Regents Obediently Fall into Line
The November 22 decision by the New York State Board of Regents to uphold, with minor concessions, the Board of Trustees’ decision to kill remedial education in the Senior Colleges brings us even closer to the end of the era of open admissions in CUNY. In doing so, the Regents displayed all the servility that their masters, Pataki and Giuliani, expect of them.
Individual Regents tried to portray the “compromises” that were made to the plan as significant improvements that would greatly reduce its negative impact. Others made the excuse that it would have passed anyway in its original version, and better to have an “improved” version go through than to approve the original plan.
These excuses are all a load of crap. This type of cowardly behavior by the so-called “liberals” on the Boards of Trustees and Regents, college presidents, and other officials, is what allows devils like Giuliani to put forward such plans in the first place against the overwhelming opposition of the people of CUNY and of the city. If more liberals and centrists had stood up from the beginning and called a spade a spade, the plans would never have gotten this far.
Instead, they vacillate, speak delicately, and ultimately go along with the show in order to preserve their power and privilege. And we get the shaft as a result.
In contrast, student activists and many supporters of CUNY in the community demanded and continue to demand the preservation of open admissions. These groups weren’t broad and well-organized enough to win on their own at this point, but the powers that be will never protect open admissions or any other rights without constant pressure from below. The organizing must go on.
Presently, the only thing that might stand in the way of the outright end of open admissions is a pending civil rights lawsuit based on the broadly anticipated consequences which will disproportionately impact thousands upon thousands of young Black, Latinos, and other people of color in this city and hinder their chances of getting a higher education.
It shows what a reactionary state mainstream politics is in when over and over again it takes judges, many of them appointed by Republicans, to stop the depredations of the tyrant Giuliani and his house servant Herman Badillo, while the centrist politicians go along to get along.