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Leaky toilets, missing ceiling tiles, busted doors.
These are just some issues plaguing the City University of New York’s aging buildings that proponents of the school system hope can be repaired with additional funds they’re calling for in the state budget.
CUNY students and staffers rallied Wednesday at Lehman College to call for a “New Deal for CUNY” and an additional $500 million in the state budget.
Speakers said those funds, aside from helping with much-need repairs, are also needed to hire enough faculty and staff and reduce or work toward free tuition.
“Ceiling tiles falling on your head. Bathrooms and libraries that don’t work,” Penny Lewis, a CUNY Ph.D. graduate and faculty member, said at the rally.
“Things that would be a crisis at any other university are things that we have been asked to just put up with, that we just are supposed to expect at CUNY. The time for that is done,” she said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget appropriates $792.8 million in capital funding — an increase of a few hundred million dollars from this year.
But officials from CUNY, where buildings average over 50 years old, have said they need $1.247 billion to address the university’s capital needs.
A coalition of union faculty and staff, students and community groups that’s dubbed itself CUNY Rising Alliance also launched #CrumblingCUNY to share images of the disrepair. The social media hashtag has been flooded with photos of water damage, shelves falling off the walls, broken thermostats, and out-of-order escalators and water stations — at least one with plants growing out of it.
Wednesday’s rally was the latest in a series including the CUNY Rising Alliance, which has also lobbied elected officials and testified in Albany.
Sources said the $500 million increase in operating funds, found in the Senate and Assembly one-house budget resolutions, is still on the table as legislators decide final priorities.
“Building repairs don’t get made on time, more than half the faculty — myself included — don’t get paid a living wage, and have no job security, and there’s not enough mental health counselors,” said Ruth Wangerin, a faculty member at Lehman College, who sung the praises of her students.
“Their teachers want the best for them,” she said. “Now let the state government and Albany do its best for them.”
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