CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

On September 24, 1968, the Steering Committee of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Coalition on Educational Needs and Services (B-SCENS) met to discuss the criteria they hoped to use in the selection of a president for a new, public college in Central Brooklyn. A broad network of local educational advocacy and community-based organizations had formed the B-SCENS as a network to gather and formalize the community’s demands for the new college, and appointed the five-member Negotiating Team to meet with an equal number of CUNY officials as a “Presidential Search Committee.” Of special note in these minutes from the Steering Committee’s meeting is the suggestion that the selected candidate’s experience would “not [be] all college level,” and would include “public school experience (provides knowledge of lower school system deficiencies; [and] experience with college-age youth.” The question of whether the new college president wouid be required to have university-level experience would emerge as a flashpoint in the months to come.