CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

A participatory project to collect and preserve the histories of the City University of New York

We found 36 items that match your search.

Letter: Economic Disparity

In this letter addressed to President Irwin Polishook of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), Jonathan Lang, Chair of the Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC), outlined the differences in salaries between adjunct and full-time faculty and expressed [...]

Doctoral Students Council News: Murphy's Optimism

This Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC) newsletter, published in 1982, covered adjunct news that ranged from notes on a meeting the DSC steering committee had with Chancellor Murphy to a satirical piece entitled “How not to be an Adjunct”. The [...]

The Graduate Students' Union 1983-84: A position paper

Written by the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) in 1983-84, this position paper stated the intentions of the recently formed organization. The aims enumerated were to advance the interests of CUNY graduate students as employees (or prospective [...]

The Refuse: On Representation or Decertification

This issue of The Refuse (December 1983-January  1984), a Doctoral Students’ Council newletter, addressed the issue of retrenchment at CUNY, pointing to several articles that had mischaracterized CUNY’s relationship to labor precarity and [...]

Deconstructing Chancellor Murphy's Comments on Adjuncts

The Association of Part-Time faculty (APTF) sent out this correspondence to full -and part-time faculty asking them to send letters to CUNY Chancellor Joseph Murphy who had called the adjunct employment situation “catastrophic” but, according [...]

PTU Newsletter (vol. 1., no. 1)

The debut newsletter in 1986 of PTU View, was published by a group devoted to fighting for the rights of part-time staff at CUNY. Included were listed contacts at various CUNY campuses; announcements of several Spring meetings; and a detailed [...]

GSU Denied Room for Meeting

This document, filed in 1986, included both the original memo from the Graduate Center's Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, Geoffrey Marshall, and the Graduate Student Union’s (GSU) response. In the initial memo, the permission to use a room [...]

PTU View

The August 1986 PTU View newsletter called for adjunct faculty to sign a "union authorization" card. In addition to listing how the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) had failed to represent the interests of contingent faculty, the PTU’s demands [...]

CUNY Adjunct Alert (December 1998)

This newsletter, produced by CUNY Adjunct Unite! (CAU), discussed the PSC's alleged accusations against both CAU and The Adjunct Project for violating New York State's Taylor Law. The article argued that CAU is an independent organization and [...]

CUNY Adjunct Alert (February 1999)

This February 1998 CUNY Adjunct Alert newsletter responded to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Vice President Richard Boris's positions on adjunct labor at CUNY in relation to the recently ratified contract expressed in the December 1998 issue [...]

"Another step in an ongoing international campaign for parity in adjunct pay and working conditions" – Campus Equity Week 2001 Memo

Written by Marcia Newfield, this 2001 memo reported on the "historic" meeting of unions in the USA and Canada to discuss adjunct labor. The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) held a roundtable at the Graduate Center called "Adjunct Equity in the [...]

Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Caucus Contract Demands

Compiled by the "Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Caucus", this twenty-item list included a number of contract demands specific to CUNY's large adjunct teaching population. The “Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus” was a group formed in 1973. [...]

Three Pronged Alternative Approach to Pro-Rated Pay

This information sheet compiled in 1995 addressed the income disparity between adjuncts and full-time faculty and proposed a three-pronged approach to lessen the income disparity. The rationale and calculation of pro-rated pay for adjunct faculty [...]

Trench Scholar!

Will Petry, an adjunct who had recently been elected Chairperson of the Doctoral Students' Council (DSC) at the Graduate Center, wrote this 1986 editorial in Refuse. Petry recounted a series of specific events in relation to his employment as an [...]

Adjuncts Reject PSC Contract

Tom Lynch's 1973 article, “Adjuncts Reject PSC Contract,” published in The Meridian, The Student Voice of Lehman College, argued that the raise was inadequate in so far as it was lower than the cost of living and was less than what full-time [...]

Response to the Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus

This letter, dated May 14th, 1973, was addressed to David Allen and signed by David Newton of Chancellor Kibbee’s office. In the letter, Newton responded to a request to a meeting by asking for identification and affiliation, explaining that the [...]

Guidebook for the Implementation of Asian American Studies at CUNY

This guidebook, published in November of 1995, was assembled by members of the Asian American Studies Faculty Development and Curriculum Project, a $15,000 initiative funded by the CUNY Office for Faculty Development. The guidebook provides [...]

"Mind if We CRAASH Here?"

This article in the Hunter Envoy from October 2007 profiles the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) during the semester of its founding. CRAASH was founded by four Hunter College students—Olivia Lin, [...]

"Asian Studies Crisis?"

This article in the Hunter Envoy from April 2008 covers Dean Shirley Scott's response to claims made by the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) about the lack of financial support from the Hunter [...]

Petition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter

This petition was circulated by the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) in the semester of its founding in Fall 2007. The petition outlines the issues facing the program and the reasons around CRAASH's [...]

Letter from the "Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus"

Posted on the walls of John Jay College in 1973, this letter from the Executive Committee of the "Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus" called for broader support from the CUNY community for the dignity and rights of adjunct faculty. In addition to [...]

Your Voice Counts

"No Budget Cuts, No Tuition Hikes, No Police on Campus" This flyer called for Graduate Center students to show solidarity in support of the City University of New York (CUNY) strike by joining the CUNY Graduate Center (GC) takeover. The pamphlet [...]

Graduate Student Action Paper

Written by the Graduate Center Student Strike in April 1991, this action paper reported that the City University of New York's (CUNY) Graduate Center had been taken over by graduate students on the morning of April 16th in solidarity with the [...]

What to Do If You Are Asked to Report to Work on Campus Tomorrow

Sent on March 18, 2020, this artifact included a statement by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) dictating terms for essential workers whose roles required continued in-person work during the official closure of CUNY. Despite its name, distance [...]

Thursday's Special

This satirical menu featured dishes called “democratic” university, “meaningful” academic employment, “right to peaceful protests” and “safe and secure” learning places and was part of a pop-up political theater action created by the [...]

Song: "Hit the Road Matt: Good riddance to a reprehensible Chancellor!"

This version of the Ray Charles classic was written by members of the Graduate Center General Assembly and Adjunct Project on the occasion of CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein's June 2013 retirement. The song references ongoing scandals over which [...]

"A three-pronged experimental approach to the problem of undiscovered college potential among the young men and women of New York City"

This memorandum from Chancellor Bowker’s office called for three new forms of CUNY desegregation programs (pp. 1-2). This “three-pronged experiment” would be excused from CUNY’s general obligation to admit only students with the highest [...]

Minutes from 4/8/1965 CCNY Faculty Council Meeting

In these notes from a liberal arts and sciences faculty council meeting at City College, CCNY President Gallagher describes a tentative plan to admit 100 “disadvantaged” students into an experimental program in fall 1965. After discussion, the [...]

1967 - 1968 Annual Report of the SEEK Program

This is a CUNY-wide report for the SEEK program during the 1967-68 academic year. Included in the document is a cover letter from SEEK director Leslie Berger to CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker, a table of contents, a list of SEEK administrators, and [...]

A New Role for Psychology: Working with Disadvantaged Persons in a College Setting

In this 10-page "position paper," Berger describes and offers a theoretical rationale for the central role of psychological counselors within SEEK. A handwritten note adds an additional source on page 10. Short for "Search for Education, Elevation, [...]

To Help Them Achieve: The Academic Talent Search Project 1966-68, Part II

In the Fall of 1964, (armed with a Rockefeller Foundation grant) Brooklyn College’s School of General Studies launched a 42 student pilot program using Bowker’s model, which it called the “Academic Talent Search Project” or “ATSP.” The [...]

The Pre Baccalaureate Program at the College

In this December 1966 City College Alumnus article, Leslie Berger publicly describes and advocates for the City College SEEK model and challenges all traditional college admissions criteria as incompetent measures of student potential. Short [...]

Educational Opportunity Programs: Are They Academically Justifiable?

In this 22-page, July 1969 Milwaukee speech to the first annual conference on educational opportunity programs in higher education, Leslie Berger--director of CUNY's SEEK program--describes the birth and rapid growth of SEEK from 1965 to 1969; [...]

"Pre-Baccalaureate Program Student Statistics -- Fall Term 1965"

This early summary of the first semester of SEEK (then known as the Pre-Baccalaureate Program) details the courses, schedules and teachers for the 113 SEEK students in Fall 1965 at CCNY. These first SEEK students took a mix of mainstream and special [...]

"The Faculty Council Interim Report of the Committee on Enrollment Policy"

This April 1964 report shows the deep conflicts within the CCNY faculty with regards to expanding access to new students. Complaining about limited facilities and student unreadiness, the faculty committee resisted both loosening admissions [...]

"Winter Soldiers - The Story of a Conspiracy Against the Schools"

Published in 1941 by the Committee for Defense of Public Education, a joint committee of the Teachers Union and the College Teachers Union, Winter Soldiers tells the story of the Rapp-Coudert hearings and New York State's efforts to rid its [...]

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