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News :: Education |
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The Battle for CPCS |
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by Jason Pramas
Email: info (nospam) massglobalaction.org (unverified!) |
07 Mar 2006
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op-ed appearing in The Mass Media (UMass Boston student newspaper), March 6, 2006, Vol. XL, No. 12, pg. 8 |
Note: There will be a Community Hearing and Rally to Save CPCS, THIS THURSDAY, March 9 from 4-7 p.m. in the CPCS Plaza, 4th Floor (rear), Wheatley Hall, UMass Boston in Dorchester--easily accessible by Red Line T (JFK/UMass stop) or car.
http://www.umb.edu/about/directions.html
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The College of Public and Community Service, one of the original three colleges of UMass Boston, was founded in 1973. Its goal was to provide a quality education for "non-traditional students" interested in working for social justice—where credit would be based on experiential learning, rather than grades. The other important reason for its foundation was that it was to be the standard bearer of UMB's much-vaunted "Urban Mission"—which says that UMB is first and foremost a university for the people of Boston.
Over the last 30 years, CPCS and its groundbreaking pedagogical method have provided meaningful access to higher education opportunity for thousands of Boston area residents. But as time has moved on, conservative forces in society (and within UMB itself) have railed against the very idea of public education, and particularly against public higher education—that never achieved full tax-based funding like K-12 did. These forces want to privatize public higher education as much as possible and run it like a profit-making business. Progressive institutions like CPCS don't fit into their vision for a corporatized UMB.
With this as background, a battle for the future of the CPCS is now being waged by its students, staff and faculty against a Dean who is a quisling for the Provost, a Provost that wants to destroy our college, and a Chancellor that—after some recent meetings—seems to be backing the Provost and Dean.
The linchpin of this battle is the current fight to stop CPCS Dean Adenrele Awotona from gutting CPCS Student Services by transferring our Administrative Dean, Sarah Bartlett, and Cheryl Monahan, one of her few remaining staffers, to the UMB Registrar's Office and Admissions Office respectively. From the outside, such staffing decisions may seem insignificant, but to the CPCS community these represent further moves by UMB Provost Paul Fonteyn to eliminate our college, or hobble it into irrelevance.
Fonteyn and other higher administrators have made clear that they don't understand CPCS, they don't like it, and that they believe it's "too expensive." They cut our budget and staff significantly over the last few years, then complained that we somehow don't perform. When we perform anyway, they ignore it. They got rid of our former Dean, Ismael Ramirez-Soto, who wouldn't play ball with them because he believed in CPCS. Then last summer, they hired a Dean who made nice with everyone for the first few weeks—then swiftly set about putting together a small "leadership team" under his direct control, which he means to leverage against the democratically-elected CPCS Policy Board of faculty, staff and students. The UMB administration backs him fully in this.
Awotona started moving to dismantle CPCS's democratic internal structure from the get-go. He ignored faculty and staff leadership. He also showed virtually no interest in CPCS students at all, other than to imply that he'd like to reinstitute grades, and bring in more high-tuition international students.
When the CPCS Undergraduate Faculty elected Prof. Cuf Ferguson as the Undergraduate Chair this last December, Awotona refused to seat him—in a direct challenge to both the CPCS Constitution and its Policy Board, which the administration are conveniently refusing to recognize.
After the Ferguson incident, Awotona then announced in mid-January that Sarah Bartlett and Cheryl Monahan would be transferred out of CPCS. Most students at CPCS are there because of these women, and whatever the Dean, Provost and Chancellor say, they don't want to leave us, and we don't want them to leave. If Bartlett and Monahan are forced to transfer, we will have only a handful of staffers left at CPCS Student Services. As Bartlett is the highest-ranking career administrator at CPCS, with 20 years experience, if she is removed, a critical part of what makes CPCS special goes with her. And the Dean, Provost and Chancellor can then take apart the rest of the school piece by piece. We cannot allow that to happen.
The announcement of the staff transfers galvanized faculty, staff, and student concern about the direction in which the Dean was taking the college. The faculty and staff were already organizing via the governing CPCS Policy Board, and by late January, the students had founded a new college-level student government called the CPCS Student Union. Students then elected representatives to the Policy Board, and are now working closely with the staff and faculty to stop the transfers of Bartlett and Monahan.
A couple of weeks ago, based on their mounting concern that the future of the college was at stake, the CPCS tenured faculty, and then the entire CPCS staff and faculty, held two overwhelming majority votes of "no confidence" in Dean Awotona. At Harvard University, readers might recall, such votes just recently unseated Harvard's sitting president. But here at UMass Boston, Chancellor Michael Collins has remained unmoved by the protestations of the entire CPCS community against the Dean. Awotona was going to stay, and Bartlett and Monahan were to be transferred.
All of this, Awotona, Fonteyn, and now apparently Collins say is "for the good of CPCS."
Well, we, the students, staff and faculty of CPCS disagree. We know what's best for CPCS because we are CPCS. The more involvement we have in the recruitment and admissions process, the more success we have in getting students into the college. When the University has moved toward more standardized and unilateral admissions and recruitment practices, CPCS has suffered. Yet, in the final analysis, we are not being attacked because of any problems with our administration.
We are being attacked because we threaten the business model of higher education exemplified by the Dean, Provost and Chancellor. We are being attacked because we believe that higher education is a right funded by society, not a privilege funded by individuals. We are being attacked because we believe that the best higher education is a democratically-run system with full student, staff, and faculty participation. We are being attacked because we are the future, and they are the past. Change never comes easily. And it rarely comes without a fight.
We would like to go on record that we are ready for that fight. And we invite other people around UMB and beyond to join us. It's not just the future of CPCS at stake here. It's the future of public higher education in Massachusetts.
Jason Pramas is a senior at the College of Public and Community Service. |
This work licensed under a
Creative Commons license |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by observer
(No verified email address) |
07 Mar 2006
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This crucial battle is part of the larger war being fought by people who still believe in community and social justice, against the rightward shift in the country. Those of us who refuse to relinquish the gains of the past century (women's rights, worker's rights, civil rights, human rights) are facing the looming prospect of a government which doesn't even recognize the Constitution's authority, and social institutions like UMass which don't recognize their responsibility to the people. More and more, we are expected to believe that the Markets are democratic and will sort out all our problems.
Bullshit! We need to support CPCS now, and keep this key Boston institution in the hands of people who are looking out for the best interests of the working-class and poor people of the area. We must refuse to relinquish what our forbears fought so hard to gain.
All out to UMass on Thursday! |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Ori
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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Except people who have to work! |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Umass Student
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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why wasn't this centered? Is it because it might actually concern the people of Boston, as opposed to some rich Cambridge or Somerville college kiddies?
Is it because Umass is generally a college full of working people, as opposed to folks who have the time to run campaigns to get their friends out of some fines and short jail time?
Well, what the F is it? |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by BIMC Editor
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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We don't re-post articles that have been published elsewhere, with very few exceptions... The Mass Media is a perfect venue for this article. |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Jason Pramas
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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Well, I'll chime on to this one. I've never agreed with this policy. And as I said to Sofia when she asked me to post the piece to begin with, in journalism we sell different rights to different media outlets. The Mass Media at UMB is a print outlet with no active website. BIMC is a web outlet with no print version. Apples and oranges. I would appreciate it if this was centered--particularly given the gravity of what's happening. |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by BIMC Editor
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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We work as a collective in a consensus-based process. If the editors as a whole do not see the merit of centering an article (specially if it already has been published), it just isn't. It follows the reasoning that if we re-post one article, why wouldn't we re-post articles from the Student Underground or What's Up Mag for example? And so on and so forth. The list goes on.
Hope that helps. |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Jason Pramas
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2006
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I think you all have answered your own question. |
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ummm... |
by obvious solution
(No verified email address) |
10 Mar 2006
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seems like the problem is this isn't an original article- why doesn't someone just write something original up and publish it? the policy makes perfect sense to me- that's why there is an 'other media' section. griping about rich cambridge 'kiddies' isn't very constructive.
i was there at the rally yesterday and i'm going to write something up. hope that doesn't stop others- especially people who took photos- the more info and accounts, the better for the concerned observer. |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Umass Student
(No verified email address) |
10 Mar 2006
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This was a frigging original article! That was the author who was posting comments you nimwit!
Mass Media publishes in the school, inside Umass, not to the greater Boston community (although saying that this sight reaches Boston's community is a laugh). This shows a huge double standard because there have been several cross postings between the Student Underground and this site.
So really, what has to be done is to get really bad, biased editors to put together a "radical" umass publication, that no one will read. That way, as long as we ensure no ones reading it, BIMC can publish it on their website, so again, no one will read it.
Mission accomplished |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by Umass Student
(No verified email address) |
10 Mar 2006
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The one thing you folks don't seem to think about in this story, with your limited understanding of the world and even more limited understanding of this state and this city, is that this is a STATE school. Which means taxpayers are paying for it. The MAYOR was schooled at CPCS for chrissake! He's a big dork, but he could be worse and CPCS might be the reason.
All that means is, this is an issue out side of the school as well as in, so the comment "Mass Media is the perfect place for this" is profoundly ignorant. |
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Re: The Battle for CPCS |
by yo
(No verified email address) |
10 Mar 2006
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Umass Student, first, chill man! I haven't seen any Student Underground postings on this site... What are you talking about? Are you a troll or something? It seems to me you just want to rock the boat, regardless.
obvious solution is the constructive solution. my 2 cents. |
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