TOWN HALL MEETING SUMMARY

CONGRATULATIONS CUNY, WE'VE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED THE FIRST OF THREE TOWN HALLS!

Despite complications with CUNY that shall be listed below for your information, the event was attended by approximately 30 students and faculty from Hunter, Medgar Evers, City Tech, John Jay and Bronx Community College. We also had some of our external allies attend the event as observers. Solidarity was felt all around!

Members of the taskforce also attended, namely, Vice Chancellor of Legal Affairs and General Council Frederick Schaffer, Associate General Counsel Kristen Bowes, CUNY Director of Student Affairs Zina Richardson (Office of Vice Chancellor Moore), and Vanessa Anderson from the office of Institutional Research.

A big THANK YOU to all who attended ESPECIALLY the witty, insightful and inquisitive students of CUNY!

Special thanks to the following for making the event what it was: Jerin Alam, the office of Dean Ayravanien of Hunter, Selah Brown, Sonatha Allan and Darakshan Raja. Thanks are in order to Ms. Zina Richardson for her diligence in maintaining constant communication with SGC and the Hunter Women's Rights Coalition in preparation for the town hall. Finally, thanks goes to Vice Chancellor Schaffer's office for providing refreshments.

MAJOR ISSUES:

Students were quick to hone in on the major issue of the Town Hall: Proper and ubiquitous communication from CUNY Central throughout all of the campuses! Vice Chancellor Moore did construct a memo to all the VP's of Student Development throughout the campuses, but while it is clear that the memo went out from his office, it is also clear that not everyone got the message to pass the information on to students. The advertisement was not what we would have liked, ideally, all students would have been emailed throughout the university system, as we are with CUNY newswires and other such information that the university decides is fitting for all 450,000 members of CUNY to receive simultaneously.

In fact, we asked for it.

Then again, some schools, like John Jay College of Criminal Justice, that openly knew about the policy and the town hall, refused to publish even what the Vice Chancellor wrote, the emailed blog posting announcing the town hall that was sent from SGC, or the individual emails that came from SGC Co-Founder and taskforce member Elischia Fludd, a John Jay student.

Other students complained of the same issues at their respective schools.

Thus, there was a combination of communication breakdown and communication disregard.

Both factors would seemingly anticipate a failed town hall.

Not for resilent CUNY students that braved the storm and stress of the final weeks of school to attend a town hall!

MAJOR POINTS:

Students overwhelmingly pushed for mandatory prevention education! Other key factors were the need to focus on the psychological and emotional effects of sexual assault and how a student can begin the journey to heal.

That's just a tid-bit. We hope to bring you individual perspectives soon, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, view some pics here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37953877@N04/sets/72157617645862162/show/


To Building a Greater CUNY!






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