The Struggle for Education Continues!

CCNY students joined this week's nationwide movement to defend students' rights. Here's what happened in New York Cityby Hannington Dia.On Thursday, students, educators and other school proponents gathered in cities across the country for The National Day of Action to Defend Education. Affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protestors led a rallying cry for fully-funded public education at all levels.In New York City, a crowd of hundreds--including a contingent from CCNY--met in lower Manhattan before marching to Brooklyn. The event was mostly peaceful, minus the occasional scuffle with police.At the City Hall rally, participants made their voices heard. “The 1 percent's agenda for education is soon to be 1 trillion dollars in student debt, which now far surpasses credit card debt,” shouted one participant.“The 99 percent says education is a right, not a privilege,” said another student. “We demand free public higher education."With that, the protestors began their march to the Brooklyn Bridge, led by a makeshift figure of a man wearing a suit with a school for a head and holding pictures of Mayor Bloomberg, Developer Larry Silverstein, school Chancellor Dennis Walcott, CUNY president Matthew Goldstein and Success Academy Charter Schools head Eva Moskowitz.The crowd was fired up. “It's a shame that this country spends more money on foreign invasions instead of its students,” said Melissa Rodriguez, an anthropology major at John Jay College. “So many students aren't getting an education and nobody cares.”Walking across the bridge with a Professorial Staff Congress/CUNY poster, Jim Perlstein was out to show unity with students, even though he left the teaching profession years ago. “The public sector has taken a beating; it's being privatized,” said the former CCNY professor. “Public institutions like CUNY  are the avenue of opportunity for the working people of this city and they are in danger. The defense of the institutions and the defense of adequate funding are absolutely critical.”Perlstein also feels those better off need to give Uncle Sam more money for students' sake. "We have to tax the rich and maintain the surtax on higher income individuals," he said. We have to protect the access students have to affordable education.”Things heated up in Brooklyn as the marchers stopped in front of City-Tech. Police officers interrupted a student preparing to talk about his experiences at the college, telling the crowd they were blocking entrances and pedestrian traffic. After moving across the street, that same student shook off the police as students began chanting in the background.“This is where our tax dollars are going to,” said Rashawn, a computer information systems major who didn't want to give his last name. “We're paying their salaries, and they're stopping us. The least they could do is let us speak our minds.”Rashawn shared what he was about to say before the police intervened. “We're called the senior level college of technology, and ours is outdated. Funding is not going where it needs to.”Even though his parents don't make much money, Rashawn didn't quality for any subsidized loans. Saddled with a debt totaling $20,000 and counting. He still wonders how he'll be able to pay it off once he graduates later this year.CCNY students Russel Weiss-Irwin and Alyssia Osorio also came to the march as representatives for Students For Educational Rights.For Osorio, paying for college proved to be a complicated tightrope job of taking out loans and saving up money from work. So much so that she was eventually forced to move back in with her parents. “It's very hard for me to focus on both school and my job,” said the political science major. “People need to see that the tuition needs to be freezed and the students have a voice.”Before long, the crowd arrived at Fort Greene Park. A former CCNY student who teaches writing composition at Baruch College and studies at the CUNY Graduate Center shared his thoughts. “It's tough to look at my students and see that our education system is in crisis," he said.  "It's tough to tell my students that I, like them, qualify for food stamps."The event ended with a press conference across the street from Brooklyn Technical High School. That school was chosen because it is where the Panel For Educational Policy meets to decide which New York City public schools to close (shortly after the conference, the PEP voted to close an additional 5 institutions).Free education seems like a long shot in this economically-drained society. Still, the Day of Action showed that as long as educational officials keep shortchanging students and faculty, they will respond in kind.