In the basement of a three story building in Brooklyn, Nadia Rodriguez lays on a twin size wooden bed which she shares with her two children. The twenty-six year-old single parent said she couldn’t complete her freshman year because she was “forced” to work twenty hours at a week at a community hospital in Queens while attending Hunter College as a full-time student.
Nadia, who dislikes having her photograph taken, is among the estimated ten thousand SUNY and CUNY students in the state controlled welfare program who dropped out of college last year. She believes that a college degree would move her permanently off welfare.
Opponents of this controversial work-fare program which came into law last year as a component to the state’s welfare system argue that the prime cause of this wide-range drop-out is the work location. They say work locations are frequently a great distance from the student campuses or their residences, making it impossible for these students to attend classes on time. They further argue that most students end up attending partial classes or miss an entire class period.
On the other hand, proponents argue that allowing welfare recipients to work on a campus where they are enrolled as students is likely to promote lethargy. Evidently, statistical information provided by CUNY administration indicates that the implementation of New York City Work-fare requirements has seriously hindered the academic studies and degree progress of such CUNY students. In just a short period this regulation has gone a long way to discourage the enrollment of welfare recipients into colleges.
However, the Welfare Reform Act of 1997, which CUNY officials hoped will remedy this ugly situation, will allow recipients who are attending SUNY and CUNY to work on a campus where they are enrolled or a work site within a “reasonable proximity” to the campus. This situation has posed another question as to whether the already crowded SUNY and CUNY institutions would be able to provide jobs for all recipients.
Confidently, Hunter College Vice President, Silvia F. Fishman, said there will be jobs for every student who has a work-fare assignment at Hunter. But the Dean of students was not sure how many work-fare students would be assigned to Hunter. “We don’t have those numbers yet. Those numbers will be made available by the Human Resources Administration,” she said.
Inevitably, many people believe this upsurge of work-fare recipients will threaten the fate of other workers already working at CUNY and SUNY. However Dean Fishman dismisses this idea vehemently, saying that there are enough jobs at Hunter to prevent that from happening. “We would not be interested in compromising the position of a full time worker because we recognize they, too, need the position,” she added.
Responding to the high drop-out rate as a result of work-fare implementation, the Vice President said the School has always made available whatever financial resources it has to help students who are in financial distress. With respect to students who may have dropped out of school because of work requirements, Ms. Fishman said the College will make it much easier for those students to work on campus. “Hunter College is very anxious to support the opportunities for students to work on campus wherever possible in positions that are related to their academic interest,” she said.
Accordingly, CUNY Board of Trustees issued a report, dated September 29, 1997,which requires all College Presidents to implement a plan that will identify appropriate positions on campus and monitor procedures for the administration of this program. Such a program will include the recipient’s academic review process and ensure that students meet the requirements of the laws.
The twenty-one-page report further indicates that each College President should submit the implementation plan to the Chancellor on or before October 17. The deadline for this plan is barely two weeks from the date of this publication. However, Ms. Fishman indicated that Hunter will honor this deadline. She said Hunter’s Human Resources Center is overseeing this job which will then go to the President for his approval.
However CUNY Vice Chancellor, Jay Hershenson, told the Envoy that the University Administration has been very instrumental in this year’s policy because the University has approximately 15-16 thousand students who receive public assistance out of a total number of 204 thousand. “We are interested in making it easier for our students who are on welfare to attend college and complete a college degree. This is the principle behind our efforts,” he said.
In the meantime, Hunter College campus-based student activist group, Welfare Rights Initiative, has called on all students who receive public assistance to contact their organization. They provide legal services and leadership training to equip students for participation in the policy and program decisions that affect them. They can be reached at 650-3592.
As people wait impatiently to see how this policy will be implemented,
it is still unclear whether this new law will help alleviate the previous
problems. A report on the awaited policy plan which has to meet the approval
of the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) will be decided
upon by December 1 of this year according to Rita Rubin, Director of Public
Information at CUNY. She added that CUNY is still working with HRA to see
how quickly the student work-fare program will be approved.
