer supporting the public sector. Perhaps this is true, and in fact the
statistics bear it out. It does not however justify the muscular disrespect for
the faculty, and for the professionals it has asked us to hire and appoint. We
have to launch this new administration with a Faculty Experience Survey of
Eightieth Street. Perhaps this survey should also be sent to Presidents,
Provosts, and Deans so they can sign it anonymously. Maybe we’ll get somewhere
if we start with innovative PR games; it seems to be the way to go. Thank you.
Professor Anne Friedman (Developmental
Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – Many of us have struggled for
a long time here to regain a meaningful voice in the running of our university,
others of you are here for the first time and I know that you will invigorate
our group with fresh spirit and strong resolve. We do the teaching, we do the
research, and we along with our students make this university a great
university. I believe I have done a pretty good job on the Executive Committee
so far. I’ve been your liaison to Status of the Faculty Committee and this has
been an active and a productive group.
I’d like to continue with that. I’m also the voting faculty member on
the BOT Committee on Faculty, Staff and Administration. Here I have been an
articulate and steadfast advocate for you, addressing crucial issues, such as
Affirmative Action, Search Waivers, the Executive Compensation Plan, and most
recently looking into faculty hiring processes. I think that on this particular
committee of the Board, continuity is very important and I’d like to continue
in that endeavor. As a leader in the PSC I’ve spent 6 years dealing with the
Chancellery and legal counsel at the collective bargaining table. This has
given me an intimate understanding, sometimes too intimate, of how our
administrators think and how they operate. While the UFS and the PSC are two
distinct bodies, there are issues where governance and working conditions
clearly overlap. The Polishook-Cooper decision, now reaffirmed in the Perez decision, and areas such as
intellectual property, academic freedom and tenure are examples of where we can
collaborate and increase our potential power. In my work with the AAUP I meet
with colleagues across the country and this has helped me to expand my
understanding of our local challenges in national perspective. So I ask for
your support. I know the issues, I know the players, and I think I have
demonstrated my commitment to working with all of you. From senior and
community colleges with full-time, part-time and CLT faculty, in all of our
disciplines I offer you respect, I offer you tenacity and energy and a positive
vision for our collective future. Thank you.
Professor Eda Harris-Hastick
(Social and Behavioral Sciences, Medgar
Evers College)
– I ask for your vote for the following reasons: I’ve served on the University
Faculty Senate Executive Committee in the past and I have traveled with
colleagues to Albany,
lobbying. I’ve served on the Research Committee, Student Affairs, CUNY BA, Affirmative Action. I am committed to City University.
I believe I have a very special role to play and I ask for your vote. Many of
you do not know me. I see a lot of new faces, and that’s wonderful; new ideas,
fresh ideas. But let me tell you just a little bit about my style. I believe in
collaborating with others and my colleagues with whom I’ve served on the
University Faculty Senate committee before will tell you that I speak openly
about my point of view and I’m open to suggestions. I believe that we have to
work together to find solutions. You’ve heard a lot tonight about some of the
issues that are facing us, such as: faculty governance, faculty satisfaction,
faculty-driven curriculum and so on. I believe I have a special role to play. I
ask for your vote, I pledge to represent all of you, Community Colleges, Senior Colleges,
full-time, part-time. I would appreciate your vote and your support and I plan
to continue my high level of commitment, my passion for this university,
passion for what we do in the classroom with students. Thank you.
Professor Alfred Levine
(Engineering, Science, and Physics, College
of Staten Island)-
I joined CUNY in 1970 and
fell in love with the institution. My students were wonderful, resident
undergraduate tuition was $0, and faculty were
encouraged to develop innovative programs. I remember speaking to a colleague
at a non-CUNY school who explained to me that administrators come and go, but
it’s the faculty that determine the quality of an institution. Thirty-six years
later our students are still wonderful [tape flipped] …
Professor Terrence Martell (Finance, Baruch) -
…You certainly wouldn’t want five Martells on your
Executive Committee, but you could well use one. I am a reasonable expert in
Finance; I know how to deal with this corporate bureaucracy that we talk about.
I would just simply ask that you remember, I am President of the Baruch Faculty
Senate, I sit on the Cabinet of the College, seven of us, and I’m the only
faculty member there. I don’t whinge about respect, faculty shouldn’t have to
whinge about respect, faculty should demand and get
respect. If you elect me to the Executive Committee, I will do my best to do
for the University Faculty Senate what I have done at Baruch. We’ve
reestablished the principle that the Baruch College Faculty Senate participates
in academic decisions. We’ve reestablished the principle that members of the
faculty are sitting at the decision-making table when the decisions are made,
not responding after the fact. I will give you that and I will give you my
commitment that while you might not want five of me, one would be a pretty good
bet. Thank you.
Professor Phillip Pecorino –
(Social Sciences, Queensborough
Community College) – I
want to welcome the new members of this Senate. I hope you find your time here,
however long it will be, as rich as my experiences have been over the last
half-dozen years or so. I arrived in 1972 at the University, and it’s become a
good part of my life, not the center of my consciousness – Stefan, you’ve got
grandchildren! The Yankees are closer to
the center of my consciousness. But I’ve dedicated myself to a few things that
I’ll highlight. You have my written statement there and I have the advantage of
endorsing all of the wonderful things every one of my competitors, colleagues
and fellow nominees have said. I support in particular Sandi’s statement about
a more aggressive approach, particularly with outside authorities in
representing our case to them as we can do best. But two things I want to
highlight. One is that, I have to
confess, I have a hypersensitivity to threats to academic freedom. Sometimes
people think I perceive them when there are none there. More often than not,
give it a year or two, and they agree with me that it was there. I probably
continue in that vein, sounding the hue and cry for all of us when I think
there’s something amiss and threatening to what our prerogatives are and our
basic freedoms. The second area is in governance, and again I’m echoing what
others have said. I would like your endorsement in playing a role in seeing
that we are restored to the proper role and perhaps, maybe not restored, but
finally given the proper role that we and only we deserve to have in the
governance of the University. So I ask you all for that. I would be a newcomer
to the Executive Committee so I’m not a Martell quite, but a semi-Martell, if
you want to compromise and put one of us there. Thank you.
V. New Business:
A. Discussion of CUNY Task Force on Retention
Professor
Michael Barnhart (History, Kingsborough
Community College) – I’m
Chair of the Academic Policy Committee, for those who are newly minted
senators. We received a copy of the retention report as did the rest of the
Faculty Senate, and we discussed it this afternoon at our committee meeting. I
think we had the same reaction that probably many of you had when you read it.
There are things in there that are somewhat incendiary
if you are a teaching faculty member.
There are also quite a number of vaguely worded suggestions about things
that might be done to boost retention at the various campuses. We believe that
there are actually quite a number of issues that end up getting conflated in
that report, including issues of retention and also graduation rates and
attitudes that may or may not pervade the campuses about the preparation of our
students. We concluded that because there were so many issues, and that in the
end there seemed to be so little that was actually concrete in the way of
actual suggestions in terms of how this was going to shake out in terms of
University policy, that we would devote at least the fall of the upcoming
academic year in our committee to a study of this report and also of the
general initiatives that surround undergraduate education at CUNY, starting
with an interview with Judith Summerfield, the Dean for that area. So I guess
this is sort of an informational item. / Chair O’Malley - I did write a response that I will
circulate to the Executive Committee and to anyone else who wants to see
it. It’s a draft. I think it’s important
to have something sent immediately but there is a lot more work that we need to
do. / Professor Cooper- It’s possible that this is not happening at every
campus, but it’s happening at some. In terms of the Provost being forced to
comply with this retention report that 80th Street has produced, one
of the things that is being done is calculating the
number of students registered in every course in the college and how many
complete it. If you have drop-outs, for instance if somebody drops because your
syllabus is too tough, this counts as not being retained in the college and the
effect of this is grim. /
C. Resolution on Brooklyn
College Arts Exhibit: Tolga Morawski (Art, Brooklyn
College) – First I want to read the
proposed resolution (see the Minute for the text) and then I would like to get
permission to have a couple of guests speak briefly from Brooklyn College.
The resolution was passed by Brooklyn College Faculty Council, 58 in favor, 10
against, and 6 abstentions: “We, the Brooklyn College faculty, deplore that
students’ artwork was recently removed by the Brooklyn College administration,
and we deplore this act of censorship of artwork on the part of the Parks
Department, and we affirm students’ rights to be involved in any decisions or
actions related to their artwork.” That is the resolution. / Chair O’Malley- Do
I have a second? / [Off mic] – Second. / Chair
O’Malley- We need permission of the body for two non-senators to speak? Yes?
Professor Mona
Hadler (Art,
Brooklyn College)
– I’m a professor in the Art Department at Brooklyn
College and also here at the Graduate Center.
We also brought Zoe Cohen who’s the head of
the MFA students so that you could ask her questions if you wanted. A week ago
we had our opening. Everyone was there,
there was no problem, and it was a wonderful show. The next day, Julius Spiegel decided that
several of the works needed to be censored. He’s the commissioner of Parks in Brooklyn. The issue is censorship -- even if they were
more outrageous they should not have been censored. I can tell you they were
not really offensive but that’s not really the point. The point as far as I’m
concerned is censorship. The next day, the students went to the show and the
locks had been changed and they were never allowed to talk to them.
Traditionally what happens when art shows have works that are deemed
questionable in any way, traditionally signage is put up and children are
warned, parents are warned to not bring their children. People do not mind
doing that in the art world. It’s
happened in the Museum
of Modern Art
endlessly. There is wonderful Dada shows
where curtains were put up. I’m supposed to be quicker; I’m very emotional
about this. They could have negotiated, they were not allowed, meetings were
cancelled. We were supposed to go on
Friday to meet with them. We were told that we shouldn’t go because First
Amendment rights were being defended.
All of a sudden it was leaked to the paper that the show was going to
come down. We were never, the students
were never, allowed to in any way negotiate with it. Finally, one of the
ultimate outrages of this was that we agreed to have a meeting where the
students wanted to negotiate on Monday morning.
They were asked not to bring a lawyer, so faculty and students came. At the same time, the meeting was cancelled and
the art was being taken down by the college. We raced to the place and stopped
it for a little while but not in the end. So, what we ask of you is to please
support the resolution because of censorship.
It is wrong and our students have to be supported. This is an
education. We have to defend First
Amendment rights and we have to tell students that we defend it as well. /
Chair O’Malley- Thank you. And now, the next person. /
Professor Hadler- I’d like to thank you all for your time and introduce the head
of the MFA, Zoe Cohen.
Zoe Cohen - I’m president of the
Graduate Art Student Union and I just wanted to emphasize that the students
were never given the opportunity to negotiate with the College or the Parks
Department through the College. At a number of points during the three or four
days after our show was locked, we requested just access to be able to receive
information about the events, to request the support of our College against
this outside body that had deemed our MFA show as an academic requirement to be
closed down. It just seems that our College never once considered the
possibility of supporting us in the show that we had opened in the space that
the College provided us, and that the College in fact made the decision without
consulting us whatsoever to remove the work physically from the gallery that we
had installed the work in, at the same time that we were scheduled to be
meeting with the Provost to ask for their support. / Chair O’Malley- Thank you.
Charles Tobey, did you want to speak? Head of governance at Brooklyn College.
Professor
Charles Tobey (Physical
Education, Brooklyn College) - Chairman of the Faculty Council at Brooklyn College. I think that most of the
Council agreed to support this resolution. I do, too. There are just a few
facts that have to be brought out so you really understand what’s happening
here. The art was deemed obscene, some of the art, by functionaries in the city
government, and they closed up the gallery. They locked the gate and locked the
door and you couldn’t get in. The students, the night before they locked it,
wrote a statement indicating that they wanted to have the right to move any art
and do anything that was going to affect their art. But what they really wanted
was to keep the art where it was, at the Armory. That was looked at by city
officials as an ultimatum that this was where they wanted it. Supposedly there
was an agreement between the College and the Parks Department that there would
only be art in that gallery suitable for families. That hasn’t been found
anywhere in writing yet but maybe that was a shake-hands agreement. So what
happened was, some administrators went down to the gallery and they found four
sanitation trucks parked outside the door. Immediately, they felt that this was
what they were doing. The students gave them an ultimatum, they refused to
accept it, and they were going to just discard all of the artwork. At that
point the College moved in and said, “We’ll take it, we don’t want you to have
it.” It could have been done better, it could have
been done more gently. Some of the work did get damaged, some of it beyond
repair. They just put all of it in the back of a pick-up truck and took it
away, stored it at Brooklyn
College. Since then, they
found another gallery in DUMBO and they’re going to let the students decide
whether or not they want to relocate and put the project in there. Could it
have been handled better by Brooklyn
College? Perhaps. Maybe they
could have begged for one more day and gotten the stuff out themselves, or
maybe they could have been more careful in handling the art but I don’t think
the administration or the College was responsible for impinging on academic
freedom or the First Amendment. I think that was really from the Parks Department, and by acquiescence the Mayor who refused to get
in on this. The way the motion is worded right now I fully support it.
Professor
Manfred Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I just wanted to note that the news
reports said that the artwork had been physically damaged and destroyed, and
that this resolution does not really address that issue as far as I could see
it. I just wanted to note that absence.
Professor
Philip Pecorino (Social Sciences, Queensborough Community College)- The Supreme Court
regards academic freedom as a special enunciation of one of the First Amendment
rights, and there has already been a court case adjudicated on behalf of the
faculty -- I think it was Corpus Christi, Texas. There was an artistic
performance, a drama and the community didn’t like it and the administration
wanted to stop the performance, but the principle was that the faculty
determines what’s most appropriate in terms of the instructional program both
in the classroom and surrounding the classroom on the college campus. This work
was actually part of the academic program, a requirement, so this is not simply
First Amendment, freedom of speech, or artistic expression, it’s also got to do
with academic freedom. This is my hypersensitivity.
Chair O’Malley – On the motion, all those
in favor? / [Multiple Voices] – Aye. / Chair O’Malley-
All those against? Abstentions? OK / [Unidentified
Speaker] – What’s the name of the abstention? / Chair O’Malley – There’s one
abstention. Passed without dissent. That would be
accurate.