Just wanted to give a quick congratulations to the CUNY students who have been working hard since 2008 to institute a CUNY-wide sexual assault policy. The Board of Trustees approved the policy on Monday. Among other things, the policy mandates that each CUNY college develop prevention and education programming and train relevant staff in the prevention and handling of sexual assault.

Students at CUNY (the City College of New York) have been working hard for sexual assault policy reform, through a group called Students for a Greater CUNY. This group of students has been doing amazing work to affect policy reform at a large public college, check them out at their new website: www.cunysgc.com, and on our post about them from last year. Activists from CUNY are a great example of students effectively engaging their administration to work towards policy reform.

They’re holding a Town Hall meeting October 22 – see below for details!

CUNY SEXUAL ASSAULT POLICY PUBLIC FORUM
(New York, NY) – On October 22, CUNY students will have the opportunity to have their voices heard and ask questions to the CUNY Sexual Assault Policy Taskforce regarding the history, progress, and implementation of CUNY’s first ever prevention-based sexual assault
policy. The Public Forum, which is open to all CUNY students, will take place on October 22, 2009 from 6-8 pm. The Forum is sponsored by Students for a Greater CUNY (SGC) and cosponsored by Queen’s College Democratic Student Alliance.

WHAT: CUNY Sexual Assault Policy Public Forum

WHO: Frederick Schaffer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs and General Counsel, the City University of New York
Kristen Bowes, Associate General Counsel, the City University of New York
CUNY Sexual Assault Policy Taskforce members
CUNY students

WHEN: October 22, 2009
6-8 pm

WHERE: Queens College, Rosenthal Library 230

The purpose of CUNY’s sexual assault policy is to ensure students have recourse on CUNY campuses for services and needs when faced with sexual assault. The aim of CUNY’s sexual assault policy is to be student-centered and prevention-based while being inclusive of the diverse population of students at CUNY.

Media notes: The Forum is open to all CUNY Press, faculty and administration. If you would like to reserve an interview with any of the student taskforce members, contact Darakshan Raja
@ Darakshan.Raja@jjay.cuny.edu. For further information on the CUNY Sexual Assault policy background and updates, please visit www.cunysgc.com.

So I’m a bit behind on posting this, but it’s still an important news story.

This op-ed from the New York Times discusses some reasons why tuition inflation is now double the general inflation rate. Not only do staff job increases outpace enrollment, but colleges are also trying to seem more appealing to prospective students by increasing amenities, such as gyms.

Last December, NY state legislature decided to increase tuition for CUNY & SUNY students by $300 for each semester. But colleges will receive only 20% of the money generated by the increase, with the remainder going towards the state budget deficit.

So on April 22nd, students along with faculty walked out of classes to protest the CUNY tuition hikes. At Brooklyn College, 400 students protested in the quad, while 250 people walked out at City College. Baruch College’s newspaper, The Ticker, has an article with more details.

Some students complained that not enough people seemed to take an interest in the protests. A CCNY student described the attempt to attract more students to walkout:

There is not enough of a communal feel here at City. Everyone is in his or her own bubble. They’re not moving me I’ll tell you that much.

One of my friends who attends Brooklyn College said something along the same lines, which is a little depressing. These changes affect every student who isn’t enrolled on a full scholarship. Many who attend CUNY do not have excessive income, and tuition raises are difficult enough when the economy is actually flourishing.

Here’s a video petition against SUNY tuition hikes:

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), and many colleges and organizations are honoring it in creative and thought-provoking ways. Here are just a few:

The very thought of walking in high heels makes me feel nauseous, so I salute the 161 men who decided to Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. It’s not particularly common to see men rallying for women’s rights, so seeing them doing just that while decked out in heels is always uplifting.

Another article spoke about students at the College of William and Mary honored SAAM with their “Consent is Sexy” week, hanging a large banner with anonymous messages from students.  Called the Hope Wall, messages included “Change can happen,” and “Move from surviving to thriving.”

Ithaca College held a discussion panel to publicize changes made to their sexual assault policy. It’s great to read about some of the reforms that are being made just in time for this month, including minimum sanctions for specific offenses and the creation of more specific sexual assault terms; both necessary in helping to lessen the chance of a case being thrown out for lack of consensus.

Continue Reading »

Our NY premiere will be on April 30th, 2009 at 8:00 PM at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center which is located at 208 West 13th Street. After the screening, there will be a Q & A with SAFER and guests including Karen Singleton of Columbia University’s sexual assault prevention program. Feel free to RSVP on our facebook event page.

University Silence is a short documentary film created by Sarah Richardson. It’s a candid narrative by a survivor of a campus assault, describing her struggles with her college administration, and shows how a lack of effective policy and honesty can further compound trauma. If you have any questions about why policy reform is so crucial, this is necessary viewing. In the words of the narrator, “It’s better to be known as an honest university than a perfect one. Perfect doesn’t happen.”

Boston and LA will also have their own screenings– please email organizers@safercampus.org for more information.

Please come out and join us!

Students for a Greater CUNY has been working to get a comprehensive sexual assault policy for all the campuses of the City University of New York, and they’ve just had their first success! A CUNY-wide task force had its first official meeting this week to begin drafting a new policy – and the task force includes the two student founders of Students for a Greater CUNY.

The CUNY system is composed of 23 different colleges serving more than 400,000 students. Unfortunately, only some of those schools have sexual assault policies and there is no overall policy for the system. Students for a Greater CUNY has set out to change that, demanding a policy that offers clear definitions, clear procedures for getting help, clear procedures for filing complaints, and clear commitments to effective prevention programs.

Elischia Fludd, a BA/MA student at John Jay, and Jerin Alam, an undergraduate student at Hunter College, founded Students for a Greater CUNY in response to a huge need they saw among their peers. They have been working all year to get CUNY to create this task force, and they’re just getting started. They set the tone for the task force’s upcoming work by presenting to this week’s meeting the results of a student survey they conducted. Task force participants learned that (depending on the school) between 60 and 86% of respondents were unaware of what information or services their school had regarding sexual assault prevention or response! More than half those surveyed thought CUNY was doing an inadequate job providing information about sexual assault. Those are the kind of numbers that make a university sit up and take notice, and Fludd and Alam are optimistic that a strong policy will be developed by the end of the academic year.

If you’re interested in getting involved with Students for a Greater CUNY, please email cunypolicy08@gmail.com

I’m a little late to the party, but down on the brown side has a great post about student work going on at Hunter. CRAASH (The Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter) is fighting its ass off for a bare minimum of courses. The program has zero dollars allocated in this year’s budget (meanwhile, CUNY tuition keeps going up).

I encourage ya’ll, especially any Hunter students out there, to get involved with CRAASH. For more info about what they’re doing, and to find out how to sign their petition, go here.

Are you a student at the City University of New York? We’re planning an organizing forum for students at CUNY colleges (undergrad and graduates students), and we need more student input to make it a great event. If you attend one of the CUNY schools, please take a few minutes to fill out this survey. Thanks!
If you’d like to get involved in planning the forum, give us a call at 347-689-3914.

Are you a student at the City University of New York? Want to do something to end sexual violence?
We need CUNY students to lead the planning for an organizing forum we’re planning for the fall. If you have time this summer to attend meetings every 2-3 weeks, at convenient times and locations, please contact us for more information about joining the committee.

I’m so excited about the May 5th training we are doing for students of the City University of New York! It’s going to be an amazing, empowering day. We’re going to cover lots of good stuff, from understanding a school policy, to building a movement for change. Sign up already!