Submit Your Spring 2020 Grades on May 28, Not Sooner

Dear Colleagues,

You’re likely aware that many Brooklyn College adjunct jobs are currently at risk, and for some the health insurance that comes with their CUNY employment. The PSC is engaged in a union-wide campaign to preserve those jobs and build for the larger struggle ahead. Here at Brooklyn, the PSC chapter is urging all faculty to submit Spring 2020 grades on the last permissible date, May 28. We are not asking you to violate university policy or state law, nor is your students’ degree progress in jeopardy. But in solidarity with one another as faculty, we must act in protest of the demand to cut 25 percent of Fall course offerings. Having everyone on the faculty do the same thing at the same time is one important way to show to the administration and ourselves that we are capable of acting in concert. In order to exert pressure on the decisionmakers and those who hold the purse-strings of the university, we will need to escalate coordinated actions beyond next week, into the Summer and Fall, and we will need the participation of our professional staff colleagues as well. Their concerns – and ours – about returning to a healthy and safe workplace may become the next site of collective action, even as the immediate task is to keep our faculty on payroll and insured.

The campaign to submit grades no sooner than May 28 builds upon the good work that has been launched by our BC chapter working-groups on Legislative outreach, Communications & Media, Strike Authorization, and Student & Alumni outreach. You have probably seen the #CutCovidNotCUNY social media campaign. You may have seen coverage of the struggle over Brooklyn College funding in The New Yorker, The Nation, and City Limits, among others. We are building the participatory local infrastructure that is needed to wage a successful struggle for a safe and fully funded university, even as campus and university leaders remain silent.

If, like those of us on the PSC chapter executive committee, you are concerned and outraged by the proposed layoffs, please wait to submit your grades until May 28, no sooner. If this seems to you like too tepid an action, unequal to the forces arrayed against us, do it anyway! Then come build capacity with us for bolder actions ahead. If this feels to you like too risky an action, rest assured that you can still provide your students with their grades as soon as you complete them, just send them by email. Here’s a way to convey to your students the urgent need for this collective action.

Please let me know if you have any feedback about this action, and if you’d like to join the dozens of colleagues engaged in outreach to others in their departments and across campus, email me (jcdavis@brooklyn.cuny.edu) and PSC organizer Janet Kwon (jkwon@pscmail.org).

In solidarity,

James Davis, English Department

BC PSC Chapter chair

Proposed resolution BC PSC Chapter Meeting, 5/21/20

The following passed as a statement of the members assembled at the May 21, 2020 special meeting of the Brooklyn College PSC chapter. Quorum not achieved: 22 yes, 3 no, 2 abstain.

WHEREAS the COVID-19 crisis has caused unprecedented physical, emotional, and economic hardship for the students, faculty, and staff of the university, many of whose families have been thrown into chaos due to layoffs, illness, or both, and

WHEREAS the governor has been granted the right to make executive cuts to the state budget, and this pressure is already being felt at Brooklyn College via demands by administration to slash Fall 2020 department budgets by as much as 25%, and

WHEREAS adjunct faculty, who are most vulnerable to these cuts, teach a majority of classes at CUNY, and have faced decades of unstable work, low wages and hyper-exploitation that have left many financially unprepared for this crisis, and

WHEREAS many adjunct faculty in particular rely upon a minimum number of courses per year to retain their health benefits, which they desperately need in the midst of this pandemic, and

WHEREAS the wellbeing of the faculty and staff are inextricably linked to the wellbeing and success of the students who attend the university and the quality and quantity of the research performed therein, and

WHEREAS a militant response from our union, up to and including a job action, is likely the only way such ruinous budget cuts can realistically be resisted, and

WHEREAS, in the last Delegate Assembly meeting the union membership was denied the opportunity to fully discuss delegate Marc Kagan's resolution, "The PSC Union will immediately ask all faculty to withhold submission of grades until such a time (if any) that best demonstrates the power of our union to disrupt the normal operations of the university. All faculty should be asked to notify their students that this action is in support of a fully-funded CUNY ”, and

WHEREAS President Bowen acknowledged there were irregularities in the voting process and attempted to hold a revote, by which time the Delegate Assembly no longer had the quorum necessary for a binding vote, and

WHEREAS, on May 13th, the City College PSC chapter passed and approved a similar resolution to this one, as did the John Jay PSC chapter on May 14th, be it

RESOLVED that we, as the Brooklyn College PSC chapter, join our fellow union members in urging the Delegate Assembly and Executive Committee of PSC to take the initiative and revote on the above resolution as soon as possible.

Donations in Time of Need

Please use the links below to donate to the families of our deceased colleagues and to colleagues who have lost loved ones.

Jay Jankelewicz family
https://www.gofundme.com/f/wh43nu-rest-in-peace-jay

Jamilah Simmons family
https://www.gofundme.com/f/63rtz-support-the-simmons-family?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet