CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER
NOV - DEC 2000 VOLUME
3, NUMBER 2
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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER |
CUNY Bends Rules for Fire Department
By Bill Crain
The CUNY Board of Trustees' new remediation and admissions policy requires students to pass the three Freshman Skills Assessment Tests in order to enroll in CUNY's bachelor's degree programs.
But CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has recently given members of the New York City Fire Department permission to enroll in John Jay's bachelor's degree program without taking the tests.
The firefighters must have passed the civil service exam and have completed fire academy training, but they are clearly receiving preferential treatment. The civil service exam is not on a par with the CUNY tests. And the fire academy training is practical, not academic.
Firefighters are already receiving transfer credit for the fire academy training, but this is typically unwarranted. They get credit for skills such as learning to drive the fire truck.
Earlier in the year, the Chancellery violated the new admissions policy by allowing students with 45 credits from non-CUNY colleges to transfer into CUNY's bachelor's degree programs without passing the tests. Apparently, CUNY's leaders look more highly on students outside the university, even though these students had been having difficulty with the tests.
CUNY preaches "high standards" but doesn't take its admissions policy seriously or apply it consistently. The policy is biased and political.
I have written to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which is monitoring CUNY's admissions policy for bias, about the preferential treatment for the firefighters and the non-CUNY transfers. The Fire Department is almost entirely white. I bet the non-CUNY transfer students, in comparison to CUNY students, are disproportionately white, too.
Bill Crain is a professor of psychology at the City College, CUNY, and a leader of CUNY Is Our Future, a group of faculty, students, and community activists working to maintain open access.