CUNY Alumni: Allies vs. Pathways
On March 13, 2012, the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association of Hunter College passed a resolution expressing our disapproval of the Pathways Initiative and calling upon the university to “support transfer strategies that are based upon intercampus faculty agreements with administrative cooperation.” As far as we know, we are the only organized group of CUNY alumni to take a stand thus far. So many CUNY alumni hold faculty and administrative positions throughout the university, and we are able to get timely inside information about Pathways fairly easily.
The PSC, whose first president, Belle Zeller, was an alumna of Hunter, and whose first vice president, Israel Kugler, was an alumnus of CCNY, can find natural and powerful allies for this and other causes among the 1.1 million living CUNY alumni, most of who still live in the New York metropolitan area. Alumni who understand what Pathways is and what it will do to the quality of the CUNY undergraduate degree have a very real interest in visibly supporting the call for a moratorium.
Patricia Rudden
City Tech & Past President, Alumni Association of Hunter College
Thanks for Sandy coverage
Congratulations on the great Clarion articles about how CUNY faculty and staff were affected by Sandy, especially the coverage of those at York College. Your articles gave folks who didn’t see things first- hand a chance to feel, know and feel more what other people have endured and are enduring. And a big, beautiful thanks to all at York who made the college the kind of welcoming shelter described in Clarion for those who were displaced. That’s a beautiful story.
Janice Cline
York College
Newtown shooting
We are sick at yet another firearm massacre of innocents. And sick that the NRA says there is nothing to be done, no limits on firearms, magazines or firepower that can be imposed, that these dead children are the sacrifice we must make for freedom. The tail is wagging the dog. If the massacre of children in Newtown, Conn., isn’t enough, what is?
So the 9-mms guns were legally purchased and owned by the mother. Well, that is exactly the problem, isn’t it? The purchaser may very well be responsible and mentally balanced, not emotional, guaranteed never to lose her mind. But firearm ownership is like a genetic disease. Who knows when someone in a firearm family will flip out—if not in this generation, then perhaps in the next, as firearm ownership becomes a family tradition?
Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery,” is our story. In Jackson’s tale, the townspeople annually murder one of their own, a tradition they deem necessary to maintain their way of life. It seems insane. But then, that is exactly what we do when we tolerate firearm massacres as the sacrifice we must make to the god of firearm freedom, to the NRA and its tragic, foolish philosophy.
K.J. Walters
Lehman College
Shout-out to Shortell
I’ve just read Tim Shortell’s outstanding article on “Election Polls, Expertise and Empirical Thinking” in the latest issue of Clarion – and I thought it was one of the best articles I’ve ever read in our union newspaper. Shortell clearly conveyed the importance of truth, evidence, and rational thinking in coping with complex realities, and he underscored the value of critical thinking in education. If only the world at large could assess the real problems faced by the human condition in the same manner. I hope that the officials in CUNY who wish to take us down the “Pathways to Perdition” read this article and reflect on what our students need to learn in order to function effectively in the real world. Very well done.
Howard Prince
BMCC (retired)
