A sampling of comments at the PSC’s March 8 Town Hall Meeting on Pathways:
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STEPHEN JABLONSKY, chair of City College’s music department, recalled that he and Chancellor Goldstein had been students together at CCNY: “The core curriculum at that time…prepared us for a life as citizens of the city of New York. It also prepared me to go to Harvard University and be on equal footing with anybody from anywhere in the country. It prepared me to be a professor at the greatest college in the city of New York and in the country. And I am very proud of our school, and any diminution of what we do is a crime.”
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HOLLIS GLASER, professor of speech
at Borough of Manhattan Community College:
“Something that’s been bothering me has been how bad [Pathways] is for faculty collegiality and morale. We are pitted against each other in this process, fighting for turf and fighting for student credits…. This has been a horrible process.”
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GAIL AUGUST, associate professor of English, ESL and linguistics at Hostos Community College: “I’d like to speak to the myth of faculty input. On October 1, we received the plan. By October 15, fifteen days later, the whole college was supposed to respond to the plan. As a member of the College Senate, I went crazy trying to organize a Senate meeting in those fifteen days. It was not possible. The possibility for input was just non-existent.”
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AMIR KHAFAGY, student at LaGuardia Community College, member of Students United for a Free CUNY:
“Pathways is nothing more than a cop-out, an excuse to give students a cheaper, poor quality education. New York students have already been through a Pathways program, and that was the City’s high schools.… CUNY is a school predominantly of color, of poor, working-class folks. And to give us the lowest standard of education, to say you’re not good enough…to learn more, is completely racist and undermines the integrity of the school.”
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NIVEDITA MAJUMDAR, associate professor of English, John Jay College:
“Last week I was having a conversation with a colleague from another CUNY campus about Pathways. After hearing me out, she said, ‘But surely the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees, they must believe that it’s good for our students?’ I answered, ‘Yes, I do think that they believe it’s good for our students.’ But this is also a group that believes in a stratified, hierarchical society. They believe our students are going to occupy a certain stratum of the job market – and that to do so, they do not need a well-rounded liberal arts education.”
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RELATED COVERAGE:
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Hundreds Attend Town Hall Meeting
