Well… why don’t you try some museums? Museums are a perfect winter day activity. It’s warm inside, you can spend all day there, perfect date place… and it’s cheap. For CUNY students especially.

Check out this list of free/cheap/discounted museums you can go to (taken from http://gonyc.about.com/cs/museums/a/museumdeals.htm)

Everyday Deals

City Councilman Charles Barron

Today was a special day for CUNY, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials came to the Borough of Manhattan Community College to celebrate the rebuilding of their Fiterman Hall, which was badly damaged on September 11, 2001.

However, during the first part, City Councilman Charles Barron and CUNY Trustee Jeffery Wiesenfeld has a shouting match, yelling “You shut up!” “You’re a disgrace!” and “You’re a sickening racist!”

The word is that Councilman Barron had to sit in the audience and felt disrespected that he wasn’t originally seated at the front with the other officials. He was also upset ...continue reading]]>

City Councilman Charles Barron

Today was a special day for CUNY, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials came to the Borough of Manhattan Community College to celebrate the rebuilding of their Fiterman Hall, which was badly damaged on September 11, 2001.

However, during the first part, City Councilman Charles Barron and CUNY Trustee Jeffery Wiesenfeld has a shouting match, yelling “You shut up!” “You’re a disgrace!” and “You’re a sickening racist!”

The word is that Councilman Barron had to sit in the audience and felt disrespected that he wasn’t originally seated at the front with the other officials. He was also upset that Mayor Bloomberg did not mention CUNY students or the City Council at all during his speech.

The Daily News offers this exchange between Barron and Wiesenfeld, which started after Barron expressed his unhappiness:

This prompted CUNY trustee Wiesenfeld to shout down Barron from his seat in the front row. “You’re a disgrace!” Wiesenfeld shouted. Barron then yelled back, “You just be quiet. Ain’t nobody talking to you. Whether you like it or not, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. You sit there. You shut up!”

Wiesenfeld, a former staffer for Mayor Ed Koch and Sen. Al D’Amato, was a senior aide to Governor Pataki, who appointed him to the CUNY board.

A principal with the firm of Bernstein Global Wealth Management, Wiesenfeld was confirmed by the state Senate in 1999 despite allegations that he referred to blacks as “savages” and Hasidic Jews as “thieves.”

Wiesenfeld later told the News, “This individual has no civility. He has no personal decency. All of us can have a persecution complex. My parents, my wife’s parents were in concentration camps, I’m sure his ancestors were subject to slavery, but that is no excuse for his ill-fitting conduct in public, the way he deals with other public officials.” And Barron said Wiesenfeld was “a right- wing, racist, ignorant fool,” who “should not be sitting on the board of trustees of CUNY.”

Check out the video here.

A CUNY Tuition Hike Protest

After CUNY had already raised students’ tuition fees by $300 this fall, CUNY announced that they are raising the tuition once again this spring, by another $300.

Due to New York City’s struggling economy, the government has decided to take out its frustrations on students and cut $300 million from the public education budget, and force students to make up for that money themselves. Both CUNY and SUNY have already canceled courses, increased class sizes, imposed hiring freezes and cut maintenance needs.

“We’re tired of seeing funding for CUNY sacrificed for short-term budget savings,” said NYPIRG Vice Chairperson, ...continue reading]]>

A CUNY Tuition Hike Protest

After CUNY had already raised students’ tuition fees by $300 this fall, CUNY announced that they are raising the tuition once again this spring, by another $300.

Due to New York City’s struggling economy, the government has decided to take out its frustrations on students and cut $300 million from the public education budget, and force students to make up for that money themselves. Both CUNY and SUNY have already canceled courses, increased class sizes, imposed hiring freezes and cut maintenance needs.

“We’re tired of seeing funding for CUNY sacrificed for short-term budget savings,” said NYPIRG Vice Chairperson, Brooklyn College Junior Patrick Krus. “If policy makers would just think a few more moves ahead, they’d see that tuition hikes and funding cuts are never a good strategy.”

Imposing these huge tuition hikes on students is incredibly straining. Most people enroll in CUNY schools because they are ultimately cheaper than private colleges. Even so, students struggle to pay tuition, sometimes taking on two jobs to cover all of their education costs. Many students cannot even afford to continue attending college because of the tuition hikes.

“Asking New York’s working-class, poor and middle-class students to pay more is no way to fill a budget gap and it’s certainly no way to rebuild the state’s economy. Public higher education is the key to revitalizing New York’s economy. This is the moment to invest in CUNY and SUNY, not to put obstacles in the path of students,” said Dr. Barbara Bowen, Professional Staff Congress/CUNY president.

There have been several walkout, protests, and strikes held by CUNY students and faculty. However, they have had no affect on Governor Paterson’s decision to raise tuition. There will be another demonstration at the governor’s offices at Third Avenue and 41st Street at 4 p.m. on December 16, when a new state budget likely to include more cuts is expected to be announced.

Last week we discussed the record numbers of people that were applying to Community Colleges and City University of New York schools in general but a new study suggests that the colleges have their work cut out for them.

According to a report done by CUNY itself, 90% of students who graduated from city high schools and are entering a four-year (not two-year) CUNY school cannot do a simple algebra problem. More than a third of the students tested could not convert a fraction into a decimal.

More than 70% of the CUNY system is made up ...continue reading]]>

Last week we discussed the record numbers of people that were applying to Community Colleges and City University of New York schools in general but a new study suggests that the colleges have their work cut out for them.

According to a report done by CUNY itself, 90% of students who graduated from city high schools and are entering a four-year (not two-year) CUNY school cannot do a simple algebra problem. More than a third of the students tested could not convert a fraction into a decimal.

More than 70% of the CUNY system is made up of students who graduated from New York City public schools.

The shocking results stunned city officials who had been thinking that programs like the No Child Left Behind plan were helping students when in fact those programs forced schools to prepare students for tests, not educate them on the fundamentals.

While so many New York City public school did perfectly fine in high school, officials are now hopefully realizing that the system that the city has in place misrepresents the reality of how well students are doing.

Many in the government are already calling for quick reforms of the education system…so that a college student can do an algebra problem.