Why I’m walking out of class

WE STUDENTS are not told of the inspiring radical history of our City College of New York. We are not told that our school was free until 1976, or that it was such an exciting hotbed of political ideas in the 1930s that Black writers like Richard Wright affectionately called it the "Little Red Schoolhouse."

Most conspicuously, we are not told of the mass 1960s struggles that rocked our campus for the people's basic right to an education, culminating in the historic 1969 CCNY Open Admissions Strike. This action successfully fought the school's previous racist admissions practices, and ultimately forced its doors open to welcome huge numbers of students of color and the creation of ethnic studies departments all over CUNY.

Such victories are not officially discussed because, hey, what happens if the students decide to advocate again for our educational rights?

History does not repeat itself, but rather interacts its past with its present and future in a continuous dynamic process. Right now, we are seeing history being looped and remixed. The disastrous economic crisis has politicians and bankers alike scrambling to find ways to apply band-aids here and there at the terrible expense of students and working people.

For CUNY students, a recent state legislature decision in early April to impose $300 more in tuition fees each semester demonstrates that our lives and our right to an education are under attack. This tuition increase is not even going toward more investment in our schools; 80 percent will be funneled directly into the state budget. We are effectively being taxed for wanting to go to college.

That's why CCNY students are organizing a mass walkout on April 22 at 2 p.m. with a clear message: We are walking out today so we don't have to drop out tomorrow.

This walkout has been a long time coming. Military recruiters are still invited every semester to peddle their education-for-murder-abroad exchange program. Whole departments, like Black Studies, Women's Studies, Psychology and more, are being eroded into oblivion. Baskerville Hall, the place where in the past clubs could actively congregate, is a never-ending construction nightmare.

Professors and adjuncts are being told to work more for less pay, to endure larger class sizes with fewer resources. CCNY security makes entrance into NAC more and more of an aggressive process. Who knows--maybe we'll soon have to take off our shoes and be administered body searches?

We are walking out on April 22 because we think that CCNY can reclaim its original vision, as stated on January 21, 1849, the day it opened free educational doors to NYC--that "the experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few."

We are walking out on April 22 because we are feeling more and more disenfranchised from this "Poor People's Harvard," which should be seen as a haven from the economic crisis, not an extension of its uncertainties. At a time when our city and state governments should be consciously investing in our futures with more educational funding, more scholarships and more resources for students and teachers, we are being told to learn with less.

Join us on that day, when we will reclaim our radical history of City College by leaving our classes en masse at 2 p.m. to hold a rally at the NAC plaza and firmly assert that education should be for the people, not for profit.