December 2003    

Reply to President Fernández  

From:  LESNICK, HENRY
To: FERNANDEZ, DOLORES
Cc:  HOSTOS DISTRIBUTION LIST
Subject:  Reply to President Fernandez
Date: 8/19/01 11:02 AM

Dear Madam President:

    You ask in your letter of 8/17/01 that I “correct some of the misinformation that is being generated.” That is what I was doing in posting the several first-hand reports of the participants in the events at Hostos this past week. Let me further this effort and attempt to clarify the issues raised by the protests and the administration/peace officer response. There are several distinct issues raised which call into question the future of our institution.

       Most disturbing is the total disregard shown for protestors’ First Amendment rights.  You say in your letter “demonstrating is a civil right but the students who came to register also have civil rights and they want to register with the least amount of chaos.” You claim to deny protestors’  First Amendment rights in the name of protecting the rights of registering students. But the rights of registering students were not violated by the protestors. There is no evidence to indicate that the students wishing to register were obstructed or prevented from doing so in any way by the protestors.

    The CUNY complaint against the Vice President of the Hostos Student Government states that “the defendant began to hold up a sign and protest against the college administration inside the above location [the 3rd floor atrium of C Building].” After refusing to leave the area in the atrium outside of Registration and take the demonstration out in front the building, the student government officer was arrested. This student’s basic democratic rights were trampled because he held up a sign and protested administration policy to people whom he wished to address and declined to be directed by agents of the administration to take his protest to another venue. Exercise of Free Speech in a closet is meaningless.

    First Amendment rights received no more respect outside the C Building, where a protesting student standing on the street outside the college away from the registration area was arrested and had his sign confiscated. His sign read, “Stop arresting our students! Let them exercise the First Amendment of the Constitution.”

    Academic freedom rests on the foundation of the First Amendment. If we allow students’ lawful protest of administration policy to be criminalized, there is every likelihood that the faculty and staff, who might presume to express views critical of the administration will receive similar treatment.  A glimpse of the erosion of academic freedom accompanying the attack on student protests was available last week at Hostos.  Last Thursday campus peace officers refused to allow a Hostos professor to meet with his student in his office in the B building. The barring of entry into the college of Professional Staff Congress President Barbara Bowen, and the barring of entry and arrest of CCNY Professor Wm Crain, who had been to Hostos numerous times and spoke at our last college senate meeting, is unprecedented in Hostos practice.

    You point out in your letter that we all want to increase enrollment at Hostos, and I think that is one issue the entire community can agree on. But your suggestion that the students’ exercise of their Constitutionally protected rights should be sacrificed to reach the goal bespeaks a skewed set of priorities. This view overestimates the effect of orderly, lawful protest on enrollment. It also seriously underestimates the negative effects on enrollment of unlawful arrests, injury and criminal charges brought against our students. If this college is run like a prison, enrollment will suffer.

    Additionally, let me suggest that the solution to student unrest is not repressive use of public safety officers, but greater sensitivity and responsiveness to the values and concerns of the Hostos community. I cannot evaluate more than a couple of the students’ demands, but I would like to comment on your approach to them.  First you say in your letter that you discussed all the demands with the SGO leaders the “SGO leaders understood them.” I take that to mean that the SGO leaders understood the administration’s position on the demands, but clearly more than “understanding” was required or else SGO leaders would not have been leading the protest against the administration’s position on the demands. Examination of two of the more substantial demands may clarify the basis of some of the opposition to the administration’s stance.

    The students demand that classes not be cut or eliminated. The administration responds that no courses have been cut or eliminated. But at the same time the administration looks to increase enrollment in the non-college CLIP program by approximately 200 students This increase must, of necessity, result in the elimination of the college courses in which these additional 200 CLIP students would have otherwise been enrolled. The proposal to increase CLIP enrollment and eliminate these college courses was precisely the cause of the demonstrations and protests last semester and was thoroughly rejected by all college governance bodies and withdrawn by you with the promise that the proposal would be tabled pending its study and recommendations by a college-wide taskforce, which apparently has not yet been convened. This new CLIP proposal might appear as an effort by your administration to circumvent your promise and implement this policy rejected by the college community.

    Another demand that deserves through, critical examination and that appears to warrant our thanks to the students who raise it is the demand that the administration rescind a $50 ACT workshop fee and a $300 fee for the remedial English 1306 writing workshop. This fee, which I had never heard mentioned before, threatens, again by indirection, to undermine the mission of the college. Charging $300 for a remedial workshop will certainly price many of our students out of our college. This fee would constitute a de facto increase of tuition, apparently targeting only Hostos students and receiving none of the open discussion within the college community that such a dramatic change in policy must have.

    College and University governance by administrative fiat will inevitably and increasingly require the enforcement of the CUNY Peace Officer force. The continued existence of our college and our university as institutions nurturing the open exchange of ideas among faculty, staff and students, and the pursuit of our historic, educational mission is threatened by these events.  You recognize that we must work together to achieve the tasks facing the college. To bring the college community together the administration must respect the rights of the members of the college community. The administration must drop the charges against the five arrested at Hostos last week.

Sincerely,

Henry Lesnick

8/18/01

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