About

Throughout the city and across CUNY’s campuses, students, faculty and staff are witnessing CUNY’s slow transformation by the tides of corporate privatization and the elimination of social welfare support from the state. The powers of privatization, militarization and corporatization have entered into a holy alliance, and our CUNY, our city, our entire globe have fallen under its spell.

But there is something in the air, working to counteract this process. People are starting to come together. Faculty, students and staff across the campuses, across the city, and across the world are pushing back.

CUNY has a radical history and together we – students, faculty, and staff – are going to write the next chapter. We propose to create a DisOrientation Guide to CUNY as one small step in this direction which is a map of the factual socioeconomic history of CUNY. Our aim is to remember CUNY’s radical past, contribute to its radical present, and to envision and build its revolutionary future. The DisOrientation guide will be a free, easily accessible resource distributed throughout the CUNY system. It will be a work in progress. A living document.

Below we list some of the areas we are interested in exploring. We invite you to join us in creating this DisOrientation guide in these and other areas.

Here is our tentative list of areas to explore:

People’s History of CUNY
-History of social movements and student movements at CUNY
-Current social movement and student movement work at CUNY
Knowing CUNY
-Workers at CUNY (academic and non-academic, labor related issues)
-Students at CUNY/Not at CUNY (admissions, demographics, student body, access, stratification)
-Power/CUNY (power mapping, thinking about corporate CUNY, military CUNY)
-Neoliberal CUNY (CUNY in a broader political-economic context)
-Resources
-Maps
-City-wide resources for the CUNY community (CUNY in the city)
-Adjunct’s guide to CUNY (intro to PSC, basics of workplace rights at CUNY, etc)
-Undergraduate’s guide to CUNY (campus specific)
-Guide for non-Academic workers at CUNY (campus specific)
-NYC Highschool student’s guide to CUNY
-Reimagining CUNY
-Right to the University
-CUNY mission statement