I appreciated the fact that one of our last readings asked us to reflect on the changing meanings of the City University of New York – it helped the course take on a meta feel and forced me to reexamine a system in which I play a role.
The CUNY system was for a time a great equalizer, before being forced by the economy, to remold itself as a much more standard institution. Its whispered promises confined themselves to the ears of the haves.
Now, in a sea of colleges charging $40,000+ in tuition, CUNY sits somewhere in the space in between “the two New Yorks of today, one of breathtaking wealth, the other of searing poverty.” It is a site of negotiation, a place in which students of different classes can mix. It still provides an opportunity for advancement, my home campus being rated one of the best colleges on the Social Mobility Index 2016.
And yet, CUNY exists in a city that seems to provide fewer and fewer outlets for the poor, the hungry, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free even as it pays lip service to progressive values. The tensions of New York make it one of the world’s treasures, even as it can be one of the world’s coldest.
