Our Legacy

Did you know CUNY used to be FREE?

I spoke to my sociology class today about the Speak Out at Brooklyn College, and tried to enlist students to come to the planning meeting on Thursday December 4th. The response was tepid at first, but when I mentioned that CUNY used to be FREE, people started to talk. Many of them didn’t know this about our institution, and many said that our financial situation must be worse than ever before.

In response to their response, I am posting information provided by George N. Spitz who I met at the Hunter meeting for Cuny Contingents Unite, Spitz writes:

The City College of New York Was originally founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847. A combination free school and college, it would provide children of immigrants and the poor access to free higher education based on academic merit alone. The Free Academy was the first of what would become a system of municipally supported colleges.

Hunter College, the second, was founded as women’s institution in 1870. Brooklyn College, the third, was established as a coeducational institution in 1930.

In 1847, New York State Governor John Young gave permission to the Board of Education to found the Free Academy, which was ratified in a June 7, 1847 referendum- 19,305 in favor 3,490 against- that has never been repealed! Founder Townsend Harris proclaimed, “Open the doors to all…Let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know no distinction. Dr. Horace Webster, the first president of The Free Academy, said “The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few.”

In 1976, Gene I. Maeroff wrote in the New York Times sadly, “For more than a half-century the graduating seniors at City College have risen at the commencement ceremony to recite the Ephebic Oath of Devotion, vowing to strive to transmit the city a greater, better and more beautiful city than it was transmitted to us.” Mr. Maeroff concluded: “Part of the greatness that City College graduates were able to bequeath was the policy of free higher education, which is about to end.”

Free tuition continued through war and depression, notably the 1930′s depression. Ironically, New York City could afford free tuition in the 1930′s despite massive unemployment and only a 1% sales tax compared to a 8.375% today and no income tax. There were attempts to extend free tuition for the State University system despite Governor Nelson Rockefeller efforts to kill free tuition in the City University System. New York Mayor Robert Wagner and Assembly Speaker Anthony Travia led fights to protect free tuition. At a 1967 Constitutional Convention Chairman Travia and Vice Chairman Wagner pushed through a proposal making free tuition mandatory at all public higher education institutions. Ronald Maiorana writes in The New York Times September 9, 1967 issue, “Bankers and investment brokers failed to bid on state notes allegedly forcing withdrawal of the constitutional free tuition proposal.”

In 1976, Wagner was out of power and Travia was promoted a federal judge after attempts to defeat him failed. More pliable Democrats Governor Hugh “Society” Carey and Mayor Abraham “Punky” Beame took advantage of a so-called fiscal crisis and did away with free tuition. Fred Hechinger in the New York Times May 18, 1976 wrote:

“Free tuition at the City University was sentenced to death many months ago in the political back rooms. Formal execution has merely been waiting for somebody with courage to sign the death warrant in public. Governor Carey now appears ready to take that fatal step. Hechinger concluded:

“Once free tuition in buried, the politicians will want it to be forgotten. Others take a longer view of higher education kinship to America as the land of opportunity will want to keep his memory alive, not as one more oddity in the most out of the attic, but as a sensible and realistic option for a more affluent, more confident and more generous day.”

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Today George Spitz is an advocate of restoring free tuition at CUNY. He is also running for City Counsel in NYC. For more information, or to contact Mr. Sptiz visit www.georgespitz.com

The Day The Students Went On Strike

These photos were compiled by the Brooklyn Junction Blog which includes commentary by Richard Grayson, a former Brooklyn College Student.

Grayson recalls his memory of the 1970 student strike for Brooklyn Junction: “As you probably know, after the invasion of Cambodia, on May 4, 1970, four students at Kent State University were shot by National Guardsmen. There was a nationwide student strike. I have kept a daily diary since Aug. 1969, and on May 5, we were so upset that even though the BC administration and President John Kneller were definitely antiwar, students took over the college — as I recall, as President Kneller was speaking at our memorial/antiwar rally that afternoon.

We held it for about 2 weeks during the nationwide campus strike and had many events and rallies and teach-ins. “The majority white students took over Boylan and Ingersoll and Strike Central was President Kneller’s office, the 2nd floor office that still, I think, is the president’s office or maybe a campus museum? We proclaimed it Peoples University. The black and Puerto Rican students took over Roosevelt Hall and proclaimed it Malcolm X-Pedro Albizu Campos University.

Revolution was in the air for a while. Paul Schickler and I put out a daily 2-page mimeographed strike news version of the Ol’ Spigot, the student government newspaper Paul had founded a couple of years before. Our LaGuardia Hall office’s phone, like all the other ones where students were, clearly was being tapped. The one inside is our HQ at Strike Central. (I pilfered a copy of the BC President’s stationery and wrote a letter to my favorite political figure, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark in Dr. Kneller’s name, inviting him to speak on campus — and perhaps not coincidentally, Clark ended up as the June 1971 commencement speaker! (I’ve always wondered about that)

You can see the People’s U banner outside Boylan. I have a shot of LaGuardia with a banner that has a lot of unreadable stuff written on it. I do remember a LaG sign saying “This college is closed due to war — Free Bobby Seale!” (Later someone added an -S to the final message and added, “get them while they last.”)