December 2003    

This Is a University?
More on Hostos: Student Demands

From:  Anthony O’Brien
Subject:  More on Hostos: student demands
Date:  Fri, 17 Aug 2001 16:05

Some of the student demands at Hostos (all taken from the student leaflet) were to restore cut Spanish-language courses in Sociology, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Public Administration, Business Administration, and Early Childhood Education; to restore cuts in ESL, Math, Biology, and Spanish; to protest fees of $50 for the ACT test workshop and $300 for the English 1306 workshop; to protest the sending of more than 300 students to the CLIP Program; and to offer evening students the same programs as day students.

The Hostos students were arrested, one – who was thrown to the floor and whose wrist was injured – on trumped-up serious charges of assault and resisting arrest, for making these demands inside the building. As anyone can see they are reasonable demands and would be widely supported by students and faculty not only at Hostos but throughout CUNY. It is just not acceptable that such protest by students in their own buildings is being repressed with violence shows of force, a total lockdown of the building enforced by 12-15 security at the entrance, and excessive criminal charges. The pretext that security were protecting the registration process is the usual flimsy screen for an attempt to deter and intimidate student protest.

Yesterday a Hostos student with ID was not allowed to accompany a Hostos faculty member to the faculty member’s own office! Faculty from other CUNY colleges, including the PSC president, were not allowed to enter the building either – e.g., to go to the library, or, in [Professional Staff Congress president] Barbara Bowen’s case, to see and assist the faculty member [Bill Crain of City College], a PSC delegate, who had just been arrested. Students, lined up on the street in a humiliating time-wasting queue, were being allowed in one by one only with a slip showing their appointment for registration, so they too were being prevented from seeing faculty, using the library, etc. The place resembled a prison, not a college.

Who made such a policy, a mockery of everything a university is supposed to be? No answer is forthcoming. The one Hostos administrator to show his face briefly before he quickly retreated behind the security lines was Carlos Hargraves, Director of Public Relations. When faculty asked him who had instituted the policy under which we were being denied administration with CUNY faculty IDs, he shrugged and said he didn’t know. Chief Bernabe, asked the same question by the PSC president, said he was not at liberty to say.

This is a university?

There is an idea around that Hostos security, i.e. Chief Bernabe, is making policy on his own. I think it much more likely that the Hostos and central CUNY management and security are all well aware of this police-state atmosphere at Hostos and fully intend to continue it and extend it to other campuses at their discretion until they are stopped by student and faculty outcry. What it reveals is fear of the students – all of them, not just the elected student government leaders who were arrested – fear of reasonable student demands in the face of the new CUNY, fear of student protest and a student movement. As a faculty member I think we should not allow this sort of thing to happen to our students, in part because we should have no illusions that the same procedures will not be used on us, faculty and staff, as we too mount a vigorous resistance to the new CUNY policies. Indeed they are already being so used as our barring from Hostos and the arrest of Professor Crain show.

They are right to fear student and faculty resistance, because the BoT’s [Board of Trustees’] new CUNY has raised the level of student, faculty, and staff grievance to a new high, which will only be exacerbated by Pataki’s budget. The Hostos lockdown is any abysmal example of a regime of force that everything is in place to extend throughout CUNY as needed., should we decide not to take the current outrages lying down.

As always when repression is stepped up like this, it seems best to me to continue right on doing what the repressive regime is so afraid of. The Hostos student activists I spent the day with yesterday have the right idea, and they were educated, not intimidated, by this spectacle of power without legitimacy. When Miguel Malo was released without bail at his arraignment, came down [from] the bench greeting and hugging his family and supporters, and left the courtroom with a five-year-old clinging delightedly to his knees, the smiles all around were powerful indeed.

The small band of CUNY faculty who went to Hostos, and the leafleting and discussions among Hostos faculty themselves, showed that when student protest is crudely repressed like this the faculty and staff will be there. The worse the repression, the more of us will be there, and we will stop this deterrent terror.

Tony O’Brien, Queens College, PSC Delegate

See also:
Defend Miguel Malo! (November 2003) 
Day One of Miguel Malo Trial  (1 December 2003) 
Day Two of Miguel Malo Trial  (2 December 2003) 
Day Three of Miguel Malo Trial  (3 December 2003) 
Day Four of Miguel Malo Trial  (4 December 2003) 
Day Five of Miguel Malo Trial  (5 December 2003) 

Return to The Frame-Up of Miguel Malo