CUNY Blindsides More Than 2700 Students By Doubling Their Tuition

http://theword.hunter.cuny.edu/get_em.html

Bleeding CUNY
By Mikaela Torres

As they prepare for registration for the Spring 2002 semester, many students 
are faced with the challenge of finding money to pay for their tuition and 
college expenses. But CUNY's "undocumented and out-of-status students," 
individuals who are not legal residents, are faced with a bigger challenge 
because their tuition will be doubled starting the spring semester.

The University said that it was raising the rates to comply with a 
five-year-old federal law that prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving 
preferential treatment over out-of-state students, according to a memorandum 
sent to the BoT, college presidents and administrators.

"It is a very cruel decision that will force thousands of students to drop 
out of school," City College Professor William Crain says in an interview. 
CUNY General Counsel Frederick P. Schaffer says that CUNY is obligated to 
obey the 1996 federal law. However, Crain says, "the law has no implementing 
regulations and there are many ways to comply with the law," without having 
to raise tuition. Texas and California have allowed undocumented students to 
attend public universities and are charged the in-state tuition rate as long 
as they have lived in that state for at least three years.

Several faculty members consider the decision making process as "irregular" 
because "even within CUNY's own framework, it was nothing that was decided 
upon by the Board of Trustees," says Marjorie Stamberg, a Hunter adjunct.

September 11 gave birth to many issues, not only social and political. The 
CUNY decision was made sometime in the month of October and that caused 
people to assume that it is somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks, the war 
in Afghanistan and the xenophobia sweeping the country. "Since 1989 CUNY has 
given undocumented students the in-state tuition; all the mayors, beginning 
with Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani - they all went along with it," says Crain 
who teaches psychology. "There was a bad federal law, the 1996 federal law, 
which was also created in an anti-immigrant mood right after the first 
bombing of the World Trade Center."

Stamberg says the decision is "certainly connected to the war in Afghanistan 
because shortly after that, Frank Padavan, a rightwing state senator from 
Queens, made an announcement that the presence of 'illegal aliens' at CUNY 
was a threat to national security."

[...]




_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.