The CCNY Libraries will return to normal operating hours on Monday, May 13th. At this time, only people with a current, valid CCNY ID will have access to the building and the libraries. Check out our website library.ccny.cuny.edu for more information or to reach out to us if you have any questions. We look forward to having you back!

Beginning on Monday, May 13th we will return to our normal modalities for classes and exams. All classes that are normally held in person will return to campus for the last three days of the semester. Final exams will also be held as they normally are, in person and on campus according to the posted schedule. Shuttle buses will also resume normal routes and hours of operations.

I fully understand that returning to campus after the events of the past two weeks will be stressful. I hope that the normality of the final three days of classes next week will ease that stress as we welcome you back to your campus.

There is a heightened security presence on campus that is here to keep everybody safe and to restrict entrance to the campus to City College students, faculty and staff. Please remember to bring your City College ID with you to campus and expect it to be checked by our security guards at the entrance to campus and at the entrance to campus buildings. Entrance to campus is only available at the north and south ends of Convent Avenue.

Finally, I am grateful that the Psychological Center on campus has offered their services to help the campus community through this difficult time. They have set aside the times and Zoom link below to meet with anyone who wants to talk. Please don’t hesitate to take advantage of this resource.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89837256630?pwd=HhVkc1jfG3Pnp00kyr9N34wO27DOTe.1
Meeting ID: 898 3725 6630
Passcode: 527556

Monday, May 13 from 2:30 - 3:30 pm (Students)
Tuesday, May 14 from 8:30 - 9:30 am (Staff/Faculty)
Wednesday, May 15 from 3-4 pm (Students)
Thursday, May 16 from 2-3 pm (Students)
Friday, May 17 from 9-10 am (Staff/Faculty)

Dear CCNY Students,

I am inviting you all to a town hall today to speak with all of you, centering mainly around encampment related events. I’d like to spend some time spelling out a timeline for events and unpacking my thinking around the actions we took in relation to the protest.  We do not have the staff right now to support an in-person meeting, so we will be online.  

The town hall meeting will be held today Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 4pm. The meeting will be via Zoom. You can find the details below:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://ccny.zoom.us/j/81333854033?pwd=MVVPTzJPSllDSmgzNU54VjJPb283UT09

Meeting ID: 813 3385 4033
Passcode: 257171

Following the session, a recording will be available online for those who are unable to attend. 

Please note that in order to join this meeting, students must sign into their CCNY Zoom account. 

If assistance is needed, please contact the following IT Support groups. 

Service Desk
Phone: 212-650-7878
Email: servicedesk@ccny.cuny.edu

Zoom Conferencing Support Bridge 
(see iMEDIA website for operational hours)

Zoom: https://ccny.zoom.us/j/2126505480
Email: iMEDIA@ccny.cuny.edu
Phone: 

1. Dial 646-558-8656 or 646-931-3860 and follow prompts
2. Meeting ID: 212 650 5480
3. Meeting Password / Passcode: 5480

Sincerely,

Vince Boudreau
President

To the campus community:

Shuttle bus service has resumed and will be running from 630am to 10:00pm, making all regular stops on Convent Avenue. 

Thank you.

Facilities Department
The City College of New York
Compton Goethals, Room 04
(212) 650-8675
Facilities@ccny.cuny.edu

I write first of all to thank all of you for your adaptability in this stressful time. As you will have seen from my message yesterday evening, a limited number of classes will return to campus beginning tomorrow, while the rest will remain online for now. Students, faculty and staff coming to campus will find an enhanced security presence designed to keep the campus safe. Nevertheless, this may be unsettling to many of you and to our students. I ask that faculty provide maximum flexibility to our students, remembering that students with classes on campus are likely also to have classes online. In addition, supervisors should please be considerate of the needs of your staff.

I am grateful to Sasha Rudenstine and Diana Puñales-Morejon who have offered their services in the Psychological Center for anyone in our campus community who wants to talk. They have set aside the times below for students, faculty and staff at the following zoom link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89837256630?pwd=HhVkc1jfG3Pnp00kyr9N34wO27DOTe.1
Meeting ID: 898 3725 6630
Passcode: 527556

Monday, May 13 from 2:30-3:30 pm (Students)
Tuesday, May 14 from  8:30-9:30 am (Staff/Faculty)
Wednesday, May 15 from 3-4 pm (Students)
Thursday, May 16 from 2-3 pm (Students)
Friday, May 17 from 9-10 am (Staff/Faculty

After careful consideration and input from the campus community we will re-open campus, on a limited basis, beginning on Wednesday, May 8. Classes with essential activities that cannot be completed remotely (studios, labs, etc.) can resume on campus, with the appropriate Dean’s approval, beginning on Wednesday. Other classes will continue online for the time being. Instructors who need to hold classes on campus now should work with their Chair and the Chairs should submit a list of classes resuming in-person instruction to their Dean for approval. Anyone coming to campus will need a valid CCNY ID. Access to campus is limited to Convent Avenue at 135th and 140th Street entrances where IDs will be checked.

Finally, this has been an extraordinarily difficult time for our community. The Psychological Center at CCNY will be holding space for faculty, staff and students to acknowledge the pain of the current moment, in all our lives. I will share details about how to access this help in a separate memo tomorrow.

Dear Campus Community,

We are pleased to announce that Benny's Food Pantry will be conducting a 'soft' reopening this week, operating by appointment only. To ensure a smooth transition, we will be open for appointments on Wednesday and Thursday, while utilizing Tuesday and Friday of this week for restocking and cleaning purposes.

For those with scheduled appointments from last week, a member of Benny's team will contact you individually to arrange a new appointment.

If you wish to schedule an appointment, please visit our calendly website here.

Furthermore, we are excited to share that the migrant kitchen will resume on the last Thursday of this month. However, please note that it will be paused for the summer break and will resume on August 29, 2024. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this period.

Regarding fresh food pickups, we anticipate resuming them in the Fall of 2024. We will send out another broadcast closer to the date to update you on the specifics of the resumption. 

Thank you for your continued support and cooperation.

Sincerely,
Benny’s Food Pantry Team 

I write to let you know that classes will remain online on Monday, May 6th. I expect that soon thereafter we will resume in-person classes and I will endeavor to give everyone at least 24hr notice before returning to classes on campus.

Thank you for your understanding, and thanks to all of you for making the move to online on such short notice.

Dear CCNY Faculty and Staff,

I am inviting you all to a town hall next week to speak with all of you, centering mainly around encampment related events of this week. I’d like to spend some time spelling out a timeline for events and unpacking my thinking around the actions we took in relation to the protest. We do not have the staff right now to support an in-person meeting, so we will be online.

In order to allow ample time for discussion and questions, I am limiting this first town hall to faculty and staff. I will follow up on May 8 with a town hall that specifically invites and addresses CCNY students.

The town hall meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 12:30pm. The meeting will be via Zoom. You can find the details below:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://ccny.zoom.us/j/85236915781?pwd=SkUrRG1KaEt5RW1DcFV5djYxMGxZdz09

Meeting ID: 852 3691 5781
Passcode: 095242

Following the session, a recording will be available online for those who are unable to attend.

Sincerely,

Vince Boudreau
President

Dear CUNY Community,

As you know, we returned from spring break yesterday at a time marked by the increasing presence of demonstrations at colleges across the country, including at City College. As a member of the CUNY community for over 20 years, first as a member of the faculty, then as president of two CUNY colleges, and now as Chancellor, I know that calling on the NYPD to assist an on-campus incident is something to be done only as a last recourse, and one I hoped I would never have to consider. Below, I want to share why we reached that very difficult decision on Tuesday evening with the safety of our students, public safety officers and community at the center of our concern.

Around 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, over 200 demonstrators, most of them unaffiliated with CUNY, moved from Columbia University, entered the City College campus and were joined by people in the encampment. A group of them quickly attempted to break into the college’s landmarked Shepard Hall before moving on to the Administration Building, where they smashed glass doors, vandalized offices, covered security cameras with paint and trashed files and computers as they tried to barricade themselves in the Financial Aid Office before CUNY public safety officers were able to subdue them and arrest 31 individuals. As we began surveying the damage, public safety officers found bags left behind by those arrested, which contained chains, flares, a bolt cutter and box cutters.

In the face of immediate danger to personal safety and damage to campus facilities, and with the fast-growing number of demonstrators creating an emergency situation, City College President Vincent Boudreau and I made the difficult decision to request the assistance of the NYPD who entered the encampment area around 11:45 p.m. Arrest figures from the NYPD show that 172 people were arrested outside and inside City College throughout Tuesday. Of them, 104 or 60% were not affiliated with CUNY. Those figures align with what we had already noted at the encampment. 

When the first demonstrators arrived at City College and set up the encampment a week ago, we indicated that the encampment violated University policies but said it could stay in place as long as the protest remained peaceful.

During the days and nights that followed, my office and CCNY worked to minimize the presence of unaffiliated individuals at the encampment and mitigate a series of increasingly violent incidents that put students at the encampment, as well as public safety officers and other employees, at risk.

These incidents included a fire Sunday night at the Marshak Science Building caused by the use of a flare gun that brought FDNY to campus, a clash between public safety officers and demonstrators, and a troubling statement by the camp’s liaisons early on that it was not safe for even the president of the college to enter the encampment area.

The University notified organizers and demonstrators on Tuesday afternoon that the encampment needed to be dismantled on Wednesday in time for the start of classes; we further said that if that occurred, we would work with student leaders to identify an alternate location on the City College campus for protests to continue, in accordance with CUNY policies. Furthermore, we offered to keep the door open for ongoing dialogue regarding the demands of the demonstrations.

Classes are being held remotely at City College this week. I want to thank public safety from Central Office and CCNY, and officers who were deployed from other campuses, for their work keeping the campus safe over the past week amid growing tensions. Thanks also to the custodial team at CCNY. I also want to convey my appreciation to President Boudreau and his administrative team for their steady leadership.

Protocols for Demonstrators

As we return to campuses for the final stretch of the semester, I want to reaffirm that everyone in our community has a constitutional right to free speech and a right to protest peacefully, in accordance with CUNY’s policies. Tuesday night’s actions were taken in response to specific and repeated acts of violence and vandalism, not in response to peaceful protest.

CUNY’s policies are spelled out in the Rules and Regulations for the Maintenance of Public Order (the Henderson Rules). Rule No. 3, for example, specifies that the “Unauthorized occupancy of University/college facilities or blocking access to or from such areas is prohibited.” There are consequences in place for violating the Henderson Rules, ranging from disciplinary probation to expulsion and CUNY will enforce them as needed to protect every member of our community.

CUNY has been, and will remain, committed to ensuring that every CUNY student and faculty or staff member is safe from violence, intimidation and harassment.

I know the conflict in the Middle East will continue to have a palpable impact on our community. And that the next few weeks are naturally stressful for our students with final exams and, for some, the anticipation and anxiety that can accompany the otherwise happy aspects of graduation. Your well-being is paramount to us. We have counseling and related support services in place for all community members.

Finally, I ask for your continued cooperation and support, so that we can close out the academic year on a positive note. Our goal is to preserve everyone’s ability to attend classes, teach and work, and to maintain scheduled campus activities with minimal disruption. We also want to ensure that those graduating this year can enjoy commencement ceremonies and graduation activities with their classmates and families.

Five years ago this week, I had the great honor of becoming Chancellor. Although these past five years have presented many challenges, we have also accomplished many things working together as a community. Let us continue building a better CUNY and a better New York together, powered by our diversity, driven by our desire for excellence, and grounded in mutual respect.

Sincerely,

Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Ph.D.
Chancellor