CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

In this article excerpted from the December 1975 issue of York College student-run Spirit Magazine, managing editor Teddy DuBose decries proposed budget cuts to CUNY institutions at the height of the 1970s fiscal crisis in New York. DuBose further rejects the idea of implementing tuition at the city's historically free colleges. The city and state's economic woes were of such severity, however, that the protestations of DuBose and thousands of others were of little consequence. By the fall of 1976, not only did the university system face large budget cuts but full time students were responsible for tuition costs for the first time since the founding of the city's Free Academy nearly 130 years earlier.

Spirit Magazine, a self-described "third-world publication," was the creation of York College students and reflected the concerns and priorities of the college's large black student population.