"An Open Letter to CUNY Admins"
Posted on July 7, 2020, this Reddit thread recorded one unnamed student's open letter to the City University of New York (CUNY) administration in the interest of drawing critical attention to the persistent mix of unclear, conflicting, or otherwise discordant signals received by CUNY leadership and its student populations following the outbreak of the COVID-19 across the greater NYC area. Scrutinizing CUNY administrators amid a persistent lack of institutional transparency, the student portrayed university communications as "wrought with uncertainty" which contributed to the confusion regarding CUNY's plans for the future.
The letter emphasized the effects of these student anxieties and struggles, calling attention in particular to instructors who have reduplicated their teaching practices and set rigid expectations for their online courses. The student also noted the tendency for faculty to compensate for the loss of in-person learning by increasing the workload in their courses, failing to acknowledge the ongoing struggles and embodied learning experiences of their students in the process.
This item is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) Distance Learning Archive, a group project developed as part of Prof. Matthew K. Gold's Spring 2020 Knowledge Infrastructures seminar in the Ph.D. Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, in partnership with the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program. The project's goal was to resist or trouble the discourse of catastrophe around the shift to online learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by documenting the lived experiences of students, faculty, and staff across CUNY's 25 campuses. Further, the project wanted to document the moment of crisis response by taking a critical approach to educational technology.
The letter emphasized the effects of these student anxieties and struggles, calling attention in particular to instructors who have reduplicated their teaching practices and set rigid expectations for their online courses. The student also noted the tendency for faculty to compensate for the loss of in-person learning by increasing the workload in their courses, failing to acknowledge the ongoing struggles and embodied learning experiences of their students in the process.
This item is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) Distance Learning Archive, a group project developed as part of Prof. Matthew K. Gold's Spring 2020 Knowledge Infrastructures seminar in the Ph.D. Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, in partnership with the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program. The project's goal was to resist or trouble the discourse of catastrophe around the shift to online learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by documenting the lived experiences of students, faculty, and staff across CUNY's 25 campuses. Further, the project wanted to document the moment of crisis response by taking a critical approach to educational technology.
Source | CUNY Distance Learning Archive
Creator | Anonymous
Date Created | July 7, 2020
Rights | Obtain From Reddit
Item Type | Social Media Post
Cite This document | Anonymous, “"An Open Letter to CUNY Admins",” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed January 13, 2025, https://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/12672.
Creator | Anonymous
Date Created | July 7, 2020
Rights | Obtain From Reddit
Item Type | Social Media Post
Cite This document | Anonymous, “"An Open Letter to CUNY Admins",” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed January 13, 2025, https://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/12672.
