The following pamphlet was produced by the CCNY Coalition in the Fall 1997.  It explains the real deal on why CUNY Card is a scam and why we should organize against it.

What is CUNYCard?

CUNYCard is a new ID card administrators are attempting to implement at campuses across CUNY, including City College. The proposed card may act as a library card, and, if students choose, as a Citibank debit card and MCI calling card. The card also has the potential to be programmed as a xerox card, a vending machine card and an access card for restricted parts of campus.

Though the proposed card sounds neat, CUNY-Card is actually an attempt by administrators, Citibank and MCI to violate students’ pocketbooks and privacy. That’s why CUNY administrators, working on it three years behind closed doors, have said almost nothing publically about CUNYCard. They don’t want public debate about it. This pamphlet, made by students and faculty, will attempt to update the CUNY community on the proposed card and explain why administrators don’t want you to know about it until it’s too late.

If implemented, how would the card take money from students?

The bank portion of the card would allow students, if they chose, to open up a Citibank account. Stud-ents would access their accounts by using CUNY-Card as an ATM card. The card would act as a debit card allowing students to remove only the money available in their accounts. If students chose, CUNY could deposit their financial aid directly into their Citibank accounts.

Sounds convenient, eh? But with the accounts, students won’t be able to write checks, won’t be able to make deposits on campus, and their accounts would accrue no interest. Why would anyone want to get an account with such poor service? Other banks offer much better deals.

When CUNY first began to implement the card on campuses, all sorts of fees were in store for students who opened up accounts. The contract between CUNY and Citibank–not between Citibank and students mind you–included a $3 per month maintenance fee, a $2.50 fee for dormant accounts, $1 ATM fees and an 80-cent fee for transfers from other banks’ accounts. Perhaps because administrators felt political pressure from card opponents, and certainly not because administrators were feeling magnanimous, some fees have been eliminated. For now, there is no maintenance fee and students are supposed to get 8 free ATM transactions per month.

Sounds nice, eh? But how would Citibank make money? After all that’s why the bank is providing this service, right? One way is when the aid checks are deposited students won’t be able to access their money for a couple days. During that time the bank can use that money as it pleases, probably for its own investing. As CUNY student financial aid amounts to some $300 million a year, that’s a lot of money. So in essence, every year, some of the economically poorest students in the nation will be giving Citibank, the world’s second biggest bank, an interest-free, $300 million loan with which it can make some easy profit. In sum, the bank is acting as a carpetbagger.

There’s a second way Citibank could make money. We said the fees are lessened“for now”. You see, the terms of the contract can be renegotiated, according to the contract, “at either party’s request”. As students have had and won’t have any input on CUNYCard except as consumers handing money over, they would have to be wary of any efforts by Citibank or CUNY to restructure the fees.

In fact, restructuring fees has occurred at other colleges. According to Mark Piotrowsky of the Center for Campus Organizing, administrators pursued a gradual implementation of fees for a similar bank-sponsored ID card at his alma mater, the University of Florida. “It quickly became clear it was a scam to steal money from students,” stated Piotrow-sky in a phone interview. “The administration would force students to get a new card every few years because they would introduce new features to the card. They’d charge students $10 for each new card.”

Citibank’s proposal for the card lays out a similar implementation strategy, one that maximizes their money-making. “The objective...is to distribute the card to every user and begin a user stream to fund additional applications and equipment,” the proposal reads. “The next step would be to arrange the banking applications with users and establish a means to efficiently penetrate the user discretionary market.” That’s “to efficiently penetrate” your pocketbook! So while there aren’t many fees now, there’s nothing to assure that there won’t be more later. In fact, that’s the plan!

It’s a no-lose situation for Citibank. It invests practically nothing into the project. Confidential documents show the CUNY campuses need to provide Citibank and MCI with precious space on campus at no charge, must pay for the computer equipment and software for the system, for the maintenance of the computers, for additional cardstock, among other expenses. Of course, when we say “the campus” pays, we really mean students pay. The administration deceitfully claims the card system self-sustaining “with no costs to the University or the taxpayers,” neglecting to add that the system is to be entirely supported by the bank and telecard fees charged to students.

This arrangement contrasts starkly with the one City College had previously. Until only last year a Chemical Bank branch operated out of the basement in Shepard Hall. The bank cashed students’ aid checks at no charge to students until administrators closed it.

The big questions remain. What does one say about a school that has spent thousands of dollars and years’ worth of administrators’ time to provide students with dubious banking services, but refuses to provide courses or professors or even clean bathrooms? Moreover, why can’t CUNY set up a credit union for its students–the faculty have one–and plow any profit back into services for students, not corporate pockets?

What is Citibank’s record?

CUNY’s choice of Citibank is disturbing as the bank’s record is characterized by anti-student policies, racism and union-busting. In October 1995, the Campaign for an America that Works awarded Citibank its “Hog of the Month” award for the bank’s lobbying efforts to kill direct student lending. The federal loans permit students loans directly from the government without exorbitant fees or interest. Citibank lobbied against these loans because it wishes to force students to receive loans through commercial banks. That would allow the banks to gouge students with fees.

In 1989, Citibank tightened credit for students seeking to obtain U.S.-guaranteed loans through the bank. According to the Wall Street Journal, Citibank drafted guidelines to deny loans to students at schools whose default rates topped 25%. Wrote the Journal, “[The policy] would potentially hit hundreds of...colleges that cater to low-income students and minorities. Federal surveys have shown that several branches of the City University of New York...have default rates above 25%.” In other words, Citibank created a policy that discriminated against CUNY students.

In 1988, Citibank denied some University of California students credit cards because of the students’ ages and majors. According to the Oakland Tribune, Citibank had a policy of denying cards to humanities majors because of their alleged poor credit histories. “They’ve targeted [their services at] student groups they think will have higher-paying jobs, such as MBA students,” the Tribune quoted a Stanford business professor.

Such discrimination extends to Citibank’s lending practices. A federal report published in October 1997 showed Citibank three times more likely to reject black loan applicants than white. In a May 1996 report, NYC Public Advocate Mark Green showed the bank had closed a slew of branches in low-income neighborhoods, many in New York’s black and Latino communities. Green accused Citibank of “financial segregation”. One Bronx councilwoman accused Citibank of “total insensitivity” to the neighborhood she represents.

CUNY’s involvement with Citibank is akin to assisting a company still operating in apartheid South Africa. Tellingly, Citibank was the last American bank to divest out of South Africa. The bitterender bank didn’t leave until 1987, years after an anti-apartheid divestiture campaign had begun.

Discrimination also characterizes the bank’s union-busting. In 1994, Citibank hired a new cleaning and maintenance firm. The new employer refused to rehire the janitors, many of them minority, who had previously cleaned Citibank branches. These workers, members of Local 32B-32J, earned $13.10 an hour with generous benefits. Instead, the new firm hired non-union workers for $7 per hour. Citibank supports the arrangement, calling the halved wages “moderately less rich.”The union has accused Citibank of “destroy[ing] the living standards of minority workers” and “pitt[ing] two groups of minority workers against each other.”

MCI is vehemently anti-union. In 1986, MCI fired 450 workers at its Southfield, Michigan sales office despite high profits there and just eight days after employees had notified MCI their intention to organize a union.

How would CUNYCard violate privacy?

CUNYCard could be used to allow administrators to track students around their campuses. A Hunter College faculty committee issued a report describing how the card operates at Baruch College where the card is already installed: “CUNYCard is required for entrance to the buildings, the libraries, the washrooms and the offices.” When students swipe their cards through Baruch’s turnstiles, “Each use is instantly recorded on a computer and appears in real time on a screen in the security room. This means that anyone can be tracked in, out, and around a building complex by administration.”

The Citibank proposal for the card calls the tracking capacity “user audit trail” whereby “the system...tracks operations performed by all system users.” Moreover, “audit trail reports can be formatted by user,” indicating CUNY administrators and security can have certain individuals segregated in the computer system for monitoring.

Within the last few years administrators and security have kept enemies’ lists of student activists, followed students at off-campus demonstrations, arrested CCNY students hunger-striking against budget cuts, brought guns onto York College’s campus against the expressed wishes of York’s president, kept speakers invited by students from entering campus, and shut-down several student newspapers because administrators disagreed with the opinions they expressed. Do we really want these types of administrators and security squads to have the capability of tracking students around our campuses?

Does City College have to get the card?

On the possibility of stopping CUNYCard all together, CCNY Vice President for Finance and Management Nathan Dickmeyer stated in an interview in The Campus, a student newspaper, “There are questions about the choices of Citibank and MCI...[but] [w]e cannot eliminate, discriminate against suppliers other than [by] substantive or financial means. To do so is illegal. The procedures to choose the supplier is done at the state level with state lawyers.”

Dickmeyer is full of excuses, isn’t he? ‘Our hands are tied there’s nothing we can do.’ But there are always ways to dump racist, anti-student, union-busting companies off our campuses. It’s just that Dickmeyer and other administrators embrace Citibank’s agenda, want to act as the bank’s junior partner, and have no intentions of bouncing their invited guest.

In fact, the contract with Citibank shows we need not have the card if we so choose. No state lawyers are making City College take part in the card system. For example, the contract states, “Affiliated Institutions within the State of New York may elect, but shall not be required, to participate” in CUNY-Card. Furthermore, “[CUNY] may also elect, at its sole option, without liability, (I) to terminate this Agreement and its obligation hereunder, in whole and in part, by giving Notice...”

Sounds good! Let’s give notice to Citibank and MCI that they’re not welcomed and must stay out.

What can we do to stop CUNYCard?

“The best thing to do is to keep doing what we’ve been doing here at City College–try to organize students and faculty against the card, hold forums, and spread the word that CUNYCard needs to be stopped,” responds Keeanga Taylor, City College’s Student Ombudsperson.

She continues: “We need to take collective action against an administration that declares that if you don’t use [CUNYCard] then they’re going to dump you out of school, that they’re going to give us hell if we don’t comply with a contract CUNY negotiated with Citibank without any student or faculty input whatsoever.”

“This may be a first dangerous step in the privatization of our public institution,” says Professor William Crain of the psychology department. “Private corporations don’t have the needs of all students at heart. Their main concern is profit. I hope students, staff, and faculty will speak out against the CUNYCard.” And speak out they have. Student and faculty groups from campuses across CUNY–like CCNY, Brooklyn, Queens, York, Hunter, BMCC, Staten Island, the Grad Center, the faculty union, the university-wide faculty senate and the CUNY-wide student senate–have all issued proclamations against the card.

We ask you join efforts to stop this unnecessary, wasteful, undemocratic, and invasive attempt by administrators to foist CUNYCard onto City College and our sister campuses around CUNY. CUNY should be a place for learning and questioning, not a place for commercialization and the blind obedience to authority administrators have asked of us.  Our ID cards, important symbols of our campus community, should reflect our campus’s interests, not Citibank’s.