Students Ask Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to Remedy Injustice at SUNY

Elected student leaders from SUNY Binghamton and the SUNY Student Assembly have called upon Congressman Hakeem Jeffries to support their demand for Student Assembly Representation on the Chancellor Search Committee. The April 13th letter states “a structure has been put in order to prevent student representation on the search committee itself. This clearly demonstrates SUNY’s viewpoint of students as second-class citizens. A search committee formed to select a Chancellor without student representation is in direct opposition to values such as diversity and inclusion which SUNY claims to uphold.” (Full letter attached)

The students of SUNY are deeply disappointed that the Board of Trustees has failed to include student representation on the actual search committee that will be considering and interviewing candidates for the position of Chancellor of the State University of New York. Instead, the student representation has been relegated to the furthest possible end of the process when 2-3 finalists come before the full Board, which is now calling itself the “Executive Search Committee”.

This fog-like structure effectively prevents student representation on the actual search committee itself. For far too long the SUNY Board of Trustees has treated its own students as second-class citizens. This is nothing less than taxation without representation, and as tuition and fee-paying students we deserve to have a voice at the table as the next leader of our institution is selected. No member of the real search committee should serve in the absence of student representation in the decision-making process.

Other major public higher education institutions such as the City University of New York have adopted Chancellor Search Committee guidelines which require student representation on its real search committee. There are no search guidelines for the position of Chancellor at the State University of New York. The most recent selection of a Chancellor was conducted without a national search.

On Friday April 8th the Student Assembly gave Cuomo’s Board of Trustees a midterm grade of “F” as they continue to work behind closed doors, against the needs of students, and ignore those directly impacted by their calculated decision making.

Source: SUNY SA