September 26, 2000

Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in Room 630 of John Jay College. Present were Senators from the following campuses: Baruch: Hill, McCall, Pollard, and Alternate Reusch; BMCC: Friedman, Herz, Neis, Price, Vozick, Young, and Alternate Martin; Bronx CC: Fuld, Read, Skinner, and Alternate Brennan; Brooklyn: Bell, Jacobson, Kahan, London, Shapiro, and Tobey; CCNY: Connorton, Crain, and Sohmer; CSI: Cooper, Levine, and Alternate Petratos; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin and Philipp; Hostos CC: Canate; Hunter: Doss, Krishnamachari, Steinberg, Wallach, and Wonsek; John Jay: Bohigian, Clarke, Davenport, Kaplowitz, and Alternate Davenport; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Richter; LaGuardia CC: Beaky, Gallagher, Mettler, and Reitano; Lehman: Avani, Bullaro, Feinerman, and Alternate Mineka; Medgar Evers: Harris-Hastick, Umolu, and Alternate Leocal; NYC Technical: Cermele, Hounion, and Walter; Queens: Hemmes and Kulkarni; Queensborough CC: Barbanel, Greenbaum, Weiss, and Alternate Tully; York: Coleman, Cooper, and Kirkpatrick. Governance Leaders present: Cooper (York), Feinerman (Lehman), Hemmes (Queens), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), O’Malley (Kingsborough), Perlstein (BMCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Davidson, Frisz, King, Richardson, Rodriguez, and Yousef. Executive Director Phipps and Administrative Assistant Pasela were present.

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minutes of June 6, 2000: The Minutes were approved as distributed.

III.Reports: [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

A.Chair (oral and written).

B.Chancellor (oral).

C.Representatives of the Board Committees (written).

D.Liaisons on Campus Conditions (oral and written).

IV. Approval of UFS Standing Committee Slate 2000-01: The Slate was approved with corrections.

V. Annual Committee Reports (written). Available in the UFS Office

VI. Invited Guest – Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer: [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

VII. New Business: Professor Crain (Psychology, City) introduced a "Resolution on Remediation Exit Exam" which was referred to the Executive Committee. (attached).

There being no further business the meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps

Executive Director                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                            Subject to Senate Approval

a. Chair: This is a plea. We will need the input of the various discipline councils. Some of them have functioned well, some have not functioned at all, and some have never been organized. We will be soliciting, through the chairs of the various departments, the organization and enhancement of the ongoing discipline councils. We will possibly organize discipline councils that have not met. There are academic fields that are either not speaking, or speaking past each other, to the point they can’t make reasonable input as to what the attitude of the faculty is toward a lot of questions. Oct. 24^th will be Committee night. This is taking place at Lehman College in the Bronx, across the street from the reservoir. There is much parking, a block from the train station, and it is a safe neighborhood. Are there any questions that have some immediacy about them?

Professor Levine (Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island) – "I wish to comment on the report from the Doctoral Education Committee. It describes the inequitable funding support for, and financial aid to, doctoral students at CUNY, in contrast to SUNY. According to this report, they did not receive help from various administrators in obtaining information. At the last meeting of the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders, Chancellor Goldstein stated that if faculty wish to make suggestions for the Budget Request, they should make them directly to him, or to the Budget Committee of this group. I would suggest that this is a perfect example of where a faculty committee should come up with a proposal and present it to the Chancellor for inclusion in the Budget Request for next year. If you don’t want to do it yourself, give it to me and I will hand it to the appropriate person."

Professor S. Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "I served as the Executive Committee liaison to the Doctoral Education Committee. I will attest to the fact that we spent 18 months in an effort to collect this data. The faculty at SUNY are not exactly forthcoming. The truth is that the SUNY graduate student is almost entirely supported. The CUNY graduate student is almost entirely self-supported on the average. We could just not get the numbers for it. This inequity arises from the fact that once upon a time CUNY was free: the tuition was free. When it was free, the graduate students had a minimum set of fees they paid. Once tuition was introduced, however, no one seemed to have bothered to line up the different scales between CUNY and SUNY. This is the best that I could come up with. We had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to get data. I do know anecdotally that nearly every graduate student in the history departments at the four university centers of SUNY are totally supported. I think the science graduate students are as well. Anyone who has taught at our Graduate Center knows that our students are scrambling, they are working, and they have much higher rents to pay, than a student in a graduate student dormitory at Stony Brook. We really did wish very much to do something about this. But without data, you can’t prove it. I don’t know where else to go to get it." / Chair Sohmer – It is also the fact that the support at SUNY for the graduate students is categorized in the budget as financial aid. Somehow or other, that magic word gets money for SUNY students, which doesn’t work for CUNY students.

There are several vacancies in the Senate, and we are only so strong as our membership. The Graduate School, Queens, City, and Medgar Evers are lacking members. If you are from one of those institutions, please do something and encourage others to run.

b. Chancellor: Good evening. I will stay with the tradition of making my remarks very brief. I announced at the Board meeting last night that we are going to defer presenting a budget message to the Board until November. This is to give more time to get ideas from this body and other constituencies in the University. I look forward to working with the Committee on Budget for the Senate. When I worked with the Governance Leaders a couple of weeks back, I stated that I want to see ideas that you might have and incorporate them into the budget presentation for the Governor.

We will meet with the Governor in mid-October. We have had preliminary meetings with the Secretary to the Governor and other staff members in the Governor’s office to outline the parameters of what we think will be needed by the University. I reported to this body that I am optimistic that we are going to get consideration for some of the things that are so fundamental to the health of this institution. Of course the mantra that we are continuing to cite is full-time faculty. We are going to stay with the Master Plan, and see if we can get that done over the next 5-7 years.

In addition to talking about full-time faculty, we are discussing academic support personnel. So many of you have brought to my attention that over the years you have lost considerable numbers of academic support personnel. All of us who work in classrooms know how vitally important this is to the daily life of the faculty, and also for complementing activities for students. We’re going to incorporate that as well. The third area is expanding our use of technology on the campuses. The thing that I am most interested in is not so much what people refer to as a distance learning paradigm for instruction, although I think we should do that and do it more aggressively than we do, but I want to bring technology into the life of the classroom for our students. This is something that brings greater depth and resources to the learning of students. I use the term "asynchronous learning environment" within a classroom, because variation is a way of life in all of our classrooms since students are learning at different speeds. Technology can be used in a very effective way to create a different kind of learning environment. That is expensive stuff. You don’t just put a computer in a classroom, do some wiring, and it’s done. The real challenge here is not so much the technology and architecture, but faculty development.

Another area that needs attention is our legacy systems, our information systems that you’ve heard me lament about for some time. It is appalling how difficult it is to get basic information that integrates other kinds of information. I am hearing this from several of our campuses, and I am seeing several of you nodding. We can’t find people to replace those who are leaving, because the people we need to hire are not even trained in the languages that these platforms are built upon. They are languages that people no longer study or are interested in learning. We have to move much more aggressively in this arena. It is going to take a lot of money.

I heard Sandi as I walked in, and she is absolutely right -- we have to find a way to support graduate students to a much greater extent on our campuses than we have. This is probably the hardest problem for us to solve. We are talking with some developers now about opportunities for building subsidized housing for graduate students. This serves as a great impedance, in this system, to attract the best and most able graduate students. Because coming to this city and finding a good place to live becomes a heavy burden. These are kinds of things that we really need to be doing. I am going to stop at this point. I have a lot of other things to share with you. But I know that Borough President Ferrer is coming in a little while. I want to give all of you an opportunity to query me any way that you want. With your permission, I will open up the microphones to questions. Rick Schaffer, our newly installed General Counsel and Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs, is here. We are lucky to have a man of this stature. Rick, it is good to see you, and thank you for coming. All of you know Executive Vice Chancellor Louise Mirrer, who is here with us as well.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "Could you discuss the budget reductions in the community colleges. What caused them? And how are the colleges sharing them?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I didn’t know that we had budget reductions. / Professor O’Malley – "The enrollment is down…" / Chancellor Goldstein – Enrollment is up overall in the University, and way up, even more than I reported a couple of weeks ago. The budget for the community colleges is all about enrollment. That is not the case in the senior colleges, as all of you know. / Professor O’Malley – "But for this year there was a $5.6 million reduction in the budget for the community colleges. That is from the enrollment last year. In my college what they are doing is cutting the travel for faculty to conferences." / Chancellor Goldstein – From last year to this year there was a big drop in enrollment, which affects the base budget. What this is really showing us is that, with all due respect, many of us were asleep at the switch. There is absolutely no reason why, from last year to the current year, we lost enrollment in our community colleges. We showed a capacity this summer with a brief amount of activity, in really two months, to turn around an enrollment deficit that was projected by some to be as high as 20%. I even heard numbers of 30%, but of course they were poorly defined estimates. What they were based on, I don’t know, but people were making those judgments. At the end of the day our enrollment for first-time freshmen at least at the community colleges is up by close to 10%. If you don’t enroll the students you are going to lose dollars. If you enroll the students, you are going to get the dollars. / Professor O’Malley – "I was just talking about the reduction this year, the $5.6 million." / Chancellor Goldstein - If you didn’t enroll the students, there is going to be a budget reduction. Each president is going to be responsible for managing his or her budget. / Professor O’Malley – "Is it shared evenly, or how is it done?" / Chancellor Goldstein – It is based upon the revenue that is brought in by that particular college.

Professor Wallach (Political Science, Hunter College) – "I just want to respond to the comments you made about the various planks that you are stepping on and promoting, in respect to the Governor and everywhere else. My concern is the way in which there may be tensions between various aspects of fronts that you are promoting: on the one hand, the desire for more full-time faculty, and on the other hand, the exponential expansion of the use of very expensive technology. Couldn’t it be the case that in many instances we could be trading full-time faculty lines for more technology? This is a concern of mine, because the impact of technology on the classroom is different depending on the classroom. Some classrooms, like the ones in which I function, really don’t need technology." / Chancellor Goldstein – What field are you in? / Professor Wallach – "Political theory. Socrates wasn’t really interested in technology and thought that dialog was really the way to learn. In any event, the expansion of technology in the classroom may be good for asynchronous learning, but it will have an asymmetrical effect on the various kinds of education that proceed in the University. It may be the case that certainly many people do benefit more from certain kinds of technology than from others. I wonder to what extent you are aware of this? I hope you are." / Chancellor Goldstein – I do agree that it is an asymmetrical system -- that it doesn’t apply equally to all disciplines. There may be some disciplines where you are absolutely right, where it shouldn’t apply at all. I don’t see, in any way, the use of technology impacting on the reduction of full-time faculty. What I would predict is that we would have a greater need for academic support services for our faculty who use the technology. If you were going to build a university where you were beaming one professor’s lectures to a multiple of students that typically would be taught by a full-time member of the faculty, then I would say there is a legitimate issue here. But that is not what I’m interested in doing. What I do worry about is having the faculty develop those tools which they will need in order to do this effectively. And secondly, having the capacity to support the faculty with sufficient academic support services. Those are the kinds of things I worry about. Does that answer your question? / Professor Wallach – "It answers part of it. I think there is, to my mind at least, a little too much enthusiasm for technology as a naturally helpful element in an educational environment. In many cases it is not." / Chancellor Goldstein – I would agree. That’s why I think this is a very asymmetrical kind of process. It will go where it is appropriate.

Professor Pollard (Library, Baruch College) – "I’m happy to hear that you are going to be recruiting more full-time faculty. My question is what kind of incentives are you going to use to recruit and retain a more diverse faculty, particularly underrepresented groups on the faculty?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I think all of us have to work very hard -- department chairs, faculty who are recruiting, deans, and provosts. We have to understand that we live in a very rich and diverse environment here at City University. That is really our great strength. The degree to which we can associate that great diversity with a more diverse faculty is something that we need to work very hard on. It is a matter of recruiting and making the kinds of environments that people will feel very welcomed in. I’m sure that most of you saw the story about Harvard Law School trying to recruit their African-American alumni. Very many of the alumni didn’t want to do it because they found the environment at Harvard to be unwelcoming. Unless we can create a welcoming environment for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, and gender, we are not going to have the kind of rich faculty that we really need to put in front of the classroom. I think we all have to have our consciousness raised about it, and we have to work hard to do it.

Professor Kulkarni (Mathematics, Queens College) – "My question is about the faculty diversity. I am requesting that you make a more detailed profile of faculty diversity at CUNY available to the faculty at CUNY. In today’s distributed material, there is a summary of a recent Board of Trustees Committee on Faculty, Staff, and Administration. Trustee Curtis chairs this committee, and he announced that the Master Plan requires diversity in the workforce. He also sent letters to several colleges that lack diversity, from what I understand. I wish to bring to your attention that the Graduate School had a Middle States review last March, and in the Middle States report released in June 2000 it says, "It was clear from the site visit that there is work to increase diversity still to be done. Students of color still find the Graduate Center more daunting than their majority counterparts. Faculty are far from representing the model of diversity." This comment refers to the fact that there are very few minority doctoral faculty, and that for those who are there, their participation is severely restricted for many systemic reasons. The issue is not only about insuring access, but also about ensuring and maintaining excellence. Let me give you one example from last week. It does not affect me personally so I can discuss it more freely. Our good friend Dr. Stefan Baumrin, from the Ph.D. program in philosophy, informed me that there is no one in that program who works in Indian philosophy. There is someone there who works in Chinese philosophy, but he hardly teaches in the program. I do believe, Chancellor Goldstein, with my experiences, if that is true, CUNY has closed its doors to about half the philosophical wisdom of the world." /

Chancellor Goldstein – Just a point of clarification. No letter was sent by Trustee Curtis. A letter was sent at my direction by Vice Chancellor Malone on the issue that some of our campuses have, within their executive ranks, not enough diversity to my liking and certainly to the liking of some members of the Board. This was really a letter to raise the consciousness, and to do more than has been demonstrated in the past. That is just a correction to the statement that you made. With respect to your citing the Middle States report, as you so aptly read, I agree that we have to do more, as I said before. It is something that we just have to be vigilant about, and hopefully we will succeed to a better degree than we have at some of our campuses. / Professor Kulkarni – "I wish to know what your office has done so far by way of data collection. I am aware that the university publishes the number of minorities and women in CUNY’s workforce. I feel that that is not sufficient. As the Middle States team report suggests, we need more sensitive indices, indicating actual utilization of minorities and women, according to their disciplines. My question is, has your office considered and calculated such indices?" / Chancellor Goldstein – What we could use is a consultant like yourself. If you want to come in with your strong mathematical talents, we will be happy to try to learn from you. / Professor Kulkarni – "Thank you. I shall try to contact you."

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I want to ask you again about these placement tests and the SAT. I put out on the table for people the RAND Corporation’s report on the correlation between the current placement test, the SAT, and freshman grades. They are really abysmal. They range from .04 to .25. These would not be acceptable. In other words, the SAT and the placement test that we currently use are not predicting freshman grades. Now we are going to have a remediation exit exam commissioned by ACT. But ACT traditionally gets the same results as the SAT, and it produces poor results among students of color and among women. It has real problems. It is coming in, as I understand, at the end of this term. We haven’t seen any data on the reliability or the validity of it. Shouldn’t we be assessing this as a faculty, going over the appropriateness of this test before it comes in?" / Chancellor Goldstein – You have asked me that question in various ways. Let me just respond again. The amount of variance that is explained by just using the SAT in performance in the first year at a baccalaureate institution, we all know, is very low. But the amount of variance is explained when the SAT is conjointly related with other variables, like high school average, placement, class, and all the other things that we use in the index. It really does show a strong association. / Professor Crain – "0.2 – 0.29." / Chancellor Goldstein – With respect to the ACT, the ACT is a nationally normed test. Why CUNY is different than anyone else in the world, I don’t know. It is normed against other large urban systems. We are going to use it and see how it works. If it doesn’t work well, then we will look to do something else.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) – "I’d like to ask you to speak about something you mentioned to the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders that encouraged me and my colleagues. It was your sense of the need to change the proficiency exam from a barrier to a diagnostic test. You acknowledged that certain Board policies might need to be revised, amended, or revoked. That was one of them, and the ESL policy was another." / Chancellor Goldstein – I have always believed that any policy at this Board is basically a living statement of actions that the Board feels need to be taken for a certain purpose. If, over time, the purposes that led to that policy are very different than what was intended, then I think that policy needs to be looked at and either thrown out or amended and changed in some way. I think that universities have to work like that. If they don’t, they are static in time, and ultimately aren’t going to help students, which I think everyone in this room believes. With respect to the ESL policy that was promulgated in 1995, my sense is that that is an example of a policy that we ought to look at a little more carefully, now that we have had five years worth of experience implementing that particular policy. What I indicated, I guess it was ten days ago, and I’ll indicate today, is that Louise Mirrer is working with the ESL discipline council. I don’t know if they have reported out on their recommendations. But if they have, these are recommendations that we are going to consider very carefully. If it leads us to a conclusion that that 1995 policy ought to be changed in some fashion then we will bring it to the Board for their consideration. As far as I know, unless Louise can give me more information than I have right now, I don’t know if those discussions have finished with ESL. /

Professor Kaplowitz – "Although I am interested in the ESL policy, I am more specifically interested in any thinking about bringing to the Board any revisions about the proficiency." / Chancellor Goldstein – Let me indicate what I’ve always believed about the proficiency exam as it is. It is the replacement for the CWAT that we all know, right? / Audience – No! / Chancellor Goldstein – The CWAT was used in that same kind of capacity as a graduation requirement. First of all, the test itself as I understand it, is a test largely developed by the faculty of this University. Most people believe that, as a test, it is a fairly good test. There may be some nay-sayers. But generally, as tests go, this is a test people feel good about. We should use that test largely as a diagnostic test for our faculty to intervene in the life of a student. It can show problems in their ability to read a complex paragraph and write something about that. If that is a deficiency the student has, we ought to use that test to create a curriculum from that point on, be it a course, 2-3 courses, whatever it is, to remedy the problem. That’s the way that we really ought to focus the attention on the proficiency exam.

Professor Philipp (Biology and Chemistry, The Graduate Center) – "Before you came in, there was some discussion about graduate student support and the structural differences between SUNY and CUNY. I wondered if you could comment on that and the possibility that we could somehow attract more minority doctoral students, which is an expensive thing to do, as you know, because of the competition involved." /

Chancellor Goldstein – I think that one of the major problems that the Graduate School and University Center has is to develop a sufficient pot of money for graduate students. I think this is well known. I believe that the comparisons between SUNY and CUNY are correct. The university centers within the SUNY system are funded more richly than we are funded at CUNY. I think there is a disparity in the base level of funding because they are designated as research institutions. We must try to get the funding formula for our doctoral programs, in particular, funded at a very different level. It is something that we are going to have to work on. If you factor in the minimal level of support the student gets, the cost of housing, the factor that parents feel compelled to send their children to private schools, and the fact that the salaries in many of our disciplines are well below market (and they certainly are in the business disciplines), there is a great disparity there. I think that we have to work on all components of this. The advantage that we have is that a lot of people want to come to New York City, and they are willing to sacrifice to come and study in this town. I don’t know how long that is going to last, that kind of view. I am concerned about that. I am concerned about our ability to maintain a competitive façade with respect to other competing institutions. / Professor Philipp – "Hopefully, it is more than a façade." / Chancellor Goldstein – In certain areas, we are OK. But there are certain areas in the sciences, in particular, where we are way out of the box.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate Center) – "Last week, I read in the New York Times that the University of California was going to admit the top 12% of all graduates of California high schools to the University of California. Then the shocking next line really took my breath away. It said that this would become a rule, if it was passed by the faculty and the Board of Trustees. I’ve been feeling somewhat disenfranchised over the past ten years. I thought maybe under your leadership we could reverse the tendency for a policy to be made and imposed. We few who are still here, feel it is really not our place." / Chancellor Goldstein – You know that I have talked about this for some time over the years with great intensity. Empowerment of faculty in policy is an important factor. To relinquish that is wrong and not healthy for a University that prides itself on this kind of governance. Shared governance is a unique system in higher education, and it doesn’t exist in corporate America. I think it is up to the faculty to be more vocal. I would welcome that. What I am saying to you is, come in and talk to us about developing a budget message. I think that is very important. / Professor Baumrin – "That’s really original. No one has every attacked me for being a shrinking violet. I will take your suggestion." / Chancellor Goldstein – I think you should. I would like to see the faculty as a partner in the development of policy for this University. It may not work to your satisfaction, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop. I think we have to continue moving in the right direction.

Professor Doss (English, Hunter College) – "I think we have a miasma of tests going on and I’m not sure that they are all sorted out. Bill Crain asked you about the ACT version of the test as an exit exam, and you gave him an answer regarding it as an entrance exam. Later you responded about the proficiency exam which makes it a much kinder and gentler test than the ACT exit exam that will proceed it. Is there a purpose for the ACT test as an exit exam, though we could perhaps agree to one as an entrance exam." / Chancellor Goldstein – The ACT is used at other universities as an exit exam. As it is, it is a diagnostic. It has been used in that capacity. / Professor Doss – "But we have the proficiency exams to serve that exit purpose. Is there a need for this test?" / Chancellor Goldstein – There is a need because in many ways, after many years of data analysis, it was fairly clear that the Freshman Skills Assessment Tests were used for a multiplicity of purposes. For those of you who are in test and measurements, that is a very blatant violation of how something like that can be used. It really lacked all sorts of reliability measurements. / Professor Doss – "What about the ACT?" / Chancellor Goldstein – No, it is normed in a different way to do just that. It is going to be adapted as an exit test in a different way than when used as an entrance test.

Professor Richter (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "I also have a question about testing. You mentioned that the proficiency exam was going to be used more or less as a diagnostic test, so that courses could be adapted and changed to suit the needs of the student. It seems to me that that is perfectly fine for a four-year college. I am really pleased with the flexibility of your approach. The problem comes when the test is used as a graduation requirement for the community colleges. There the test is given between 45 and 60 credits. Once the student has taken it, it is too late for adaptations of course work." / Chancellor Goldstein – This is an existing Board policy, and we are going to have to see how this policy affects this University and affects the life of our students in ways that perhaps were unintended. My reflection was really on the senior colleges. If you want to say kinder and softer, I’ll accept that characterization of my comments. What I want to do is have students succeed at the University. I don’t want to have a test that says, "if you don’t pass this test, you are out." What I would like to see is this: if the student doesn’t achieve a certain level of proficiency, as evinced by that examination, then the faculty get involved early to get a sense of where those deficiencies are, and work with the student in counseling or developing a set of courses that would remedy the problem. That’s really what I would like to see the proficiency test used for. We should provide the kind of academic judgments for that student that lead to success.

Professor McCall (English, Baruch College) – "With all due respect, Chancellor, the proficiency exam was never designed as a diagnostic exam. I was one of the designers of this exam. If we had been charged with the responsibility of designing a diagnostic exam, it would have been quite different from the proficiency exam. The proficiency exam is a determiner of going from the lower division to the upper division. It is also a determiner of going from the community to the senior college. It is clear from the data on the pilot exams that the senior college students are going to be fine. If we get a student in the first year at a senior college and work with that student, and that student goes to the regular course work, that student will be fine on the proficiency exam. There isn’t enough time for that at the community college. The problem with the exam is that there is no way of gaining equity and parity for the community college student, because there simply isn’t enough time for that student to get all of the help he needs." / Chancellor Goldstein – You and Eva are making an interesting and important point. These are the kinds of things that we have to look at. If indeed your remarks about the effect on community colleges are correct, and there isn’t enough time for faculty to intervene, so that the student can indeed have a higher likelihood of success, then I think we need to take a look at this and see what we can do to make that interdiction a meaningful interdiction. / Professor McCall – "I’ve warned you before on other policies. I’d like you to take a look at this one before it happens, rather than after fact. Because the clock is ticking on these students, and irreparable damage is going to be done to some of these students. I think we need to look at it before the fact." / Chancellor Goldstein – Let’s see.

Professor Young (English, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "I want to talk a little bit with you, and ask about the ACT writing, reading, and editing test. I and many of my colleagues spent last weekend being certified, or not being certified, in the new ACT test which replaces our CWAT. There is widespread consternation, confusion, and troubledness about this new test and its rubrics for evaluating papers. We are concerned, many of us, that because of the way it is set up, the standards, instead of being raised, may in fact be lowered. This will be in some way justified by saying that we now somehow have fewer remedial students in the University because everything is better now. This exam was not designed for our population. The conduct of the sessions made that very clear to many of us. I want to know what you expect and hope will be the result, number-wise, of this new kind of test. We have so many students coming into our community colleges who do require remediation in three areas, as you know. Many of them require writing remediation, including those who come from private four-year colleges into our system, and who really can’t write. Will we suddenly find ourselves with half as many students who require remediation? Then we must celebrate this as a sudden, wonderful, miraculous transformation. Then they will be put into mainstream freshman English classes, as is already happening at the four-year colleges with the other measures, SAT, 75 on Regents, 45 credits from another college, or even perhaps a "B" in English, whatever loopholes have now been invented to prevent people from having to take these placement tests in the first place. We are concerned about what is going to happen to our experience of teaching students, and our ability to help them write well, and to take the proficiency test and to function in a bachelor’s program eventually. Do you care to comment on what your expectations and hopes are for this new test?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me just say one thing that is a bad rap. We are not looking for loopholes. The reason the surrogates were created was to give students an opportunity to progress at our University. The ACT was brought into this University for strong and legitimate reasons to replace the homegrown Freshman Skills Assessment Test. They lasted for 30 years, they went through lots of revisions, they were used for a multiplicity of purposes, and people lost confidence in these tests. When you lose confidence in the test, you really have to find other kinds of measuring devices. Is the ACT the optimal replacement for the Freshman Skills Assessment Test? I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that it is a test that is used ubiquitously throughout these United States at colleges and universities. I do know that it is a nationally normed test with lots of historical data about how it performs. I can’t predict what the results are going to be. I hope at the end of the day that it will give us the opportunities to understand what our students need. I can’t predict numbers because I don’t have the capacity to do that.

Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer – I don’t know if any of you participated, but there was a two-day standard setting exercise in the middle of August. It was participated in by faculty from English, Reading, and ESL areas. The way in which the standard setting for the new exam was done was on the basis of making an assumption that the same students in the first round would need remediation as had been the case with the last exam, the CWAT, and the old reading test. Several pilots have been introduced into the first round of administering this exam. So there isn’t going to be anything punitive for students, but we will have the opportunity to follow students who score at two different levels, some of whom will be in a regular college composition class and some of whom will be in specially designated college composition classes to see how they perform. There is no question that the new exam was introduced or the standards set in any way that creates a loophole. On the question of setting equivalencies between the various exams, this again was done on the basis of data that we had. In fact when the Chancellor came last September, he asked that we engage the College Board to help us establish equivalencies between the SAT, the ACT, the new placement exam, and the new Regent exams. We have been as careful and as responsible as possible. And as I said, we’ve introduced all along the way this year a series of pilots to see how students perform at various levels. I think that the data that we gather will be very helpful as we go forward.

Chancellor Goldstein – Any data that you want, you will get.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) – "I just have a quick factual question but, before that, let me underline what Cecelia, Jane, and Eva said. There are problems large and looming with these tests at community colleges in particular, and I think we need to watch for those. My question is, how many faculty have been hired through the flagship environment program, and how many are at community colleges?" / Chancellor Goldstein – There were 150 positions allocated across the University this academic year. I believe 120 of those positions went for the 70/30 positions, 30 of the other positions went for complemental hiring around the flagship environment. With respect to how many of those positions went to the community colleges, I don’t have the data. Louise Mirrer said about 25% of those positions designated as cluster hiring went to the community colleges. This is a matter of record. If you like, we can get those data to you.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "Despite the fact that I’m a City College graduate from the good ol’ days, I’ve never yet developed a talent of being able to consult something that I haven’t seen. Maybe you can consult in virtual reality, but I need material reality. If you are quite serious in responding to Stefan Baumrin before about the fact that this faculty wasn’t energetic enough, I assume you are referring to the Master Plan. I would point out to you that we received it about 48 hours before the Board hearing occurred on it. This is to my personal experience a little bit like June of 1995 when I was invited into Ann Reynolds’ office, five hours before the Long Range Planning Committee met to consult on the 37 points that reconfigured the University. There I was given a speed reading test and expected to come up with a faculty position. Given this history, my skepticism is well-founded. I’d like to move on to the next area in which the Board has appropriated faculty authority, and that is the creation of general education and core curriculum. I have two parts of a question for that. I assume we will not have much to say about what comes out, even though it will sound like we are going to say something. The final decisions on what constitutes acceptable courses will not be made in the places where they ought to be made, if history is any guide. My question is as follows: will somebody, either you or Louise Mirrer, define for us the difference between core curriculum and general education? And secondly, can you tell us who in Louise Mirrer’s office is qualified to decide what constitutes courses in those areas? If there is nobody there, then who is going to be selected to make the recommendations?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – I think that was sort of a nasty second question, but you are a friend. / Professor Cooper – "It wasn’t nasty, it is factual." / Chancellor Goldstein – Without being put on the spot of how one differentiates core from general education requirements, I would pass the microphone to Louise, who I think is more knowledgeable than I to give you a good discriminant function. Let me say the thing that I have said over and over again. There is a delicate balance in respect to anything that happens in this University between the legitimate rights of faculty and the legitimate rights of the governing Board, as it relates to the establishment of core curricula, general education requirements, whatever you want to reflect on. The oversight, the governing Board of this University, has every right and obligation, I would say, along with the Chancellor, to set conditions and parameters under which certain discussions take place. We discussed this earlier. A condition would be: American history is a good thing for students to learn. From my standpoint, scientific literacy, mathematical literacy, is a good thing for students to know. That is what I would consider a parameter that defines the discussion. After that, Sandi, and I will say it to each and every one of you, it is about faculty. Faculty need to be the responsible party for developing what goes on in a course. Do you expect the Board of Trustees to devise a course on plasma physics, and then come up with the experiments, the readings, and the articles? Of course not. You remand that to physicists. That is the way that it has to happen here. I don’t know why there is such great skepticism. I suppose, in part, it is a result of the SUNY experience. People believe that core curricula were rammed down the throats of the faculty. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. But here, at CUNY, that is not going to happen. The faculty are the responsible party for developing what goes on in courses. You have to be; you are the professionals. You know your field; who else is going to do it? Whether it is a core curriculum, or general education requirements, however that is defined, the faculty have to be the responsible party. I don’t know how to say it any more directly than that. I’ve said it over and over and over again. Louise, I would be interested in knowing the difference between a core and general education requirements. Do you want to say something about it?

Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer – I think Sandi is pointing out that some of our colleges have a core curriculum. They have a core of fixed courses every student has to take. Some of our colleges have distribution requirements. Some of our colleges have general education requirements. I’m sure that you are talking about the language in the Master Plan. If you look there, you will see that the Master Plan talks both about liberal education, which is kind of catch basin for all of the above. It talks about core curricula. I think that we all know that all of our colleges have one of those three. Either a core curriculum, distribution requirements, or general education requirements. We know because we have looked at it for the last three years. There is a high degree of overlap for the most part at all of the colleges. I don’t think that anyone has any particular expectation that there will be a great disturbance in this University across the colleges. There is some unevenness; Sandi knows it, probably many of you know it. Where there is unevenness, it creates a problem in articulation. It puts students at a disadvantage who want to transfer from community colleges to senior colleges. And it is a disadvantage for students who transfer from senior colleges to senior colleges. Those gaps, that unevenness, needs to be addressed by the faculty. I think that is certainly the Chancellor’s intention.

Professor Bohigian (Mathematics, John Jay College) – "It’s a pleasure to have a Chancellor who has a vision to the University, and wants to bring the University back to the stature that it had before. That is really a great start. You don’t have to be told that in order to do that, you can’t do it by yourself. You do have to work with the faculty in order to achieve your goals. I want to ask, specifically, how you propose to do that. Up to now, I think the feeling is that you’ve been out on a limb, on your own, along with the Board, totally ignoring faculty concerns and interests. In order to achieve the greatness you want for this University, you are going to have to work with us. I’ve been here, and many others have also seen every Chancellor since Bowker. The average life expectancy in terms of them being a Chancellor is about eight years. The average life expectancy of a faculty member at CUNY is 30 years. We’re going to be around a lot longer. Please be specific. You have said to us over and over again that you want the participation. How are you specifically going to get that from us?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – The Borough President is here, and certainly you want to hear from him. We want to give him the opportunity to engage with you. Sandi Cooper talks about an experience with a prior Chancellor that was wrong. If that is an accurate depiction, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, it is wrong. We’re starting to really say that you are a partner in developing policy at this University. We are starting with defining this budget message. We will give your faculty, through your governing board, an opportunity to inform what happens in the budget message. I think that is a very positive sign. In the past three years, Louise has had numerous meetings on a regular, ongoing, cyclical basis with faculty, to develop ideas that ultimately become policy. I think that that effort has gone through the right process, and it will continue.

Borough President Fernando Ferrer – I am glad to be here tonight. CUNY has been much on my mind, since well before the formulation and promulgation of the Master Plan, and since well before the current composition of the Board of Trustees. It began when I expressed some serious and heart-felt reservations about what I regarded as serious limitations to access to the University. I remember early conversations in my office, with Sandi, among others, talking about remedial programs and how long they should take. I think that most people agreed that they shouldn’t be forever but, between two poles, what is the reasonable thing to do? Thoughtful people were grappling with that and trying to come to grips with a solution that would not only steer a course that made sense for the University and for the city that it serves, but also for the students that both the University and the city serve. I was unhappy with the result of that discourse.

As you might recall, there were proposals to completely outsource it; privatizing, I think, was the term being used. There was even a proposal in the City Budget, advanced by the administration, to hold hostage some funding for City University, if you recall. I think I am cursed with a long and fairly accurate memory. The Board would be bludgeoned, and so would the City Council, into accepting a proposal, which I deemed educationally deficient. A lot of that did not come to pass, but the most injurious part did for me in those early days. That was the agreement among those who were in power to limit access. Then the argument was made, you won’t get into one of our senior colleges, but you can get into one of our community colleges. But for those of us who knew better -- who knew the intense overcrowding of BMCC, BCC, and the chronic space issues, and program issues of Hostos -- knew that that was phony at best. That was too bad. But what happened subsequent to that, in my view, was even worse. This was well before the Master Plan.

Some of you might recall that I expressed that point of view a couple of years ago in front of the Board of Trustees. (No, I did not get myself arrested. I picked the year after to get myself arrested in front of One Police Plaza. Going to school in the 1960’s, and being carried out of buildings, but never being arrested, I was in need of beginning an arrest record. I satisfied that inner need in me, and there were still issues. Some of you know what I am talking about in regard to the Diallo protests.) I have some concerns about the way the Board was structured, the political nature of the Board, and I haven’t been shy about expressing that.

But I also have some other concerns that I want to lay out on the record tonight. For those who have known me for a long time, and have been watching me for the course of my public life, you may know that part of the irksome quality of my public service is that I refuse to accept the orthodoxies of either the Left or the Right. I have serious and strong questions about both of them. That is because I grew up in a place where practical solutions needed to come together to make a difference in people’s lives.

No orthodoxy would provide heat and hot water in the winter time; only oil in the boiler and a furnace in good working order would do that. No orthodoxy would give people the training to get a good job; only practical ways to get out of poverty would help. No orthodoxy would extend opportunities to people like me, whose parents came here not speaking a word of English. Only opportunity, and the terrible assassination of King in 1968, opened the doors of a private university to me, as well as also winning a scholarship that is no longer in existence by State-wide competition. Those two things paid for college. I still had to take a loan out to pay for books, and I still spent too much time in the student center scaring up money for lunch, which accounts for my relatively undistinguished academic record. But I have some thoughts about being practical. I have some thoughts about what it might take to move a university system and the city it serves forward.

In 1986 I became concerned about two things. I was chairman of the City Council’s Health Committee at the time. I saw a dramatic shortage of nurses in this city. We were raiding every other country’s human infrastructure, and sending out head hunters, and paying premiums for per diem nurses. I was conducting hearings on the quality of care, and nurses were coming in with disclaimers saying, "I can’t work but three shifts and keep my eyes open and my nervous system in working order." Patients’ lives were threatened. I remember having a conversation with then Mayor Koch about it. I said, "Look, you’ve got to respond to the marketplace here, and pay nurses more." He said, "That’s nonsense; they are already getting paid enough." Subsequently there was a new mayor, and there was a new policy, and nurses got a little more. And suddenly we started to focus attention on upgrading nursing programs at City University colleges.

An amazing thing happened: graduating nurses were starting at the highest starting pay of any baccalaureate degree holder. We didn’t have to raid everybody’s human infrastructure, and we had a whole lot more nurses. Anybody who is involved in those programs, please let me know if I am misstating the facts. We did what we needed to do institutionally. It was also an issue within the profession about improving nurses. We needed to upgrade our programs and offerings, and the University did that. New Yorkers were healthier, because the University took those steps because somebody came to grips with the fact that nurses weren’t being paid enough. Let’s fast forward. We have a similar crisis in New York now, and it is in your profession. Teachers aren’t being paid enough. We’re training Yonkers’ teachers, Long Island’s teachers, Hoboken’s teachers, Teaneck’s teachers. And we are giving them great teachers. They spend a couple of years with us, and they are out of here because they can make $15,000 more and can support their families. It is a nice thing, too, because they shouldn’t work for nothing. They do a tough and hard job. That was my first job, teaching. I decided that it was too hard, so I became a politician. But I am married to a teacher, not only a classroom teacher but an elementary school principal, and a sometime adjunct professor. I know how tough that is; I know how dedicated you need to be. But I also know that we haven’t been producing enough of them and that we haven’t been preparing them well enough, and we’re not paying them enough.

I saw this wonderful ad about City University several months ago in the Sunday paper – all of these distinguished graduates of City University and where they went. The list went on and on. I failed to see two things though: distinguished teacher in PS 82, or distinguished principal of PS 2. I didn’t see any of those mentioned there. That is a message we send from the moment that a freshman walks in for orientation.

It became clear to me that we needed to do better. But that wasn’t a recently acquired sense. That is a observation that I have had with Chancellors going back to Joe Murphy. We needed to do better. We cannot accept the status quo, kids cannot accept the status quo, nor can their parents. The health of this city, the very survival of this city, depends on that. In fact I had some concerns that the Master Plan might even address that. And talking about improving teacher training and teacher preparation intrigued me enormously. In fact, it indicated to me that the University might be prepared to move in a direction that would help the situation an awful lot. It wouldn’t be the total solution, but it would help it an awful lot. Better pay would help it an awful lot, and of course higher professional standards at the State level. But that is not for tonight; that is a conversation for another time.

What are my concerns with the Master Plan? I think it addressed teacher training in a forthright way. Am I totally happy with it? Well, nobody is totally happy with anything, but I am happy that it addressed those concerns. What are my two issues with it? Will the Master Plan preserve the integrity of CUNY’s democratic promise to this city? It doesn’t much matter to me, as a policy maker, how you walk into this University. It matters profoundly to me, as a citizen of this city, and as one of its officers, how you walk out of this University. I have said that before the formulation of the Master Plan and since, not only at every informal group, but at every commencement I’ve ever been called upon to speak at. I think that the Master Plan has to preserve the integrity of the democratic promise and of access.

The Master Plan should also move the University forward, so it improves the quality of education for every student; that’s a no-brainer. How does it do that? There are some very sticky questions around it. One of them is the adoption of core curricula. One of the observations that I have made is that process demands faculty participation and collaboration and partnership. If that can be achieved, that is a good thing for this University, and a good thing for this city.

The aspect of it that I find most potentially troublesome is the creation of the so-called flagship institutions. I still don’t know, and I think I read real well, what that means. Maybe you know. Maybe we have some professors of Old English Literature here, who could read some deeper meaning into the Master Plan. But until you can find a subtext, that I can’t seem to find, let’s help each other out with at least these observations. I have seen over the course of my public life some colleges in this University get beggared in terms of facilities, in terms of faculty, and in terms of programs. And I have seen other units of this University do splendidly well, because they can lobby with the best of them. I guess that’s life. But that is not an evenly distributed University.

Do I have an issue with high standards? No, I do not. Do I have an issue with moving away, even conceptually, from the status quo, and moving standards to an even higher level for everybody, for teachers, for students, for Boards of Trustees, and for politicians? I have no problem with that at all; that’s where we need to go. But do I have a problem with an institutional commitment to endow some more than others in a city that has even needs? I sure do. I want to know what that means. I have some open questions about it. This is not the Critique According to Ferrer, of the Master Plan, politics in general, or just how the Board looks. These have been my observations for quite some time. They are bound to please some and displease others. That’s the way it goes. I came to tell you that, too. I serve the people who pulled the lever for me. And I see the kids that walk into that University, and they are not all kids as you know. They are not all fresh out of high school. They are mothers who are trying to get off of welfare, they are people who haven’t spoken a word of English, they are folks who have survived from generation to generation on public assistance. They are reaching down deep for something different to change the courses of their lives. They are people who just want a piece of the American dream, just like anybody else. There are people who have dumped an abusive husband, there are people who are trying to improve their lives by going to school, working a full-time job, and raising a family, and dreaming big dreams. We owe them all something. My own viewpoint is that I owe them honest discourse. That is what I’ve tried to engage in. That is my story, and I’m ready for your questions, if you have any.

Professor Kahan (Political Science, Brooklyn College) – "You touched on the politicization of our Board of Trustees. I want to take that a little further: I think it’s corrupt. I think it is rife with conflict of interest. I think that the mayoral appointees are cronies, many of whom have business before city agencies, such as Herman Badillo, the Chair, Benno Schmidt, the Vice Chair, and others who are on the payroll, or whose families are on the payroll. That has made it an ineffective Board, a Board that is not creative, imaginative, and not rooted in the community that it is supposed to represent. I would like your pledge, and I’m going to ask every candidate for mayor, to say that this cronyism will not happen in your appointments to the Board of Trustees; that nobody who has business before the city will be appointed to the Board of Trustees; that nobody who is on the payroll or whose family is on the payroll, will be appointed to the Board of Trustees; that you will try and give us an honest and representative Board of Trustees, finally, so we can deal with them and not their political bosses." / Borough President Ferrer – By the way, I am not an apologist for anyone who sits on that Board of Trustees. But I will say this -- trustees with conflict issues did not arise two weeks ago. A former governor has appointed some of them, and a former mayor has appointed some of them. I think in all of those cases there were inappropriate appointments. Politics doesn’t belong in at least two things: education and health care. Let me part company with you on one thing. It is a rhetorical thing, but for me it is rather large. ‘Corrupt’ means to me taking a white envelope, or extorting something. I’d like to tell you, I want to appoint the city members of the Board of Trustees. I want to appoint good people who understand higher education and want to move the ball forward and improve it. It is easy to make that pledge, but let me also suggest to you something else. As you ask everybody to make that pledge, ask everybody where they personally were on the issue of access.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "President Ferrer, three of the CUNY colleges are in the Bronx. Two of those are community colleges. Many of us have lots of concerns in terms of enrollment. But I would like to focus on the community colleges, especially since you mentioned the Master Plan. You talked about teacher education, you talked about flagship, and so forth. Many of us are very concerned about where the community colleges are going to fall in this flagship environment. We are very concerned about the omission of discussion of the role of the community colleges in that Master Plan. Particularly since two of those schools are in the Bronx, I would be interested in hearing you comment on what you feel is the future of the community colleges, what it should be, and the fact that we have not heard much in the Master Plan about the community colleges." / Borough President Ferrer – You are right. There is very little to comment on since we haven’t heard much about it. I see some of my friends from BCC and Hostos, and they are more than acutely aware of my participation with them. There are a few things that I am very sure about. Tuition in our community colleges is the highest in the State. That presents itself as an economic barrier already. It is a problem democratically. The Master Plan or a statement by the University really ought to address with greater clarity what the impact is on the community colleges. Implicit in my concern about the creation of so-called flagship institutions is the concern that at the other end, in a world of finite resources, who ends up paying for this? Is it kids, teachers, and institutions supposedly at the lower end of the educational food chain? Or is it folks who just get a lot more population put on them, have scarce resources, and more over-utilized space, or are we trying to create quality environments in all of our CUNY units. I have similar kinds of questions about that.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "The issue that Michael Kahan raised is the issue that I was going to raise. It is about the selection of trustees. I was also going to ask everyone who came here about their attitude towards access. In Albany we have attempted for some time, with the help of Ed Sullivan, to push through a piece of legislation that seems to be going nowhere. It would recreate a process that once existed when it was the Board of Higher Education. The mayor used to have a blue ribbon panel he used to consult in looking for nominations. He would do something similar to what the Bar Association does before it recommends or doesn’t recommend judicial appointments. It’s not a perfect system. It seems to me that the kind of input that that might generate might go a certain distance towards obviating the nightmare that we dealt with since 1994. Because the University systems in the State and in the city have been completely politicized in terms of trustees." / Borough President Ferrer – I have a concern about that, too. / Professor Cooper – "Therefore, I wonder, even if we couldn’t get this piece of legislation through because the Republican Senate is blocking it, and the Governor won’t have it, is there some way that you might see yourself committed to doing something like that with the five appointees that the city has in mind?" /

Borough President Ferrer – I would be open to that idea. Let me just tell you how I conduct my government, and how I have conducted my government for nearly fourteen years. When I first became Borough President, someone asked me, are you going to create a blue ribbon panel for your staff and your community board appointments? I said, "No." And they asked, "why?" I said that they should hold me accountable. They should kick me out of office if I do the wrong thing. I have removed planning board members who have done bad things in my borough. I have removed staff instantly. I am open to that idea for the judiciary, and re-establishing that, which is something that Giuliani abolished, which was a Koch innovation which was very important. I am open to that idea for City University. But I want to have input. You point out that it is an imperfect system -- let me point out to you how imperfect it is. It is only as perfect as the participants on that committee. I recognize the limitations of it. So if I appear to be hedging, it is just that I have been around the block a couple of times. I know that when you had this commission or that commission, it all seemed very good and very worthy of the New York Times editorial board support. Except, when you dug deeply and looked at the list of people, many of them had business with the city. Many of them were very good friends of the appointing authority. I want to make sure that we do something that inspires public confidence in a real legitimate way and, secondly, comes up with the best quality candidates that will move this forward. I recognize the imperfections in that as well. I would be less than honest if I didn’t acknowledge them. / Professor Cooper – "The trouble is that they get in for seven years and you can’t remove them." / Borough President Ferrer – Well, let me tell you something. Let’s say that I became the mayor next year. I’m stuck with them for about four years. That’s going to be a problem. Because there are some that I would want to change yesterday. But then there are some who currently work in city jobs who, if they wish to remain on the Board, can do it while receiving an unemployment check, but won’t be receiving a check from the City Treasury.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I’d like to favorably read a couple of sentences that impressed me very much from your testimony of September 6^th, and then make a comment. You write, "If anyone thinks that CUNY can be improved by just increasing entrance standards, they are dead wrong. The question on the table should not be, is this student able to graduate from college? The question should be, how can I enable this student to graduate from college?" I’d like to really commend you on this. I think that statement could be framed. Currently the talk is all about how we can redefine admission standards in order to adjust them to the student’s likelihood of success -- that is the current phrase. The student who, due to no choice of her own, found herself with poor preparation for college is going to have less likelihood for success. And they can’t even predict it. We have just gone over these tests. Even practically, you can’t predict who, if given a chance, can succeed. The predictions are very poor." /

Borough President Ferrer – You cannot. I appreciate your pointing those lines out. They are the long hand way of saying, it doesn’t much matter to me how you come in, it matters how you come out. I think a reasonable, sensible person would say, it shouldn’t take you 25 years to get out. But let me just deal with a lot of the arguments that Giuliani himself made, because I had fun with them. He said, what if it takes you five years to get out? At your Alma Mater, Manhattan, it currently takes five years to gain a baccalaureate degree going speed of light. Wrong number -- you should have picked ten or fifteen. We can all play with numbers. There is something that is reasonable, and something that is not reasonable. Sandi and I had that conversation in my office with respect to remediation. I don’t think it is a dirty word; Brown calls it tutoring. Call it whatever you like. It is a legitimate way to extend access. I am sore about that. That one I take personally. The issue of access is all important to me. There are some who may not find it comfortable to be in college for four years, five years, or one year. That will resolve itself over time. People who are keeping an eye on things, students who are made aware of stuff, will say maybe I should be doing something else. Or maybe, I’ll come back later and do that.

What I resented deeply was the playing around with the statistics. How many graduated, without taking into account how many returned after a tough spot in their lives? You can play with numbers until the cows come home. They don’t tell the entire story. Reasonable people will agree on reasonable principles of operation. But apart from that, there are eight million stories in New York City. Everybody is a story, and everybody is a little different. / Professor Crain – "I would be very suspicious of all of this talk about flagship environments, selective colleges, and tiering. What is going to happen is that those who didn’t get a good opportunity early on are never going to get an opportunity. They are going to be moved into the second or third tier." /

Borough President Ferrer – That is the concern that I have as well. By the same token, I want every unit of CUNY to be a flagship institution. I believe that we have to continue to push the envelope for everybody, at every institution, for every student, and hold everybody to the highest standards. I have an equity issue here. I knew Matt Goldstein when he was running Baruch. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised when this Board of Trustees got him back. I was beginning to look down the corridor at folks they were talking about bringing in, and I was getting nervous for City University. I believe that I know a lot of the issues he has to face politically, and he works for a Board. But he is also a creature of City University. I want to say this to you right out in the open: I want to give him the opportunity to do this job. I have confidence that he understands the issues. I want to work with him as a policy maker and an officer of this city to see that he does. The future of thousands of CUNY students and this city, teachers, nurses, accountants, mothers and fathers, deserve no less.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Kingsborough) – "I’ve been impressed by your career. One of the problems I’ve notice going back to 1961 is the diminution of our budget. The main reason we’ve had shortfalls is from the city contributions. In the Koch years, we would go lobby the Legislature they would give us more money and he would take it away. Theoretically, the city is supposed to put up a third of our funding. What are your thoughts?"

I have been around the block a few times. Every mayor I have served with has played the same game -- Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani. It’s taken away, we’ve all got to go down and pound them about restoring community college money. They take away 100% and return 78%. Everybody then is supposed to throw a party and declare a victory. If that keeps going on over the course of years, there is a steady erosion of resources. Then there is the FTE problem, this problem, programs, etc. It all develops and gets worse over the course of the years. We’ve got to decide what’s important and make serious choices in this city. I would have done something differently than Giuliani. When he made that proposal two years ago, I recall my being in front of City Hall doing a counter press conference about it. Rather than say I am going to take this money and hold it hostage, because I want it to go to the private sector to do remediation, I said no, that’s community college money. I want to make sure that we have a very clear understanding of where we are going here. Because the mayor does, theoretically appoint five people, not immediately, but eventually, to the Board of Trustees. But at the end of the day, this is not about a political priority, this is about education.

When I was a member of the City Council, I was the first to demand a memorandum of understanding when we funded something. Because when we funded something it went into the Bermuda Triangle of funding. How do I know that? I was there. We would fund some initiative, and it would never happen, or it would happen in this convoluted way that no one recognized. It was really not what we wanted to do. We did this, not because somebody had a bright idea, but we did it in consultation with the Board. There has to be some degree of collaboration, communication, and mutual verification when we get this done. But at the end of the day, this is about the money that you need to operate and survive. Or else your programs will fail.

We have a situation, not unlike the situation we had a few years ago at Hostos Community College. I remember the funny situation. It was ironic. In the interest of full disclosure, a good friend of mine for over 30 years was the president. She was taken out for a crazy and malicious rumor of an audit. I read the final draft of the audit, and it was complete nonsense. In fact, that effort was vile. What was even worse was the reason why some of the editorial boards attacked her, attacked City University, and all community colleges. It was the writing assessment test, remember that? I remember a University-wide conversation about changing the writing assessment test. They implemented the Hostos WAT. I am not an expert on it, but it seemed to be slightly more rigorous than the CWAT. They put that in place. They got their brains beat in, because the argument was that the University was headed in the direction of dispensing with the CWAT. It doesn’t really measure much, etc. Everybody said, including some of the members of the Board of Trustees currently, "No, this is the standard, this is what you need," etc. We had to go to the supreme court in the Bronx to actually help some students get their diplomas. Because, they said, if you didn’t take this test, you can’t get your diploma. Does anybody remember that as clearly as I do? Does anybody remember this, less than a year ago, very quietly, there was an admission that the CWAT was an invalid measure of writing?

Professor Phillip (Biology and Chemistry, The Graduate Center) – "I have another question about budget. The faculty and staff union, the PSC, pointed out about a year ago that CUNY’s operating budget is close to that of one of the senior University of California colleges, which has about one-tenth the enrollment of CUNY. But the budgets are about the same. In terms of the State Budget, the operating budget we get from the State, do you see any hope that we will get the budget we need to operate as a proud, forward-looking, and progressive institution?" / Borough President Ferrer – You have just suggested one of the two ways that City University is treated different from state universities. That is one of the two ways, resources, and certainly facilities. The other way was remediation. That was the other way. It wasn’t a little hypocritical to treat two similar institutions, with similar missions, in vastly different ways. In fact, it is time to reexamine why State University looks very different from City University, with respect to these units of funding appropriations, and of course the issue of remediation, which is something that I pointed out a long time ago. You are doing this at the State University, but the Governor isn’t screaming about this? Why are we picking on City University? Because it was a political issue. It made somebody’s political press release. Let me simply say, I really do believe in the standards movement, but I also believe in equity. You can’t have high standards without the means of achieving them. You can’t compare two university systems that are, at least with respect to funding, beyond comparison.