SLAM Starts the Ball Rolling
By Keith Mitchell, News Editor
While most students were recovering from the first days of the fall semester, a dozen local and national activists met at the offices of Undergraduate Student Government (USG) to plot some really subversive shit for this coming year. The Student Liberation Action Movement, otherwise known as SLAM!, held its annual CUNY-wide conference last Sunday, and by all expectations the kids still have hell-raising on their minds.
Representatives from five CUNY campuses, high schools, community groups, offices of independent political candidates and national groups such as the United States Student Association and the Center for Campus Organizing converged to discuss issues facing CUNY students: rising tuition costs, workfare, crowded classes, retrenchment of courses and majors and simply the general attack on common decency by Giuliani, Pataki and CUNY Central.
Among the participants there was an understanding that the attacks on public education go beyond academia. Rather what’s going on in CUNY is a result of a larger systematic attack on all programs that bridge the gap between rich and poor. Hence, conference attendants sought ways to include issues that go beyond the sphere of CUNY and to connect the diverse body that makes up much of city.
“We can acknowledge difference, but in reality, we have to understand that the problems between groups is based on miscommunication, stereotypes or plain arrogance,” said one Queens based activist. ”What we have to envision is that we face a common enemy on a daily basis.”
Among the proposed projects to be taken up this year include a free tuition campaign, defense of open admission, teach-ins on the importance and history of CUNY, protests against the divestment of educational funds into building prisons and against domestic violence. Given the magnitude of these projects, there was a motion that SLAM! campuses encourage greater community involvement in the politics of the university system and vice-versa.
Representing Hunter at the gathering was Sandra Barros, an ex-executive Board member of USG and member of SLAM!, Valery Jean, and other SLAM! members at large. Among the various projects that Hunter USG/SLAM! are already involved with, such as rent regulation, the free lunch program, and defending freedom of speech on campus, a motion was also made to attempt to expand the child care services at Hunter by organizing fund-raising concerts and bazaars.
