The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner sparked a growing public debate on racism, policing and the US criminal justice system. And at CUNY, faculty across the university system tackled these subjects in the classroom, from .a law professor talking about concrete ways on how to potentially curb a federal program to get excess military equipment to a faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who teaches critical race theory to NYPD officers.
Constant drilling, classrooms turned into makeshift labs with “murky and dusty” water and dust and debris filling the hallway air are just some of the issues that faculty and students have encountered while they teach and learn in 17 Lexington, a Baruch College building where classes are held while the building goes through major renovation.
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Days before the beginning of the Spring semester, dozens of pipes burst in a major Bronx Community College building. More than 500 classes relocated, and the union insisted that proper health and safety measures be implemented before reoccupancy.
The situation isn’t new at CUNY. Students learn in deteriorating buildings across the city. The sticker price, cited by CUNY in their five-year capital request, to repair and upgrade existing buildings CUNY-wide is $4.7 billion.
In the early part of my career, I reported on issues facing Muslim, South Asian and Arab American after 9/11, from a first-person reflection about the sweet desserts at the end of Ramadan for NPR.org to the detention of a Palestinian American man who is married to a TSA baggage screener for the Fort Worth Weekly.
