Spring 2019
President's Welcome
Remarks From Professor James Davis, PSC-CUNY Chapter Chair, Brooklyn College
Thank you, President Anderson, and good afternoon, everyone. I want to recognize at the outset that almost all of us have become, in one way or another, advocates for full funding for CUNY. Some of you attend rallies or testify before the board of trustees or make lobbying visits or phone calls to our legislators. Others of you contact the president, the provost, and Alan Gilbert, telling them to tell their bosses: We need more, we deserve more, our students deserve better. Whatever your method, many of you confront the limitations imposed by austerity funding and respond by raising your voices, advocating for a different vision of your department, your program, and your college. Necessity is the mother of invention, and you have invented and reinvented yourselves as scholars and advocates—scholar-advocates—in order to meet the challenges of chronic underfunding, and that is to your credit.
You don't need me to tell you what a 2 percent per-year cap on increases from the state does for Brooklyn College; you know it from your own experience. You don't need me to tell you what a difference it would make for adjuncts to be paid a living wage; you know how it would improve their lives and our students' academic experience, and if you have given it some thought you have also realized that wage equity would reduce the university's incentive to rely on adjunct labor, since it wouldn't cost much more to hire full-time faculty. You don't need me to tell you how nefarious it is that the governor agrees to contract provisions that he then refuses to fund. This has become deliberate policy. Failing to fund public-sector labor contracts is no longer a bug—it's a design feature here in New York State.
Strong labor unions are the way to fight this, and we are fortunate, thanks to your membership and your active engagement, that the union remains strong, and fortunate, too, that its elected leaders are willing to fight. Some unions are not. Some, instead, cut deals in back rooms to advance their interests, interests they construe narrowly. Our interests, as we know, involve the good of the community. Do we want higher salaries? Of course. Do we want better dental, medical, and retirement benefits? Of course. But we also know from the extraordinary teachers' strikes in the K–12 sector that our leverage lies in linking our interests to the community we serve. It's not in construing our interests narrowly, but broadening them to reveal how important Brooklyn College is to the borough, to the city, and to the lives of its graduates and their families. What we have seen in the K–12 sector is how effective public educators can be when they’re willing to place themselves in a relation to the communities they serve.
We are not K–12, and we are not West Virginia or Oakland, but the same principle applies: Our leverage lies in our labor union, not in our board of trustees, constrained as they are by the officials who appointed them, not in our administrators, constrained as they are by the board of trustees. No, our leverage lies in our labor union, which is really no more and no less than the coordinated expression of your voices, the scholar-advocates you have become. If you have not done so already, call your state senator and your state assembly member, and let them know you are counting on them to prioritize funding for CUNY. Reinvent yourselves once more, my brothers and sisters, for we do need one another, and we will need our students and alumni and their families if we are to get out from under the slow drip of austerity funding, if we are to break the pattern other public employees have accepted, to see a fully funded college and to win a contract that is commensurate with your immense talents and ambitions.
I hope to see you at the next chapter meeting this Thursday, 1141 Ingersoll Hall, at 12:30 p.m.
President Anderson's Address
Today I will share with you a PowerPoint slideshow (pdf) to present the latest pertinent information regarding the state of the college.
