After a precarious beginning to my college career, CUNY gave me the space to rebuild myself, find my passion, and experience what is the heart of CUNY: community. 

I enrolled at Queensborough Community College after leaving another institution with a 1.0 GPA. I had lost track of my future, my prospects, and, importantly, myself: At CUNY, I have been able to recover all of these things. Everyday, I would trek up and down the hills of QCC, ready to take on my classes and rediscover the curiosity and passion I had lost. I never left campus feeling unfulfilled. The people, the campus, and the faculty all radiated a kind of warmth that is hard to come by; everyone had hope, anticipation for what the future held for all the students. There was a sense of resilience present on campus, that, no matter what, QCC would remain a place for the people, by the people. 

Queensborough opened my eyes to greater ways of thinking, introducing me to some of my favorite books, movies, and schools of thought that have now become part of my everyday life. It is at QCC that I began to question the structures that underlie our society. I became aware of the inequalities that were present within the education system in America– how education is treated as a business with corporate interests. 

CUNY would cease to be an institution overflowing with such intellectual grit without its passionate student body. CUNY is, and should remain, an institution that seeks to serve the interest of this community, rather than corporate interests. 

Upon transferring to City College, I have been able to witness the sheer power that lies within the CUNY community, the drive towards an equitable future, where every student is given the tools to succeed, where students defy the system that seeks to undermine them. 

 Any CCNY student or faculty will know of the cafe on the second floor of the North Academic Center (typically simplified as NAC), which delivers the rich smells of pastries and freshly ground coffee to any student rushing by. However, what is special about this cafe, aside from its being a convenient and affordable alternative for coffee on campus, is that it is owned by a CCNY alumni. To assume that this simple cafe that resides in the corner of the second floor is simply just a cafe, would do injustice to what this cafe means for CUNY and for CCNY; this cafe is a show of the power of CUNY, the ability CUNY  has to elevate its students. 

This cafe, however, is currently in jeopardy, as CCNY has recently struck a deal with Aladdin Food Management Services, which will turn this alumni-owned cafe into a Starbucks. 

Students have protested this decision, demanding the cafe remain a non-corporate space that allows students to enjoy affordable coffee and see, first hand, the success of a CCNY alumni; our demands have fallen on deaf ears, however, with the administration ignoring the will of the students, and moving forward with the deal.

We are losing sight of what makes CUNY, CUNY. CUNY is, or rather should be, a university driven by its students and faculty: we, as a community, are not for sale, and will not be anytime soon. People, such as the owner of the CCNY Cafe, not only have the right to exist, but must. With the erasure of student-centered, non-corporate spaces, such as the incoming Starbucks, we lose sight of the values that make CUNY a working-class academic space that fosters that warmth and radical hope for a future where one’s life is not determined by the power structures that seek to hold them back.

With the normalization of academic spaces and CUNY as places that are for sale, we jeopardize losing what holds us together: community.

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