CUNY Librarians: Give Us a Break!

With winter intercession approaching, students and faculty members are excited to have a break from academia. But not CUNY librarians. They are also faculty and must go through a similar process for tenure and promotion as other faculty. But they work at least 35 hours a week year round without summer and winter breaks.Jill Cirasella has had enough of it.An associate professor in the library department at the grad center, Cirasella testified before the Board of Trustees on November 24^th. She states, “We receive far less time than other faculty members in the University and the leave time we do get is not enough to fully develop, pursue, and expand our research agendas.”To further the cause and with the support of the faculty and staff union, she launched a petition. Over 6,500 CUNY employees have signed.CCNY librarian Tynan Hoffman is glad to see the surge in activism. “The library has to be open all the time for students and faculty to use it, so we don’t have the luxury to shut it down whenever we want to conduct research,” he says. “Our primary [goal] is to provide service to this community, but it would be nice to have the same time off as teaching faculty.”Undergraduate student worker Jamiel Alvarez has been working at Cohen Library for more than two years while studying computer engineering and sympathizes with his colleagues. How would the nonstop schedule of the library faculty make him feel? “A bit overstressed.”