I have always lamented about being born in the 1980s. After reading chapter 4, “Brooklyn College Belongs to Us,” in The Black Revolution on Campus by Biondi (2012), I wish I was around during the 1960s and 1970s. I marveled at the bravery, boldness, and social activism of Black students at Brooklyn College who organized the Black League of Afro-American Collegians (BLAC). The on-campus and off-campus leadership of Black students like Askia Davis and Orlando Pile is remarkable.

Similar to Biondi, I’m troubled that these student leaders are largely missing from the pages of history. However, I don’t find the omission surprising. The efforts that were made to make Black students feel less isolated on campus by recommending faculty, curriculum and student enrollment changes are significant. BLAC’s idea to have several Black students register for the same introductory literature course at Brooklyn College, and the audacious move to approach the professor after seeing there were no Black authors on the syllabus is no small feat.

Yet, as we approach 2020, I can attest that more needs to be done to make Black students and other students of color feel inclusive and equal on campus from the associate level to the doctoral level. I have the first-hand experience of taking a sociology course at The Graduate Center and being the only student of color and also questioning an instructor (in a non-confrontational method) about the lack of diverse scholars and authors on a syllabus. When Davis approached the instructor at Brooklyn College in 1969, he was given the option to leave the class. While I wasn’t presented with this option, I elected to drop the class because I felt isolated in more ways than one. During that same semester, I enrolled in “Intersectionality & Activist Research in the Movement for Black Lives” that was instructed by Professor Carmen Kynard. More than 90% of the class consisted of students of color, and the majority of the scholars on the syllabus were also people of color. It was the first time that I felt like I truly belonged at my campus. The instructor looked like me, my classmates looked like me and shared many of my experiences, the authors of the books and articles shared ideas and concepts that resonated with me. For once, in all of my years of being an undergraduate and graduate student at CUNY, I felt like I was not in a White-washed educational system (despite CUNY professing to be a school of great diversity).

As I reflect on Biondi’s retelling of Black students taking over Brooklyn College and my out-of-the-normal experience in Professor Kynard’s class, I wonder if my experience in Professor Kynard’s class was a hyperbolic version of a CUNY that was envisioned when BLAC presented their 18 demands to Brooklyn College administrators in 1969. I also wonder how a student-led activist movement similar to BLAC would resonate among students, faculty, and administrators of The Graduate Center. BLAC leaders were arrested, charged with felonies and misdemeanors that carried a sentence of 228 years, and sent to Riker Island as a result of trying to have the 18 demands met! Part of me wonders if there would be a similar outcome today. Are we too progressive for there to be an outcome like that, and more importantly have we become too complacent to even get to the stage of protesting? During the time of the protests occurring on CUNY campuses, Toni Cade, SEEK professor, wrote a letter to student activists and stated, “There are two traditions within our culture that are worth looking at, for they tell us a great deal about our responses. One, we have been conditioned to turn off, short out, be cool; two, we have often been pushed to make something from nothing. The first response is a negative one.” I feel like we are resting at the first response, unfortunately.

I googled Askia Davis and came across this website: https://www.askiadavis.com/authors

For several reasons, I really enjoyed reading Savonick’s (2018) dissertation. I felt most inspired by Chapter 4 – “This Class Has Something to Teach America.” Savonick describes the work of several teacher-poets who are also activists including the notable Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich. All of these teacher-poets taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) program at program CUNY in the 1960s and 1970s.  In Chapter 4, Savonick specifically describes the teaching style and impact of June Jordan, who had a “vision of social change [that] was founded on a belief that everyone had something to contribute to the production of a more just, equitable, and pleasurable world, and that classrooms were one site for discovering what that might entail” (p. 237). Savonick highlights that Jordan’s pedagogy approach preceded Paolo Friere’s popular book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by at least one year. Upon learning this surprising fact, I found that my respect for Jordan increased even more. I mean, just think. Even as we approach 2020, Jordan’s pedagogy approach can still be seen as pretty dorn radical for many administrators and faculty in higher education. I could only imagine how radical her approach appeared during the 1960s and 1970s, not just at CUNY but also at other schools where she taught at like Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, UC-Berkley, and SUNY’s Stony Brook. For example, Savonick describes how “students in Jordan’s class sat in a circle, voted on decisions about class readings and procedures, and collectively established the criteria for evaluating each other’s poetry. Students participated ‘fully and equally’ in decision-making processes in the classroom and on campus” (p. 210). As might be expected, Jordan had some doubters and haters who were not completely on board with her approach. However, as a Black woman in the academy, I’m sure negative directives were not new to Jordan, unfortunately. One detractor questioned why more than 40% of students in one of Jordan’s class received an A or A-. It seems completely absurd there was so much emphasis and concern about the grades that students were receiving instead of a focus on what their learning experience was inside and outside of the classroom, as a result of Jordan’s teaching style. It reminds me that higher education should really be less focused on grading, and more on teaching and learning. I also loved, loved, loved that Jordan held close to the belief that instructors and scholars aren’t always right in their beliefs and assumptions. Rather, students have insights that are also worth exploring and valuing – particularly Black and Puerto Rican students who are often excluded or deemed as underperformers. As conveyed by Savonick, Jordan “taught students that their voices, stories, and actions mattered for social change; in short, that each student ‘had something to teach America’” (p. 209). Although many won’t admit it, that’s pretty radical, even in this era.

As I read about Jordan and the other teacher-poets who were also activists, there were a few things that kept popping up in my head. For example, I kept thinking about how did these teacher-poets stay inspired and motivated to keep going in the face of opposition and institutional bureaucracy? I also questioned the impact on their health and wellness to keep going and pushing forward for these progressive teacher-poets. For example, did any of them suffer from burn out or depression? Did they have collective groups to support each other? Often times, we trace the public facing progress of individuals without considering their private lives and struggles. I think those areas are worth exploring, too.

While CUNY’s free tuition policy didn’t end until 1976, during New York City’s fiscal crisis, pressures to eliminate free tuition existed long before. Tahir Butt (n.d.) argues November of 1965 marked a turbulent period for CUNY and its struggle to remain tuition free. According to the 1965 headline from the New York Times, the CUNY Chancellor, Albert Bowker, and several other senior leadership staff in CUNY resigned after disputing with New York City’s Board of Higher Education about whether to charge students a tuition fee of $400. Faced with the increased demands for enrollment into CUNY’s tuition-free schools that were nearing capacity, Bowker and his colleagues reasoned imposing a $400 tuition fee on students as a logical solution. According to Butt (n.d.) and other scholars, many of these new applicants to CUNY resulted from the  “spike” of high school graduates  from the postwar Baby Boom.  The substantial migration of Puerto Rican and Southern Black people to New York City, who were merely seeking social mobility and the opportunity to take advantage of higher education, also contributed to CUNY’s unpreparedness to expand and accept more students without a $400 admission fee.

Many of those who were in favor of CUNY remaining tuition-free, frequently referenced the tuition-free history of The Free Academy, founded in 1847 by Townsend Harris, who stated during the opening: “Open the doors to all—Let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct and intellect.”  The Free Academy and the municipal colleges of Hunter, Brooklyn and Queens were consolidated into the newly established CUNY by Governor Rockefeller with the Education Law of 1961.  While tuition remained free (albeit some students still paid fees) for 129 years, one should not ignore the difference in the racial/ethnic  demographics of students who were enrolled in CUNY before the tuition imposition (predominately White students) and the parallel timing of CUNY’s end to free tuition after the large influx of Black and Puerto Rican students. While some scholars may posit race was not a factor, I would argue that given the racists history of the United States and the countless examples of efforts to oppress people of color, how could race not have been a factor?

Sure, Governor Rockefeller had been attempting to impose tuition on CUNY since 1961. By this time, he had already successfully imposed a $400 tuition fee on all SUNY schools, and he had financial dreams of doing the same thing for CUNY. However, according to Butt (n.d.) and other scholars, he faced opposition from the working class and their political defenders. Considering the Civil Rights Act didn’t pass until 1965, I’m doubtful that the working class that politicians were protecting were people of color. Sure, they were poor. But, being poor and a person of color (read: Black or Puerto Rican) during the 1960s and 1970s had to have been a “double-jeopardy.” While I found Butt’s analysis to be interesting, I was disappointed that no racial/ethnic data was provided in his analysis to provide more context for the policy changes. As a Black woman reading any sort of historical data, I’m always thinking of the place and experience of Black people, and other people of color. For example, when I read there was “merit-based free tuition” before the 1970s or that CUNY sought to combat its limited space issue by denying acceptance to whomever did not have an A- average, I immediately thought of how many of those applicants were Black or Puerto Rican and low-income. Those students who were denied entrance or forced to pay tuition because they weren’t “merit worthy” may have had just as much potential as those who were admitted. I’d be interested in learning more about the whole groups of people who were excluded because they could not afford the “instructional-fees” charged to evening and non-matriculated students or those who didn’t meet the academic requirements for acceptance . For example, what was the quality of K-12 schools they attended? What social determinants or barriers to academic success did they encounter? If they were not able to afford tuition, how likely was it in the 1960s that they were able to obtain loans to finance their education? Many of these applicants missed out on the “golden age” of higher education. In turn, the exclusion of these students with “instructional-fee” requirements or flat out rejection can also be viewed as CUNY missing out. Gloria Ladson-Billings describes it best when she questions, “how can the full range of scholarship be explored if whole groups of people are systematically excluded from participating in the process of knowledge and production?”

Perhaps CUNY missed out on the “golden age” in higher education in other ways, too. For example, CUNY (formerly the Free Academy) missed out on the benefits of The Morrill Land Grand Acts of 1862 and 1890 when funds that were reserved for establishing public education for NY were received by Cornell University. As well, efforts by Columbia University’s leadership to thwart the growth of City College and the other municipal colleges of Brooklyn, Queens and Hunter should not be ignored. Butt (n.d.) observes, “Instead of a full-scale university, Butler [president of Columbia University from 1901 to 1943] pushed instead for a smaller branch of City College as a way to avoid posing a threat to Columbia.” Finally, CUNY also missed out on the “golden age” since Governor Rockefeller was more interested in the expansion and promotion of SUNY. However, some would argue that CUNY really missed out on the “golden age” since CUNY took too long to charge tuition to all of its students; the lack of tuition fees being charged at all CUNY schools prevented an accelerated growth.