NEW YORK
A New York City college has agreed to take down a sign naming a student center after a fugitive terrorist and a Black militant convicted of murdering a police trooper.
For 17 years, the small suite of offices on the City College of New York’s Harlem campus has borne the names of Guillermo Morales, a Puerto Rican separatist involved in a series of bombings in the city in the 1970s, and Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison while serving time for the 1973 killing of a New Jersey State Police trooper.
Radical student groups picked the name after they began using the space following 1989 sit-ins over tuition increases, and the name stuck without interference from college administrators until Tuesday, when the Daily News published a front-page article calling the name “a punch to the gut” to crime and terror victims.
A City College spokeswoman initially defended the students’ right to pick their own name, but on Tuesday the college reversed course.
City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein wrote to City College President Gregory H. Williams requesting that the “unauthorized and inappropriate” sign over the center’s door be taken down. Only CUNY’s trustees, Goldstein said, have the authority to name college facilities.
