Enough is enough. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen communities of color across this city and state come together and amplify their voices against the ongoing injustice they face. Leading these movements are young people, shedding light on the inequities that exist and on the systems that were never built to support them. In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how communities of color have been disproportionately impacted, truly exemplifying the reality of injustice.
It’s not just police systems that are failing young New Yorkers. The very institutions that are supposed to put young New Yorkers on a path to stability and dignity do not serve black and brown New Yorkers — and proposed budget cuts at the city and state level are only going to make our equity crisis worse. New Yorkers with a college degree earn more than those who don’t complete postsecondary education and are more likely to have better health and be more civically engaged. Yet, even here in New York, where our public college system is heralded as a pathway for low-income students into the middle class, continued cuts to our public colleges have broken this promise. Financial aid exists, but not for everyone. Undocumented students are denied federal aid and only up until last year, undocumented New Yorkers were not eligible for state financial aid. Even when low-income students do qualify for aid, they can face further barriers to getting it through the financial aid verification process, which requires poor students to prove they are poor. These are just a couple of examples of how current systems don’t serve the students that need it the most.
New York has been hit hardest by this public health crisis and the economic impact has left the state and city to consider significant budget cuts. Unfortunately, many of those cuts come at the expense of programs that serve low-income students, students of color, and first-generation college-going students. As New York City negotiates a budget, programs like CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associates Program (ASAP), the true free college program that has been proven to increase graduation rates, are in jeopardy of being delayed to thousands of incoming freshmen. In fact, CUNY has already informed its campuses to cut their budgets, resulting in the loss of thousands of adjunct professors across the system. And at a moment when more New Yorkers are losing work and struggling to afford rent and groceries, the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) is also in jeopardy of being cut, denying thousands of low-income high school and college students, the opportunity to obtain valuable paid summer internships.
Colleges cannot continue to balance their budgets on the backs of their students that are already struggling to afford college. It’s time for our city and state to invest in the next generation of black and brown New Yorkers. We cannot allow history — even recent history — be our roadmap for the future. Our colleges are still reeling from the last recession, when major state cuts to colleges meant higher tuition for students and families. The actions taken a decade ago are still felt today with tuition costs that outpace salary growth for communities of color, a student debt crisis that disproportionately harms Black students, and declining support for our community college system, which serves an increasingly diverse student population. We cannot afford repeating the roadmap we once took.
Yet, we’re already seeing New York’s leaders lean on the dangerous mistakes of the last recession. Governor Andrew Cuomo has already suggested massive cuts to education, while saying nothing about the billions this state spends on police systems that brutalize our state’s young people. When 42% of the student body comes from households earning less than $20,000 a year, this is yet another injustice. The increasing cost of college can hinder the pursuit of a college degree. Rather than coming together in June to vote on these increases, city and state leaders should instead think creatively about how to fill a budget gap without financially burdening students.
If there is anything that we have learned over the last few weeks, it is that we cannot continue on the same trajectory as the past. We must work together to dismantle and fix systems in higher education and beyond that don’t serve our most vulnerable communities, and in doing so, we must create a more just society for our young adults today. Our future depends on it.
By New York City Councilmember for the 42nd District Inez Barron and Marissa Muñoz, Young Invincibles’s Northeast Director.