NEW YORK
City Council members presented three community college
students here with a special proclamation this month, congratulating
them on winning a national chess championship.
It was the first time in weeks anyone had uttered a kind word about
the City University of New York’s (CUNY) community college students.
And that was partly because it had all been prearranged before Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani began taking potshots at the six two-year
institutions — blasting them for rock-bottom graduation rates and
proposing the privatization of remediation.
But the hot-button issue resurfaced amid the staged niceties when a
college official asked the Borough of Manhattan Community College
students how many had ever taken a remedial class.
All raised their hands.
It was a poignant moment in what has become a pitched debate here
in the nation’s largest city over what to do about ill-prepared
students and ill-informed politicians.
But why should community college administrators and instructors
elsewhere care how the story plays out in this megalopolis that seems
so far removed from them?
