As a school year begins, CUNY students are not the only NYC students demonstrating in response to the Israel-Hamas war, but they may be more vulnerable than the students at the city’s private higher education institutions.
Eight CUNY students still face felony charges after 300 students, alumni, and community members were arrested at pro-Palestinian protests last spring. A large number of those arrests came on April 30, when student demonstrators handcuffed themselves inside occupied campus buildings. Seventy-four students were arrested at City College and Columbia University that night, after both campuses’ political organizers called to escalate protests to increase pressure. Columbia students were charged with misdemeanor trespassing charges, whereas CUNY students were indicted with felony burglary ones.
Chaumtoli Huq, a professor of law at CUNY School of Law, felt that a major reason CUNY students faced higher charges was because the CUNY administration did not advocate for lesser charges for their students.
Huq says she believes a combination of factors led to CUNY students’ disproportionate sentencing. One is the lack of advocacy for CUNY’s students by administrators in the form of a public statement, despite the over 500 faculty members who signed a petition urging administrators to ask for their students’ charges to be dropped. Another is that CUNY claimed any non-City College CUNY faculty and students that were present at the City College encampments could be seen as trespassing.
She also said the majority of CUNY students are low-income, students of color, immigrants, and/or Muslim, which can lead prosecutors to charge higher to compel a plea. Data from a 2017 study from Loyola Law School indicates that white defendants were 25% more likely to have their most serious initial charge dropped or reduced than Black defendants, and Black defendants are three times more likely to be charged with a felony than their white counterparts.
CUNY serves over 233,000 undergraduate and graduate students across its 25 campuses. According to Noah Gardy, a press secretary for CUNY, 50% of undergraduate students come from a household earning less than $30k annual income, as stated in a 2023 report by city comptroller Brad Lerner. Additionally, 76% are students of color, 95% are New York residents, and 82% went to a NYC public high school, according to CUNY’s fall 2022 enrollment data.
“There is absolutely more of a risk in terms of CUNY not just having many students of low-income backgrounds, but also Black and Brown students who are likely really familiar with a level of surveillance, and of public safety and NYPD violence,” said Flora deTournay, a fifth-year doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center.
CUNY has made no changes to curb students’ ability to protest in its student code of conduct, unlike NYU, which codified anti-Zionism speech to equate anti-semitism. Columbia University also made several updates, such as requiring student organizers to notify University Life and Public Safety before a protest, and prohibiting the disruption or interference of academic activities by a political demonstration.
As the one-year anniversary of the war in Gaza passed with no ceasefire deal in sight, the immediate plans are to “continue to organize, build and grow, and escalate,” said deTournay, a member of the Graduate Center chapter of CUNY for Palestine.
Students at CUNY are also subject to the Henderson rules, a set of 11 regulations used to maintain academic freedoms. Violations of the rules include theft or damage of school property, unauthorized occupation of school facilities, and disorderly conduct, with repercussions ranging from a warning to expulsion.
For administrators, increased security and the threat of protest is a top priority. “We’re looking forward to finding new ways to learn and grow together, sustaining a campus culture defined by tolerance, inclusivity, safety and opportunity for all,” said chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, in a welcome-back press release for the new CUNY school year, just before an announcement launching the “Our CUNY: Hate Divides Us, Diversity Defines Us” social media campaign. The letter also announces an additional 23 public safety recruits and approximately 50 additional private officers.