matters - city university of new york · joining badillo and goldstein on the jour-ney were vice...

this road trip.Joining Badillo and

Goldstein on the jour-ney were Vice Chair-man of Trustees,Benno Schmidt, Jr.,and TrusteesMizanoor Biswas,John Calandra, Ken-neth Cook, Alfred B.Curtis, Jr., GeorgeRios, BernardSohmer, and JeffreyWiesenfeld. TheChancellor was ac-companied by repre-sentatives of theChancellery and the Council of Presidents.

Alegislative reception and severalrounds of meetings provided opportu-

nities to advance the University’s agenda,notably an increase in full-time faculty,additional funding for community colleges,College Now, and improvements in the Tu-ition Assistance Program.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, respondedwith many expressions of confidence inthe leadership and stability at the CityUniversity.

A legislative reception andAlbany’s leaders, in turn, responded

MattersA Newsletter for The City University of New York • Spring 2000

1

As the New York Mets and Yankeeswere limbering up at their springtraining camps, CUNY leaders

were touching all the legislative bases inAlbany. The excursion took place onMarch 6-7 and was timed to precede thebeginning of negotiations on the highereducation budget among the Assembly,the Senate, and Governor’s Office.

Pictured above, in conversation withChancellor Matthew Goldstein, left, andTrustees Chairman Herman Badillo isSenator Kenneth P. LaValle, Chair ofthe State Higher Education Committee.The subject? Doubtless it is revealed bythe button that was in frequent evidenceon this road trip.

Joining Badillo and Goldstein on thejourney were Vice Chairman of Trustees,Benno Schmidt, Jr., and Trustees MizanoorBiswas, John Calandra, Kenneth Cook, Al-fred B. Curtis, Jr., George Rios, BernardSohmer, and Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. TheChancellor was accompanied by represen-tatives of the Chancellery and the Councilof Presidents.

A legislative reception and severalrounds of meetings provided opportuni-ties to advance the University’s agenda,notably an increase in full-time faculty,additional funding for community col-leges, College Now, and improvements inthe Tuition Assistance Program.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, responded withmany expressions of confidence in theleadership and stability at the City Univer-sity. Pictured above, in conversation withChancellor Matthew Goldstein, left, andTrustees Chairman Herman Badillo is Sen-ator Kenneth P. LaValle, Chair of the StateHigher Education Committee. The sub-ject? Doubtless it is revealed by the but-ton that was in frequent evidence on thisroad trip.

Joining Badillo and Goldstein on thejourney were Vice Chairman of

Trustees, Benno Schmidt, Jr., and TrusteesMizanoor Biswas, John Calandra, KennethCook, Alfred B. Curtis, Jr., George Rios,Bernard Sohmer, and Jeffrey Wiesenfeld.The Chancellor was accompanied by repre-sentatives of the Chancellery and theCouncil of Presidents.

A legislative reception and severalrounds of meetings provided opportunitiesto advance the University’s agenda, notablyan increase in full-time faculty, additionalfunding for community colleges, CollegeNow, and improvements in the Tuition As-sistance Program.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, respondedwith many expressions of confidencein the leadership and stability at theCity University.

Pictured above, in conversation withChancellor Matthew Goldstein, left,

and Trustees Chairman Herman Badillo isSenator Kenneth P. LaValle, Chair of theState Higher Education Committee. Thesubject? Doubtless it is revealed by thebutton that was in frequent evidence on

You have to wonder just how SophieDavis Medical School senior VivianKa (pictured at left) finds time to be

the member of a fencing team. Ka, whowon a place on USA Today’s 2000 All-USACollege Academic First Team in February,has thrust and parried to a 4.0 GPA with amajor in biomedical sciences, initiated astudent-run health education program at ahomeless shelter, and served in the Ameri-can Medical Student Association.

She has also published research on theuse of Chinese medicine among the home-bound elderly and on the toxicity of com-monly-used Chinese herbs. She plans tobecome a physician. Her fellow SophieDavis student Sherry Xin Hsu (at right)earned a Second Team award with her re-search on how the compound pravastatinremoves plaque from arteries, her work asdirector of a Harlem tutoring program, andstudent government service (and another4.0 GPA).

A legislative reception and severalrounds of meetings provided opportuni-ties to advance the University’s agenda,notably an increase in full-time faculty,additional funding for community col-leges, College Now, and improvements inthe Tuition Assistance Program.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, responded withmany expressions of confidence in theleadership and stability at the City Univer-sity. Pictured above, in conversation withChancellor Matthew Goldstein, left, andTrustees Chairman Herman Badillo is Sen-ator Kenneth P. LaValle, Chair of the StateHigher Education Committee. The subject?Doubtless it is revealed by the button thatwas in frequent evidence on this road trip.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, responded withmany expressions of confidence in theleadership and stability at the City Univer-sity. Pictured above, in conversation withChancellor Matthew Goldstein, left, andTrustees Chairman Herman Badillo is Sen-ator Kenneth P. LaValle, Chair of the StateHigher Education Committee. The subject?Doubtless it is revealed by the button thatwas in frequent evidence on this road trip.

Albany’s leaders, in turn, responded withmany expressions of confidence in theleadership and stability at the City Univer-sity.

As CUNY•Matters went to press, it wasannounced that Ka has become the secondCCNY student to win a Fulbright Fellow-ship. She will use it to study traditionalmedicine at the University of Western Syd-ney in Australia.

BATTING ORDER OF TRUSTEES, CHANCELLOR, PRESIDENTS

CUNY: The Visiting Team in Albany

Ka Boom Resounds at USA Today

with many expressions of confidence inthe, Chair of the State Higher EducationCommittee. The subject? Doubtless itis revealed by the button that was in fre-quent evidence on this road trip.

To the left Saul B. Cohen, Chair ofthe Board of Regents Higher Educa-tion Committee, listens as TrusteeJeffrey Wiesenfeld talks with Assem-blyman Edward L. Sullivan, Chair ofthe Assembly Higher Education Com-mittee. Pictured below is SenatorJohn J. Marchi with Trustees KennethCook, center, and Alfred B.Curtis.

At A Glance

1LaGuardia and WagnerArchives: Leader in UrbanCommunity History

When Dr. Richard K. Lieberman talksabout how, as the founder and thus farsole director of the La-Guardia andWagnerArchives at La-Guardia Com-munity College,he got involvedin his crusade to bring the history ofthe City to its residents, he gives fullcredit to his students. The professorof urban history is referring, specifi-cally, to the students in his very firstCity history course, taught as an ad-junct some 27 years ago.

2The Write Place for Students Is to Visithttp://writesite.cuny.edu

When I have to answer the frequently-asked question—“What is the Write-Site?”—I don’t start by talking abouttechnology, computers,or software.

The CUNY WriteSiteis, above all, a collabo-ration of people—CUNY faculty, with ex-pertise in every aspectof writing, who sharethe conviction thatwriting is at the heartof our lives and our uni-versity.

3Flourishing on SeveralFronts: CUNY-1199Union Partnership

Governor George Pataki announced $1 million in state funding to help cre-ate the John F.Kennedy, Jr. Institute forWorker Educa-tion at CUNY.The Institute,the Governorsaid, “will be a fitting tribute to a man who workedtirelessly to help direct-care workersbuild a better life.”

4Sontag on her new work::19th-Century Viticulture,Crop Rotation

After her February 29Queens Collegereading from InAmerica, hernew historicalnovel set in19th-centuryPoland and America, Susan Sontagwas questioned about how she re-searched it.

2

Edward V. (Ned) Regan—a scholar inthe field of public infrastructure in-vestment, the current Chairman of

the City’s Municipal Assistance Corpora-tion (MAC), and a former Erie County Ex-ecutive and New York State Comptroller—has been named President of Baruch Col-lege by the Board of Trustees. The ap-pointment was formally made at theBoard’s March 27 meeting, and Regan willassume office on July 15.

“Ned Regan has an extraordinary back-ground well-suited for Baruch College,”said Trustees Chairman Herman Badillo.“He has effectively managed large profes-sional organizations. His distinguished ca-reer in government, finance, and educationwill provide the Baruch student body withexemplary expertise.” Chancellor MatthewGoldstein recommended the appointmentfollowing a nationwide search conductedby a search committee chaired by TrusteeKathleen M. Pesile.

Regan is aDistinguishedFellow at theJerome LevyInstitute atBard College,which hejoined in1993, afteralmost threedecades ofgovernmentservice. Healso serves asa Trustee ofthe Financial

Accounting Foundation, which oversees,raises funds for and appoints the membersof the Financial Accounting StandardsBoard and the Governmental AccountingStandards Board.

Agraduate of Hobart College in 1952,Regan earned a J.D. cum laude from

the State University of New York School ofLaw in 1964. He has been a Trustee ofMarymount College, New York Law School,and a member of the New York UniversityStern School of Business Board of Over-seers.

As New York State Comptroller from1979 to 1993, Regan was responsible forproviding financial services for the stateand its local governments, including NewYork City, during a period of major fiscalcrisis. The Comptroller is also the soletrustee for the state pension fund, whichgrew from $10 billion to $56 billion duringhis tenure. The Erie County governmenthe led had 9,000 employees and providedhealth, library, community college andother urban services to the Buffalo metro-politan area.

Regan has taught as an adjunct profes-sor at SUNY Buffalo, Canisius College, andthe Stern School of Business.

Established in 1919 as City College’sSchool of Business and Civic Admin-

istration, Baruch College was renamedin 1953 in honor of Bernard M. Baruch,statesman and financier. It became anindependent senior college in 1968 andis now, with more than 15,250 degree-earning students who come from over 90countries, one of the largest CUNY se-nior colleges.

Regan’s many ties to the local businessand finance community will benefit theCollege, which is the premier CUNY cam-pus in these fields. He serves as director,trustee or member of OppenheimerFunds,

Inc., RB Asset Inc., Offitbank, the Commit-tee for Economic Development, the Coun-cil on Foreign Relations, the Woodrow Wil-son International Center for Scholars, theBrookings Institute, and Continuum HealthPartners.

Agraduate of Hobart College in 1952,Regan earned a J.D. cum laude from

the State University of New York School ofLaw in 1964. He has been a Trustee ofMarymount College, New York Law School,and a member of the New York UniversityStern School of Business Board of Over-seers.



A graduate of Hobart College in 1952,Regan earned a J.D. cum laude from theState University of New York School ofLaw in 1964. He has been a Trustee ofMarymount College, New York Law School,and a member of the New York UniversityStern School of Business Board of Over-seers.

As New York State Comptroller from1979 to 1993, Regan was responsible

for providing financial services for thestate and its local governments, includingNew York City, during a period of major fis-cal crisis. The Comptroller is also the soletrustee for the state pension fund, whichgrew from $10 billion to $56 billion duringhis tenure. The Erie County governmenthe led had 9,000 employees and providedhealth, library, community college andother urban services to the Buffalo metro-politan area.



Regan has taught as an adjunct profes-sor at SUNY Buffalo, Canisius College,

and the Stern School of Business.His many publications include a forth-

coming book, Corporate Governance andthe Role of the Institutional Investor, to bepublished by Nasdaq, and a monograph, “ANew Approach to Tax Exempt Bonds,” pub-lished by the Jerome Levy Economics In-stitute in 1999.

Dr. Eduardo Marti, who has previ-ously led Corning and Tompkins-Cortland Community Colleges in

upstate New York for a total of 16 years,was appointed President of Queensbor-ough Community College by the Board ofTrustees on March 27. His tenure willbegin on July 1.

“Dr. Marti is a prominent educator whohas led three community colleges withdistinction and ability. He will bring thisoutstanding record to QueensboroughCommunity College,” said Board Chair-man Herman Badillo. ChancellorMatthew Goldstein recommended the ap-pointment after a search led by TrusteeNilda Soto Ruiz.

Like many CUNY students historically—115 countries of origin are now represent-ed among Queensborough’s 10,400 stu-dents—Marti was an immigrant. He leftCuba shortly after Fidel Castro came topower and, also like many CUNY students,was the first in his family to attend col-lege. Marti and his wife, Patricia, are theparents of three children.

Marti’s field was originally biology.Between 1960 and 1971 he earned

his B.A., Master’s, and Ph.D in that fieldat New York University. From 1966 to1975 he taught in the Department of Sci-ence at Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege, then served as an Associate Deanof the Faculty from 1975 to 1978.

Marti has also been a prominent region-al educational leader. He is now Presi-dent of the Association of Presidents ofPublic Community Colleges in New York.He has also served as Chairman of the As-sociation of Presidents of Public Commu-nity Colleges’ Task Force on PerformanceIndicators. Since 1994 he has been amember of the Middle States Association’sCommission on Secondary Schools







Marti’s field was originally biology. Be-

tween 1960and 1971 heearned hisB.A., Mas-ter’s, andPh.D in that fieldat New YorkUniversity.From 1966to 1975 hetaught in theDepartmentof Scienceat Boroughof Manhat-tan Commu-

nity College, then served as an AssociateDean of the Faculty from 1975 to 1978.



Marti has also been a prominent region-al educational leader. He is now Presi-dent of the Association of Presidents ofPublic Community Colleges in New York.He has also served as Chairman of the As-sociation of Presidents of Public Commu-nity Colleges’ Task Force on PerformanceIndicators. Since 1994 he has been amember of the Middle States Association’sCommission on Secondary Schools.

Message From The Chancellor Message From The Chair

Board of TrusteesThe City University

of New YorkHerman Badillo

Chairman

Benno C. Schmidt Jr.Vice-Chairman

Satish K. BabbarJohn J. Calandra

Kenneth CookMichael C. CrimminsAlfred B. Curtis, Jr.Ronald J. MarinoRandy M. Mastro

John MorningKathleen M. Pesile

George J. RiosNilda Soto Ruiz

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld

Bernard SohmerChairperson, University Faculty Senate

Mizanoor BiswasChairperson, University Student Senate

3

Continued on page 12

Photo, André Beckles.

One Happy Registration Line

Drive for Child Health Care Registration

A seminar of shining young faces from the Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege Day Care Center met on March 13 to launch a registration drive for

Child Health Plus proposed by Trustees Chairman Herman Badillo. It is estimat-ed that about 40,000 CUNY students under 19 and children of CUNY students willbe eligible for this program, reported in the Winter issue of CUNY•Matters, to pro-vide free or very low-cost health care in New York State. Four older seminar par-ticipants were, from right, University Student Senate Chairman Mizanoor Biswas,BMCC President Antonio Perez, Badillo, and Dr. Rosa Gil, Special Advisor to theMayor for Health Policy and Chairperson of the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

When the news needs to get out andfast, there’s nothing like the CUNY

Home Page (http://www.cuny.edu) as aplace to post it. In a new tickertape fea-ture, one can find Today’s Highlightsscrolling across the top, providing youwith all of the latest news affecting CUNYstudents (scholarships, for example, orhealth programs), CUNY applicants (likeall the new Frequently-Asked-Questionson Admissions), CUNY funding (the cur-rent state of our University budget re-quest), and everything noteworthy affect-ing the University.

If you visit Today’s Highlights in April,you will see a special message to prospec-tive students from Chancellor MatthewGoldstein, as well as a fully functional on-line application procedure for freshmanand transfer students. As well, you willfind Chairman Herman Badillo’s introduc-tion to the availability of New York State’sChild Health Plus program and its afford-able health coverage for CUNY studentsand their families.

On the instructional and research side,take a look at CUNY Resources and visitthe CUNY WriteSite (see story, page 5)and CUNYMath—two web-based resources

developed by CUNY faculty for CUNY stu-dents. Or you may have wondered whatCUNY is doing on the distance learningfront: check out CUNY Online in the Re-sources section and see what facultyfrom 13 CUNY colleges have been doingwith the help of generous funding from theAlfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Those who are curious about new infor-mation technologies in campus libraries mayclick on CUNY Libraries and access digitalsources and services already available, aswell as materials in the planning stage. Stu-dents planning to transfer from a two- to afour-year CUNY college should click onCUNY TIPPS in the Student Info section tolearn how their course work will be evaluat-ed by each of the senior colleges and whatthe University’s current remediation policiesare. CUNY Study Abroad in the StudentInfo section lays out the available opportu-nities for study in foreign countries.

New information appears on the CUNYhome page every day, and it is clearly be-coming an important bookmark for a grow-ing number of the University’s students,faculty, and prospective members of theCUNY community. Lately, there have beenabout 450,000 hits on the site a month.

RESOURCES ON THE CUNY HOME PAGE

Click City : www.cuny.edu

CUNY•Matters, You, and the FutureIf you have any suggestions for future articles or new regular fea-tures in CUNY•Matters—or any views to express about the newslet-ter that would improve its coverage of life in the City Universitycommunity—please take the time to visit the CUNY home page andrespond to a very brief “Survey for Readers.” The survey can beaccessed athttp://www.cuny.edu/events/cunymatters/survey.html MarkTwain once remarked that he didn’t mind criticism at all—as long asit was all positive. CUNY•Matters is not so squeamish: readers’

City history pored over by 9,000 4th-graders each year for the last 11 years, aseven-part radio series on the life andtimes of Fiorello LaGuardia, and thosecoveted history calendars which havebeen created from the Archives’ treasuresand distributed to more than 5,000 peopleannually for 21 years.

Making history acces-sible to ordinary cit-

izens took on a moreformal aspect when,in 1982, Liebermanwas handed the for-midable task ofmanaging La-Guardia’s fledglingarchives. “We hadnothing,” he recalls,“just an idea.”

That idea—tobuild a repositoryaround the College’snamesake—soon be-

came plausible when Marie LaGuardia,the beloved former Mayor’s widow, calledthe archives and asked if they would beso kind as to take her husband’s personalpapers from her premises. What arrived,in those several boxes, was a treasuretrove to make an archivist’s heart palpi-tate.

With time, this donation served to at-tract the personal papers of three moreMayors: Robert F. Wagner, Abraham D.Beame, and Edward I. Koch. In fact, thismayoral archives is unique in the nation.Notable too among Archives possessionsare the papers of nearby Steinway andSons (on which Lieberman himself haswritten the book), a collection of CityHousing Authority material, and papers ofthe City Council. Visited by some 3,000researchers each year, the LaGuardia andWagner Archives, Lieberman feels safe inboasting, “is one of the most importantresearch centers on 20th- century NewYork.”

The Archives is also expandingvigorously onto the Web. Itsever-expanding site (www.la-

W hen Dr. Richard K. Liebermantalks about how, as the founderand thus far sole director of the

LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at La-Guardia Community College, he got in-volved in his crusade to bring the historyof the City to its residents, he gives fullcredit to his students. The profes-sor of urban history is referring,specifically, to the students in hisvery first City history course,taught as an adjunct some 27years ago.

“Two weeks into the course agroup of students approached meand asked, ‘When do we get toQueens?’ My first response was, ‘Iknow nothing about the history ofQueens,’” Lieberman says, addinghow stunned he was by their inquiry.“From all my training as an urban histori-an and all my reading, the history of NewYork means Manhattan, a little bit onBrooklyn and the Bronx, and nothing onQueens or Staten Island.”

With no history books to rely on,Lieberman explained that he quicklyformed student research groups and senthis novice researchers out into theirneighborhoods to uncover information oneveryday life in Queens. They came backfrom interviews with older relatives,neighbors, and patrons of senior centerswith a rich bounty of artifacts, photos,and documents of community history.

These bits of history flowing intohis classroom, Lieberman sums up,“changed my whole career and launchedme into a whole new way of doing histo-ry, community history.”

All those tangible remnants havemade possible the many Archives exhibi-tions on such topics as leisure and work,special elementary school curriculums on

Lieberman’s Sloan Award For Public Service

Citing Director Richard Lieberman for the“ingenuity, energy, and compassion” he has

brought to the LaGuardia and Wagner Archivesand to the teaching of New York City history, Dr.Mary McCormick, President of the Fund for theCity of New York, awarded him the Sloan PublicService Award at a ceremony on March 14.

In presenting the award, McCormick quotedthis praise for Lieberman from a national leaderin social history programs: “As a historian hehas led the way in showing a community its his-tory. He has done it better than anyone.”

The Fund, launched with a grant from theFord Foundation, has been citing outstandingcity employees for 27 years. Lieberman wasamong six honored this year; each received anhonorarium of $7,500.

At a reception after the ceremony, Liebermanin turn applauded the support for his endeavorsat the College: “You cannot imagine how muchfun and how easy it has been at LaGuardia.The College has been, and remains, a petri dishfor creativity.”

LaGuardia’s Archives director Richard Lieberman, left, looks over artifactsdonated by Beame with his assistant archivist, Eric Wolf.

By Randy Fader-Smith

M any believe that, like so muchelse about writing in CUNY,the Journal of Basic Writing

(originally just Basic Writing) beganwith Mina Shaughnessy. In a sense itdid. She was one of nine City Collegefaculty members who founded the jour-nal, with support from the Instruction-al Resource Center she had created.And she did write the first few editori-al columns.

But that was only the beginning. In1981, the year after Sara D'Eloia be-came editor, the journal moved frombeing an “in-house” CUNY publication tohaving a National Advisory Board includ-ing a number of renowned writing schol-ars from across the nation. Five yearslater, Lynn Quitman Troyka became edi-tor, expanded the editorial board, andmade JBW a refereed journal. Editorfrom 1986 to 1988, she was succeededby Bill Bernhardt and Peter Miller. In1995, Karen Greenberg and Trudy Smokebecame editors, though Karen steppeddown after three issues and was re-placed by George Otte (Baruch College),who became co-editor with the Fall 1996issue and continues to edit JBW withSmoke (Hunter College).

As the one scholarly journal devotedto basic writing, JBW represents a richlegacy of research and publication. Arecent watershed was the Spring 1997

4

It struck New York City in 1821. It hap-pened again in 1893. Dr. NicholasCoch, now an adviser to the Mayor’s

Office of Emergency Management Agency,is warning that history repeats itself andthe City must prepare for the next one.The professor in the School of Environmen-tal Science at Queens College is talkingabout the really big Big Apple Hurricane, asubject on which he has performed yearsof research.

“If we can see in detail what happenedin the past, we can predict the future,”said Coch, “and it will always be worse inthe future.”

The last hurricane visited New York in1938. Coch predicts that the next one willmost likely strike within the next 70 years,an assessment based in part on newly dis-covered evidence of those 1821 and 1893hurricanes.

Coch predicted that when the next hurri-cane strikes in the new millennium, “it willbe the greatest catastrophe.” In a lecturesponsored by the National Academy of Sci-ences on February 7, he spoke about theunique vulnerability of New York City andproduced a step-by-step damage scenario.

“When a hurricane comes, the sea level isdriven into the city. When you get saltwater underground in those cables,” he ex-plained in an interview, “the whole financialstructure goes down. Wall Street goes outof business. The banks go out of business.This is the nerve center of America.”

Besides disrupting the core of the city’seconomic infrastructure, the hurricane willalso harshly affect the transportation sys-tem. Subways will be flooded, bridges willclose and airports will nosedive under

water. “It’s too frightening to contemplate,”Coch said.

But his real point is that we must.Several factors make New York City vul-

nerable to a hurricane strike. Since NewYork and Long Island approximate a rightangle with New Jersey, that intersectionwould bear the brunt of the coastal on-slaught. In addition, hurricanes that edgeup the northeast coast tend to carrystronger and faster winds and move morequickly than elsewhere.

Coch is currently investigating threemajor northeast hurricanes. By research-ing the 1635 hurricane that struck the pil-grims and the Bay colony, the 1815 hurri-cane devastating eastern Long Island, andthe 1821/1893 hurricanes eroding NewYork City, he hopes to provide insight onthe susceptibility of New York to futurehurricanes.

Coch has conducted his research onthese long-ago storms among governmentreports, church records, newspapers, andvarious unpublished archival materials.

Y ou might expect a hurricane expertto have come from southeast, but

Coch’s interest in the subject was piquedas a young boy in New Hampshire afterwitnessing the great 1938 hurricane thatleft an extended wake of debris along theNew England coast. The image of broken

tree branches surfaced years later whenhe inspected the damage wrought on byHurricane Hugo outside Charleston,South Carolina.

The hurricane, he recalls, “literallysnapped the trees and was quite a sight. Icame back from that knowing this was thething I wanted to do.”

In an effort to make New York residents

more aware about the potential danger ofthe next hurricane, Coch stressed educa-tion and rattled off a list of must-know in-formation: “Understand the nature of thebeast. You must respond to what you’vebeen told by the emergency planners.”(Coch briefed New York emergency plan-ners in early April.) And he prophesies,“Understand that there will be fantasticproperty loss.”

Coch suggested that people living inareas less than 20 feet above sea

level move inland and take refuge in hard-ened shelters, schools, and auditoriumsfor safety.

Ironically, the worst case sce-nario is not a hurricane thathits New York City directly butrather one that passes overNew Jersey. In this case, theturbulent right eye wall, consid-ered by scientists as causingthe area of greatest floodingand highest winds, would be di-rectly over New York City.

“The earth is an inherentlydangerous place. It is full of haz-ards,” he said. “Accept the factthat there will be disasters. Ifwe’ve not prepared for them, theywill become catastrophes.”

issue, a special issue on race, class andculture in the basic writing classroom.In that issue, the journal's first full cu-mulative index accompanied a set of es-pecially important articles, none moreso than Ira Shor's call for an end tobasic writing, which he called “OurApartheid.” The issue and that articlein particular—and the vigorous respons-es to it by Greenberg and others—seemed to re-energize a field demoral-ized by cuts and marginalization. Thedebate spawned made the journal itselfthe source of considerable discussion.

Areflection of that exchange is theissue in preparation, which includes

pieces by scholars nation-wide on suchtopics as “Basic Writing and the Issue ofCorrectness,” “Meanness and Failure:Sanctioning Basic Writers,” “How WeHave Failed the Basic Writing Enter-prise,” and “Illegal Literacy.” KeithGilyard, the author of an article on“Basic Writing, Cost Effectiveness, andIdeology,” is a CUNY alumnus and cur-rently chair of the Conference on Col-lege Composition and Communication(the largest national organization devot-ed to college-level writing instruction).He is among the scholars “grateful” forthe chance to contribute to JBW. “It isone of the most important intellectualcomponents of CUNY,” he says.

Gilyard’s contribution to what hascome to be known as the Shor-Green-berg debate on the future of basic writ-ing offers compelling reasons why boththe field of basic writing and JBW, thejournal devoted to it, will live on.

THE JOURNALS OF CUNY

Journal of Basic Writing Celebrates its 25th

QUEENS WEATHER MAN WARNS THE BIG APPLE

The Hurricane (Not the Movie)By Alicia ChangJournalism minor, Queens College

Professor Nicholas Coch at the hur-ricane tracking board of the NationalTropical Prediction Center in Miami,familiar from many an emergencytelevision broadcast. His colleaguesat the Center cordially placed a redhurricane symbol on New York Cityand named it Nick.

5

Writing Center leaders meeting topolish the CUNY WriteSite. Front,from left, Marian Arkin (LaG) andPatricia Coleman (LaG); rear, from left, Myra Kogen (Brooklyn),Gail Wood (CSI), Richard Pisciotta (Queens), John Troynaski (Queens), Bill Bernhardt (CSI), and WriteSite editor Russell Day.

W hen I have to answer the frequent-ly-asked question—“What is theWriteSite?”—I don’t start by talking

about technology, computers, or software. I talk about people: Nora Eisenberg of

LaGuardia; George Otte, Gerard Dalgish ofBaruch; Ann Peters, Stuart Cochran fromthe Ph.D. Program in English; JanicePeritz, Christine Timm of Queens; andJane Paznik-Bondarin (BMCC), Clem Dun-bar (Lehman), and Bill Bernhardt (CSI).For the CUNY WriteSite is, above all, a col-laboration of people—CUNY faculty, withexpertise in every aspect of writing, whoshare the conviction that writing is at theheart of our lives and our university.

Officially, the WriteSite is an OWL (on-line writing laboratory), a phenomenonthat has spread in higher education overthe past five years. Many other campuseshave OWLs, but CUNY is the only universi-ty to have developed its own system-wide,web-based resource center for writers onall levels—and throughout every discipline.

Three years ago, when the WriteSitestarted with technical support from theOffice of Computing and Information Ser-vices, we were very aware that the vastmajority of students had scant off-cam-pus access to computing and the Inter-net. We imagined building a resourcethat could support activity on campuses,in learning and writing centers and asadjuncts to particular courses, enhancingexisting services.

But we dreamed of a time when CUNYstudents would have Internet connectionsto support them off-campus too. Taking toheart the twin CUNY goals of access andexcellence, WriteSite developers looked tothe near future, when CUNY students wouldhave ready access not only in campus labs.The Night Owl, as we thought to call thesite, would help students facing busy livesand the challenges of academic writinganytime, anywhere.

T he WriteSite (as we finally called it)builds on a foundation of strong prin-

ciples. First among these, perhaps, isgenerous rapport. In the interchange thesite supports, stu-dents post ques-tions, drafts, con-cerns, and getfeedback frompeers, tutors, orfaculty. In the cre-ation of the site,too, generosity hasreigned: facultyhave donated theirown textbooks; tu-tors and teachershave contributed materials; and studentshave donated their time and good judg-ment in testing our developing materials.Indeed, the people who do the actual webwork on the site are CUNY undergraduates,who readily contribute their opinions onusability and style.

Which takes us to another principle, co-operation. Nowhere, perhaps, is the ten-dency toward idiosyncrasy more entrenchedthan in texts and multimedia. By havingfaculty, tutors, and students working to-

gether on development and piloting, wehave ensured that what goes online makessense for many.

Though the WriteSite will ultimatelyoffer material for graduate-level writing,professional writing, and curricular devel-opment, our sense of the pressingneeds of undergraduates has

dictated our priorities. Thus, the topicsGrammar and Style and Writing Projectsclaimed our attention first. In the former“corner” of the site, we now have a uniqueinteractive resource called HotSpots,which engages students—and of courseany user—in discovery and application ofgrammatical principles in the four areasthat collaborative conversations deemedthe most pressing: “Watch your S,” “Don’tDrop D,” “Is it a Sentence?” and “Little

Words Mean aLot.” In Hot-Spots thesemost commongrammaticalminefields arenegotiated notthrough drearyfill-ins and roterules, butthrough dynamicinteractivity.

The same dy-namic principles have shaped the develop-ment of Writing Projects. Here, studentswriting in any course can discover throughactivity the essence of the various tasksinvolved in college writing. What is a com-parison, an analysis, a discussion? Whatare the basics elements of college papers?What is a writing journal—and why keepone? What are the best ways take notes,develop drafts, consult, edit, polish? Writ-ing Projects explores all of this in currentor developing resources.

A Collaborative Grant from the Officeof Academic Affairs has enabled fac-

ulty working on Writing Projects to can-

vass opinion from across the University,learning from faculty the most commonkinds of writing tasks assigned in theircourses and what are the most commonchallenges and frustrations for their stu-dents.

Robert Timm, our first editor, and Rus-sell Day, the current editor of the Write-Site (both graduate students in the Ph.D.Program in English), assumed major re-sponsibility for transferring the content oftextbooks and other materials written byCUNY faculty to formats suitable for theweb environment.

Moving away from the display model fa-vored by most other OWLs (essentiallytextbook pages on a screen) and toward amore interactive model required arduousexamination and experimentation. Itmeant trying out formats with faculty andstudents, developing templates to fosterthe site’s principles of dialogue, discovery,interactivity. As George Otte has summa-rized, “You go to most OWLs to get stuff;you go to WriteSite to do stuff!”

New areas under development includewhat we are calling the “Teachers and Tu-tors Toolbox” (a self-instructional moduleto ease faculty and staff into the onlineenvironment), discussion boards for pro-

“You go to most OWLsto get stuff; you go toWriteSite to do stuff!”

—George Otte

Continued on page 8

If it does not help you much to learnthat George Wolberg is deeply intomesh warping, control lattices, mor-

phing algorithms, and energy-minimizingsplines, then simply call to mind ForrestGump, Terminator 2, and Babe.

These three films memorably featuredthe new computer technology called imagemorphing. According to Wolberg, a CityCollege professor of computer science,the script for Terminator 2 was writtenquite specifically to exploit this technolo-gy, which had made its film debut in Wil-low in 1988.

On March 8, Wolberg was honored atGracie Mansion with one of the three1999/2000 Mayor’s Awards for Excellencein Science and Technology for his seminalcontributions to the field of digital imag-ing. At the age of 26, he published in

1990 (the same year he arrived at CCNY)the first comprehensive book on the sub-ject, Digital Image Warping. Since then hisresearch has focused on a theoreticalframework for morphing among multipleinput images, the rendering of terrain forhigh-quality fly-throughs over landscapesgenerated by satellite data, and the refine-ment of mapping—or warp—functions.Wolberg holds two patents, one for separa-ble image warping and another for image

restoration.Though video and advertising applica-

tions come immediately to mind, Wolbergsays he also hopes his research will havesome impact in medical imaging—for ex-ample the morphing, for diagnostic pur-

poses, of separate slices of a CAT-scan. Pictured here are four frames from a

prize-winning promotional video that Wol-berg made for City College in which a col-lage of alumnus Colin Powell, an unidenti-

fied student, and emeritus professor offoreign languages Manuel de la Nunezmorph into the official seal of the College.The seal was designed and first cast inbronze in 1866. The three classic headsadmonish, Respice, adspice, prospice(“look to the past, present, future”).

6

Chancellor Goldstein greeting Governor Pataki at the Graduate Center on February 22 for theannouncement of a new John F. Kennedy Jr. Institute at CUNY. At right is Chairman Badillo,Graduate Center President Horowitz is at rear, and Kennedy’s long-time friend and the ActingPresident of Reaching Up, Jeffrey Sachs, is at left. Photo, André Beckles.

CCNY COMPUTER SCIENTIST HONORED

Seriously Warped

Queer CUNY: An Unprecedented Conference

On Saturday May 6th the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies will sponsor Queer CUNY: CampusOrganizing Across the Boroughs. This first such conference will provide a forum for faculty, staff,

and students to address issues pertaining to queer life on CUNY campuses. Rather than the usual pre-sentation of papers, Queer CUNY will consist of a series of roundtables addressing such topics as howto form and maintain a student group, combating homophobia on campus, queer pedagogy, and profes-sional concerns of LGBT faculty and staff. Breakout periods and a post-conference party are alsoplanned. Queer CUNY is free, open to the public, and will take place on the 9th floor of the GraduateCenter from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, contact CLAGS (212-817-1955 [email protected]) or visit its website (www.clags.org).

Continued on page 9

When I asked my three visitors tothe Central Office to recall par-ticular moments that might cap-

ture their reasons for becoming active inthe CUNY Association of Scholars, DorothyLang told of a student in her Business Pol-icy course. On one of his early papers shesaid she had remarked, “Writing needs im-provement. Use complete sentences.”“His subsequent papers did not improve,”Lang remembers, “and he finally came tomy office and asked me what a completesentence was.” The capper: this was aBusiness Policy course for seniors.

Barry Latzer thinks of the time a stu-dent came in to his office to plead withhim to change a D to an F. Being a profwith a heart, Latzer obliged (more aboutthis F later).

The response of Nahma Sandrow, whospecializes in teaching remedial writing,was more general. “I just couldn’t bear tosee students in my classes over andover—never graduating. I felt there had tobe a better way; otherwise, let them go,stop playing with them.”

Every CUNY faculty member can sum-mon up such moments to be bemusedand/or weep over. I hark back, for in-stance, to the student in my freshmanwriting class at Baruch several years agowho referred to that period before the Re-naissance as the “Mid-evil Age”—and toanother who had occasion to mention thatfamed analyst Sigman Fruit.

Bracing anecdotes like these—andextensive classroom experience—

have convinced the members of CUNYASthat, as “Toward Academic Renewal”states, “a new culture of excellence at

7

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM CUNYAS

Achieving Academic Renewal at CUNY

E arly in 1997, Hunter College professor of philosophy Charles Landesmanlaunched a CUNY-wide faculty initiative to promote higher academic standards

within the University. The result was formal establishment of the CUNY Associa-tion of Scholars (CUNYAS). In March the Editor of CUNY•Matters met with threemembers of the executive committee of the Association to discuss their motiva-tions, hopes, and ideas for raising the quality of undergraduate education, as wellas the many specific proposals contained in a recently released CUNYAS positionpaper, “Toward the Academic Renewal of CUNY.” They were Professors DorothyLang (Business, College of Staten Island), Barry Latzer (Government, John JayCollege), and Nahma Sandrow (English, Bronx Community College).

Albany Trip, continued from page 1

CUNY requires higher expectations andstandards for classroom performance,grades, maintenance of matriculation,and accountability.”

To this end,CUNYAS offers 11recommendations,and Lang, Latzer,and Sandrow areunanimous in be-lieving the mostfundamental arethe first three,which address theneed to assurethat course con-tent is at genuine college level. CUNYASrecommends:

• Establishment of a collaborativeprocess for assuring that (a) coursereadings are at college level and areappropriately challenging for courselevel and (b) level-appropriate exams,papers, and projects are required.

• Rigorous enforcement of propercourse sequencing and course pre-requisites, with waivers of prerequi-sites permitted only in unusual cir-cumstances, in order to assure suit-able preparation for advanced course-work.

• Close monitoring by the centraladministration of grading for exit-from-remediation and “rising junior”examinations, in order to assure ap-propriate basic skills for introductorycourses.

Elaborating on these proposals, Latzer isquick to emphasize that CUNYAS is eager

for the University to “continue workinghard to bring its most deficient studentsup to genuine college level, but this shouldnot be for college credit.”

This view is born of obvious dismay atthe consequences of enrolling seriouslyunderprepared students in college-levelcourses. “This is the great error of CUNY,”Latzer asserts, “because it underminesthe quality of the courses, and the price isreally paid by the best students and even,really, those students in the middle.” Nordoes Lang concede that students grantedwaivers of prerequisites are substantiallyhelped: “Students with waivers in my in-troductory management course almost in-

variably end updropping out.”I ask what kindof “criticalmass” of defi-cient students ina class cancause it to cap-size, and therewas agreementthat between 20and 30 percent

was enough to cause trouble. “It is notfair to the middle and superior students tohave to devote so much time to basics,”says Lang.

Or simply to repetition: Latzer tells ofhis chagrin, one day, when an extremelybright student said to him after class,“Professor Latzer, you have great pa-tience.” “I knew she wasn’t commendingme for that: she was clearly frustrated bythe slow pace! Changing the institutionalconversation to one of excellence meanspaying more attention to students likeher—or like the former student of minewho was the first John Jay graduate to goto Harvard Law School. He’s back in theCity now and taking me to lunch!”

“Yes, we are hoping for better opportu-nities to ‘teach to the top,’” Sandrow adds.

Sandrow raises another area of CUN-YAS concern when she remarks on the

wide disparity of attitudes toward gradingamong CUNY faculty—indeed, among de-partments on any given campus. Some of

her colleagues, she says, believe compas-sion and nurturing are incompatible withthe need to give a final grade. Latzer, whoadmits to a reputation as a hard grader(“possibly one of the hardest at John Jay”),agrees, saying that one happy effect of thisstyle is that he tends to attract some ofJohn Jay’s best students, those who wantrigorous preparation for law school orgraduate school.

Several of the CUNYAS recommendationsare addressed to strengthening the rigorand uniformity of the grading processthroughout the University:

• The establishment of monitoring ateach college to discourage departmen-tal grade inflation intended to increasecourse enrollments and gain new fac-ulty lines.

• Clear communication of grading ex-pectations by department chairs tonew faculty, especially adjunct instruc-tors, and concerted effort to erase dis-incentives felt by adjuncts to assignlow grades when they are merited(one such disincentive being data fromstudent questionnaires).

• The abolition of the policy of permit-ting students to eliminate F gradesfrom their GPAs by retaking a course:by undermining the significance of afailing grade, the current policy bene-fits poorly performing students at theexpense of course quality, overallstandards, and the reputation of theCUNY degree.

Apropos the last proposal, Latzer tells ofthe student who asked for an F. “Shethought that, with another instructor, shecould get a better grade. I had no problemwith her request, since she was makinguse of a bona fide University policy.” Still,he thinks the policy a symbolic faux pas:“Why give the poorest students the break?We should go out of our way for the betterstudents.”

A lso subversive of the pedagogical func-tion, according to Latzer, are the many

students who are formally dismissed orwithdraw because of poor grades, only toreappear mysteriously in University class-rooms. “We believe the University’s read-mission standards require clarification andstrengthening,” he says. The CUNYAS re-port therefore recommends: “Current poli-cies regarding readmission of students whohave withdrawn or were dismissed for aca-demic problems are unclear and may beencouraging retention of poorly performingstudents. Such policies may undermineUniversity efforts to raise admissions andclassroom performance standards andshould be reviewed by the CUNY centraladministration.”

Latzer expresses the hope that theserecommendations not be seen “merely asfaculty grousing,” and Lang agrees, sayingCUNYAS has no intention of casting blameor putting the burden solely on students.“Our proposals are finally about a majorchanges in the organizational culture andin accountability.” Several proposals ad-dress this issue:

• Evaluation of presidents on thebasis of their effectiveness in raisingacademic standards at their colleges;establishment of demonstrated com-mitment to high academic standardsas a significant criterion in presiden-tial searches.

• Evaluation of faculty on the basis of(a) the requirement of examinations,

Photos, Colleen Brescia

“We are hoping for better opportunitiesto ‘teach to the

top.’”

fessional conversations pertinent to writ-ing pedagogy, and support for advancedwriting tasks such as preparation forteacher certification examinations.

A current pilot project with a group ofcampus Writing Cen-ter directors is giv-ing us importantfeedback and en-couragement. “Stu-dents are thoroughlyengaged by theWriteSite,” MarianArkin, Director ofLaGuardia’s WritingCenter, says. “Theylove the chance todiscover principleson their own andapply these to theirown writing. It’s re-markably dynamic,humane—and fun!”

A s our choice ofthe name Write-

Site implies, we weretaken by the spatialmetaphors that havebecome so much apart of the currentvocabulary for elec-tronic communication(cyberspace, chat-rooms, etc.).

From the start, we have thought of theWriteSite as a means for crossing the ac-tual, physical space of our vast and far-flung University community. We wantedthe site to be a meeting-place for facultyand students, a place for conversationand dialogue about writing that would linkvaried disciplines and enable writers onevery campus to join in the discussion.

We hope members of the Universitycommunity will come to the WriteSiteandfind there not just useful information butopportunity for the discovery and ex-change that always distinguish genuinelearning and potent writing. Considerthis our invitation to students, staff, tu-tors, and faculty to help us create a website that truly serves the needs of writersthroughout the University.

Unheavy MetalA close look at the sculpturedironwork on one of the refur-bished staircases in the GraduateCenter’s new home, the former B.Altman & Company departmentstore. Photo, André Beckles.

A fter her February 29 Queens Col-lege reading from In America, hernew historical novel set in 19th-

century Poland and America, Susan Son-tag was questioned about how she re-searched it.

“Research sounds a little more preten-tious than what I actually do,” the distin-guished novelist and critic replied. “I justread a lot of original documents. For thefarm—there are two chapters set on afarm in Anaheim [California]—I got pam-phlets issued by the Department of Agri-culture in the 1870s to find out about al-falfa and crop rotation. . .The basic rule isyou have to know a hundred times morethan you actually use.”

Sontag said she also read seven bookson the wine industry back then in Califor-nia. “I took copious notes but very little ofit actually got into the novel. . .It was thesame for [Sontag’s previous novel] The Vol-cano Lover, which took place in the 18thcentury. Of course, I don’t want to saythat people wore wigs or had buckles on

their shoes or took can-dles up the stairs whenthey went to bed. Thatwould be a very amateur-ish kind of scene paint-ing. . .You have to learnall this stuff and digestit, then forget about it.But it comes back whenyou need it.”

During her openingremarks, Sontag de-clared the venerableQueens Readings “thebest reading series inNew York.” Her read-ing will be broadcastseveral times in thespring on the cableMetro Channel’s Un-blinking Eye programand throughout Canada on the CBC, aswill the March 21 reading featuringLeonard Lopate’s “Conversation withPhilip Lopate.”

8

WriteSite, continued from page 5

QUEENS COLLEGE READING

Sontag on 19th-Century Viticulture, Crop Rotation

Queens Evening ReadingsDirector Joe Cuomo makingSusan Sontag feel quite welcomebefore her leap-day appearance.Photo. Rick DeWitt.

President Sessoms Resigns at Queens

Dr. Allen Sessoms, the President ofQueens College for the last five years,

announced his resignation on April 7, ef-fective on August 31.

Saying that “separated from my family,including my two young daughters, it hasbeen an extremely difficult while produc-tive five years,” Sessoms said.

Accepting the resignation, ChancellorMatthew Goldstein wished Sessoms“every possible good fortune as he con-siders future challenges and opportuni-ties” and thanked him for his service toQueens College.

Irish-American Institute

Established atLehman College

A proposal to establish a CUNY Institutefor Irish-American Studies, to be

based at Lehman College, was approvedunanimously by the Board of Trustees atits February meeting.

The Institute will focus on the Irish-American diaspora and its impact onAmerican life and culture.

The proposal was made and vigorouslysupported by Trustee John J. Calandra,who said on the occasion, “We look for-ward to collaborating with other Irish-American organizations, especially in pre-senting cultural and literary events thatwill enable more New Yorkers to share inthe rich Irish heritage.”

Serving on the Institute’s AdvisoryBoard will be CUNY faculty prominent inIrish studies, as well as leaders of vari-ous cultural and artistic organizations.Among the members already on theBoard, still in formation, are the poet andLehman English Professor Billy Collins,former Trustees Chairman James P. Mur-phy, Ciaran O’Reilly, Producing Directorof the Irish Repertory Theater, andLehman’s specialist in Celtic mythology,Dr. Michael Paull.

Welcoming the Institute, Lehman Presi-dent Ricardo Fernández said, “For thepast 75 years the Bronx has been a cen-tral locus of Irish immigration. As weseek to understand the impact of that im-migration, we hope our borough, throughLehman College and CUNY, can also serveas one of the centers for this effort.”

Early Reviews of the CUNY OWL

“Technology is key to our success in the future, and theWriteSite, a unique web resource, can play a key role as facethe challenges of fostering writing across the University.”

Louise Mirrer, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

“This is cutting-edge work with enormous implications forthe way we as a society communicate in writing and the waythat we communicate the critical value of writing skills toour students.”

Robert Maurer, former President of N. Y. State's Higher Education Services Corporation

“Very useful, because it refreshed my memory. This materialshould be used by younger children in grade school. Theyare the ones who are just learning, and it will be easy forthem to use.”

Dagmar Cruz, student

“The WriteSite is integral to our work in writing across thecurriculum. Here students can not only read about collegewriting but practice writing and work through college assign-ments. For faculty, writing fellows, and tutors, too, WriteSiteoffers a special mix of information and interchange essentialto support writing in the disciplines.”

Dolores Straker, CUNY’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Got a Nanosecond?

L ast January President Clinton proposed majorincreases in funding of research in (among

other areas) nanotechnology, at the same time urg-ing a 17% increase in the National Science Founda-tion's total budget to $4.6 billion.

Seconding that motion, the NSF announced onMarch 1 that it was awarding a $2.7 million grant toCity College's Center for Analysis of Structures and

Interfaces (CASI) to boost research in the newrealm of nanotechnology. (The word "nanosecond"just celebrated its 40th birthday and defines a bil-lionth of a second.) Professor of Chemistry DanielAkins, CASI's director, expects to involve col-leagues at Hunter and Staten Island Colleges, aswell as at Columbia and the University or Rochester."This project will create a pool of Ph.D.s trained ina cross-disciplinary environment in fields poised tocontribute to the next generation of nanomaterials,"Akins said.

The gate at Levy Play-ground, in CentralPark at 79th Streetand Fifth Avenue.

On the Corner Of 80th Street & Livingston

You could call brilliant the recent choice of Larry Edwards by Chan-cellors Matthew Goldstein and Harold O. Levy to fill the new position

of Deputy to the Chancellor for Recruitment and College Preparation:he’s been preparing for the job for, oh, say 50 years. As a permanent

bridge between CUNY and the Board of Edu-cation, Edwards is only slightly less venera-ble than the “harp and altar, of the furyfused” that Hart Crane went on about in hisfamous 1927 Brooklyn Bridge poem. First,Edwards considers the appointment as “pay-back” time for the life-changing experienceof earning three degrees from Queens Col-lege in the 1950s—a B.A. in Political Scienceand two Master’s degrees in Education andGuidance and Counseling. Second, Edwardsbrings 41 years of experience working withthe Board of Education, the last 15 of themat the central Board office, where he latterlybecame Supervising Superintendent and fo-cused on the City’s high schools. The Jack-son Heights native is also very familiar at the

CUNY Central Office, having worked on several University-Board initia-tives during the last decade. Now he has his own office on both sides ofthe East River, and is preoccupied with the expansion of College Now.His favorite word these days? “Seamless”—as in transition from highschool to college.

From City HallTo City U

On the eve of a major ex-pansion of College Now in

the public schools, ChancellorGoldstein announced the ap-pointment of Ninfa Segarrato the new position of VicePresident for Inter-CampusCollaboration, based at theCUNY Research Foundation.

Segarra began work on April1, while resigning from the second-longest Deputy Mayoral tenure in Cityhistory. The former Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services,however, will continue her service on the Board of Education, which com-menced in 1994. In addition to promoting College Now, Segarra, a nativeLower East Sider and NYU-trained lawyer, will work closely with collegeand University leaders to foster collaborative initiatives between campus-es. Welcoming her, Chairman Badillo said, “Deputy Mayor Segarra bringsto CUNY more than 20 years of government, community, and educationalexperience. Her talents and abilities will be very helpful in moving theCUNY reform agenda forward.”

9

ATrusteeMarries

in Dhaka

A s CUNY’s Student Senate Chair and member of the Board of Trusteesfor the last three years, Mizanoor Biswas has made his share of po-

litical arrangements. Now he has submitted to the ultimate arrangement:his own marriage. In January, Biswas returned to his native Bangladesh—where he spent his first 18 years—to meet and marry Tajin. He is seenhere with her just after the ceremony (his headgear is called a paghre).The marriage was arranged by a mutual friend of their two families, bothof which reside in the capital of Dhaka. In traditional Bangladeshi fash-ion, the prospective bride and groom met twice, for less than a total of twohours and with family supervision. The meetings clearly went well. Tajin,an architect, arrives here this spring, and the couple looks forward to rais-ing a family in New York City.

CUNY’S First African American Grad

P ictured here is William HallettGreene, the first graduate of

City College who can be identified asAfrican American (B.S. 1884). Theson of a coachman who lived on West31st Street, Greene was one of the 20graduates who survived from an en-tering freshman class of 250. Electedsecretary of his senior class and de-scribed as “very popular” in the Col-lege Mercury, after graduation he en-tered the U.S. Signal Corps, then abranch of the army responsible forcommunications and meteorologicalstudies. Greene is featured in a new,lavishly illustrated book, From theFree Academy to CUNY, that offers anoverview of CUNY’s 150-year history.The volume, edited by Professors Sandra Roff (Baruch), Anthony Cucchiara(Brooklyn), and Barbara Dunlap (City), is scheduled to appear later thisspring; it will be featured more fully in the Summer issue of CUNY•Matters.

The Faces of CUNY

term papers and other projects ap-propriate to the content and level ofthe course, (b) the assignment ofcollege-level textbooks and readingsappropriate in terms of difficulty andquantity for the level of the course,(c) reasonable and appropriate grad-ing practices, and (d) appropriateanalysis of student evaluations.

• The requirement of annual reportsfrom each college to the central ad-ministration on progress toward im-plementing all the CUNYAS recom-mendations; publication of an annualreport based on these reports andother relevant data.

The CUNYAS position paper con-cludes: “Academic renewal is the re-

sponsibility of all members of the CUNYcommunity, from the central and collegeadministrators to the faculty. These re-sponsibilities should be reflected in de-cisions concerning hiring, reappoint-ment, promotion and tenure. The com-mitment to renewal should be considereda significant criterion in the evaluationof CUNY faculty and administrators. TheBoard of Trustees and Chancellor’s officeshould give strong support to higherstandards, both verbally and through re-vised policies.”

“We were encouraged by Chancellor

Goldstein’s and Chairman Badillo’s decisiveactions to begin the revitalization pro-cess,” Latzer sums up, “and we believethe opportunity now exists to establishacademic excellence—in all its aspects—throughout the University. In our view, thefaculty can and should play a constructiverole in reinventing CUNY.”

Membership in CUNYAS, open to all ac-tive and retired CUNY faculty, is $10 peracademic year. For information or copiesof its reports or newsletter, E-mail [email protected] or contact ProfessorDorothy Lang, Department of Business,College of Staten Island, Staten Island,N.Y. 10314 (718-982-2927).

CUNYAS, continued from page 7 Of Witches: The Origin of PC

Q: When was the firstrecorded instance of polit-ical correctness?A: In 1939, in The

Wizard of Oz, when ac-tress Billie Burke, asGlinda, explains to JudyGarland’s Dorothy Galethat “only bad witchesare ugly.” Glinda, ofcourse, is the Good Witch.

10

No fool he. On April 1, Elliott Hur-witt successfully defended his dis-sertation on the great African-

American composer, folklorist, arranger,musician, and entrepreneur W. C. Handy(1873-1958) at the Graduate Center. Itwas sweet, no doubt, but pardon Hurwittand the music scholars on his defensecommittee for thinking of it merely as icingon the cake.

For, the day before, a day-long confer-ence, “W. C. Handy and American Music,”had unfolded, and it was followed in theevening by a concert in the spanking newProshansky Auditorium that rangedthrough “unknown” Handy works, spiritu-als, vocal blues, swingin’ blues, and rags.After it was over, there was no need to

Elebash Endowment Comes in Handy

ask, in the words of one Handy number onthe program, “Who’s That Man?”

In his program notes, Hurwitt callsHandy a “seminal figure in 20th-centuryvernacular music” and describes his musi-cal background as embracing “the rich to-tality of American music in the 19th centu-ry: spirituals, light classics, marches, min-strel song, parlor song, Anglo-Americanfolk music, and more.”

T aking place just blocks from TimesSquare, where Handy set up a publish-

ing house in 1918 and where Handy Broth-ers Music Company remains today, theevents were organized by City College Pro-fessor of Music John Graziano in collabo-ration with the Center’s Ph.D. and D.M.A.Programs in Music. They were funded bythe Center’s Baisley Powell Elebash En-dowment (its debut performance) and theSimon H. Rifkind Center for the Humani-

ties and the Arts at City College.The concert ended with several

numbers performed by the New W. C.Handy Orchestra, made up of somejazz greats and students and facultyfrom the Copland School at QueensCollege and conducted by MauricePeress. Peress struck a nostalgicnote in his program note, recalling,“In my teens I saw and heard ‘the Fa-ther of the Blues’ at Carnegie Hall, atall blind man who played the ‘St. LouisBlues’ on his muted trumpet.”

A poignant personal touch occurred atthe end of the conference, Graziano re-calls, when the venerable jazz hornistWillie Ruff stood up, voiced his pleasure atthe occasion, reminisced about meetingthe great celebrity in the mid-30s when hewas a third-grader, and then said that hebrought greetings from the home town heand Handy shared, Florence, Alabama.

Continued on page 12

Photo, Church Family Papers, Special Collections,University of Memphis Libraries.

Photo, Hurwitt Collection

Hurwitt Collection

The “Yellow Dog Blues” of 1914 was among thefirst to bring Handy big money, after it wasrecorded for Victor by the white bandleader JoeSmith and his trombonist Harry Raderman.Handy (at rear center, with moustache) is seenwith his Memphis blues band in a photoinscribed by him in 1918 to a powerful blackMemphis businessman. Handy is also picturedhere at a formal dinner circa 1940, a few yearsbefore entirely losing his sight.

T he range of topics addressed inbooks by City University facultymembers and graduates has always

been extraordinary. Here is a sampling toprove the point from among titles thathave recently appeared. First, three far-flung novels.

Growing out of a short story that ap-peared in American Fiction in 1998 (JoyceCarol Oates its editor), LaGuardia profes-sor of English Michael Blaine’s first novelThe Desperate Season (Rob WeisbachBooks) has received considerable favor-able attention. Its subject—a horrifyingcase of murderous violencecommitted by ason against hisfamily—certainlytouches a topicalnerve. Based onactual events thatoccurred nearBlaine’s upstate re-treat, the literarythriller was praised inthe London Times as a“tense piece of psy-chopathology.”

Violence of a more sys-tematic kind—that of thecut-throat gambling worldof Las Vegas—is the back-drop for another CUNY nov-elist, Adam Berlin. Head-

lock (Algonquin) is the title, and the herois a wrestler dismissed from college for

turning a match into bloodsport. Singularly lackingin wisdom, Odessa Rosedrops out to Las Vegas.Berlin, who earned hisMFA at Brooklyn Col-lege, is now teachingEnglish at John JayCollege.

Farrar, Straus,and Giroux describesRails Under MyBack, by JefferyRenard Allen,who has been aprofessor of Eng-lish at QueensCollege since1992, as a“brilliantly col-ored, intenselymusical novel”

that follows two cousins, Hatch and Jesus,as they face danger and come to termswith their families’ past. Deploying thecentral image of railroad tracks that carryAfrican-Americans from one form ofbondage or freedom to another, Allen’snovel addresses the African-American ex-perience of exodus and exile in the lasthalf century. Library Journal called it “aliterary tour de force—raw, powerful, andoften poetic.”

Cuban-American relations have beenmuch in the news lately—and much on

the mind of César Ayala, associate profes-sor of Latin American studies at LehmanCollege.

Not Elián but sugar, however, is thefocus of his attention in American SugarKingdom: The Plantation Economy ofthe Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934(University of North Carolina Press). Thestudy attempts to place the history of U.S.colonialism in the context of the history of

plantation agriculture and the businesstactics of the U.S. sugar industry. Saysone specialist in the field, FranciscoScarano, “Ayala weaves a fascinating nar-rative about the making of an internationalsugar plantation complex.”

No fewer than four CUNY authors are onthe title page of an important new socio-

BOOK TALK OF THE CITY

Yetthat same yearFrancis I, to raise funds for hisgovernment, issued the first letters ofpatent in 1559 to establish special lotter-ies. Although forbidden during the reignof Louis XIV, gaming continued even athis court. During Louis’ reign, ironically,two mathematicians, Blaise Pascal andPierre Fermat, invented the calculus ofprobability. Gambling became a passionin 18th-century France, and, not surpris-ingly, it was abolished by the revolution-ary government in 1793. Only in 1901was it finally legalized.

Although legislation restricting gamesof chance was promulgated in 14th-centu-ry England, borough officers were fre-quently chosen by lot and criminals con-demned in like manner. From the 16thcentury on, public lotteries became an ac-cepted way of raising money, their controlpassing from the crown to Parliament acentury later. The early Stuarts encour-aged sports requiring skill, but Puritansfound them offensive because of the gam-bling that accompanied them. Despite in-terdicts, such games as faro, hazard, dice,roulette, baccarat, lotteries, and card-games remained popular.

Not only did lotteries virtually financethe Virginia Company’s endeavors in theNew World, but they were also instrumen-

tal in funding theAmerican War of Inde-pendence. Puritansand Quakers, averse togambling because itbred sloth and decep-tion, believed thatchance was in God’s do-main and should not betoyed with.

Creative artists throughthe centuries have not

only enriched our under-standing of the problemat-ics of gambling, but haveadded to the subject a worldof philosophical and psycho-logical speculations as well.

Unforgettable, for example,is Rabelais’s portrait in Gar-gantua and Pantagruel of JudgeBridoi, who decided his legalcases by dice casting. The play-wright Marivaux gambled withlove and deception in his comedy,The Game of Love and Chance. Aman of learning and the author ofcelebrated memoirs, Casanova sup-ported himself during his travels byspying, expert seductive charms, andgambling. The notion of fatality is in-terwoven with gambling in Pushkin’s

riveting tale, “The Queen of Spades.” In Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in’s The Dream of

the Red Chamber, emphasis is placed ongames of skill played for diversionary pur-poses. In Dickens’s The Old CuriosityShop, Little Nell’s grandfather, an obses-sive gambler, intended to make money forhis ward but loses it instead. StéphaneMallarmé’s poem “A Throw of Dice WillNever Abolish Chance” cosmifies the veryconcept of hazard, while Jean Cocteau’sallegorical novel, Children of the Game,emphasizes the play of irrevocable destinyhovering over some children. AndStephan Zweig’s “The Gambler” is, forsome, a metaphor of his own obessessivesuicidal tendencies.

But perhaps one of the most movingparadigms of gambling—and the placewhere I begin Gambling, Game, and Psy-che—is in the posthumously publishedThoughts of a 17th-century mathematician,scientist, and religious philosopher. Forthere Pascal places his famous wager infavor of the existence of God.

11

ON THE INTOXICATIONS OF CHANCE

A Hunter College ChevalierProbes the Gambler’s Psyche

L ife is a gamble. Exit your front door and you gamble. Staying home is a gambletoo. Think of faulty Christmas tree lights, a light plane falling from the sky, oran armed intruder. Consider the ubiquitous forms of voluntary risk-taking—

online trading, say, or playing the lottery, visiting a casino, betting on a sport con-test—and our willingness to stake something of value on a contingency can almostseem a cultural universal. In her new book Gambling, Game, and Psyche (SUNYPress), Bettina L. Knapp probes the psychology and culture of gamblers from aJungian perspective by focusing on several illuminating literary works in the West-ern and Eastern tradition. Knapp, a prolific professor of Romance Languages atHunter College and the Graduate Center since 1961, ranges widely in chapters de-voted to pertinent works by Pascal, Balzac, Poe, Dostoevsky, the NeapolitanMatilde Serao, Sholom Aleichem, Hesse, Yasunari Kawabata, and Zhang Xinxin.Last year, Knapp—most of whose more than 50 books are on French literary fig-ures—was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Frenchgovernment. Following here is an abbreviated excerpt from Knapp’s introduc-tion, which offers a fascinating thumbnail sketch of the history of “humanity’snever-ending quest to defy destiny.”

Games of chance and of skill havealways existed. The casting ofdice, pebbles, knucklebones, and

sticks or the shooting of arrows have allserved as signs and omens of divine pur-pose. Seers, shamans, medicine men, andoracles were called upon to interpretmeanings or predict future events.

So significant were the prognosticationsof dice-oracles that a set of questions andanswers, each connected to a specificthrow of the dice, were carved on the innerside of the gateway to a mountain necropo-lis at Termessus, in what is now Turkey.Here is one example:

Kronos the Child EaterThree fours and two sixes. This is the

god’s advice:Stay at home and go not elsewhereLest the destructive Beast and

avenging Fury come upon you;For I see that the business is neither

safe nor secure.

Dice (Latin datum, what destiny dic-tates), used for thousands of years of gam-bling, have also been associated with reli-gion, ethics, and law.

The word play (German pflegen, fromOld English plegen and Old Frisian plega,to vouch or stand for, to take a risk, to ex-pose oneself to danger) implies not onlyhonor, struggle, and judgmental qualities,but also divine will, the power behindeverything, as John Huizenga explained inhis classic study, Homo Ludens.

Gambling and dice in ancient Japanwere associated with sacred Shinto ritual.The diviner, a priest, had to cleanse hisbody, withdraw into a sanctuary, close hiseyes, suspend his breathing, and finallyconcentrate on requesting the help of su-pernatural powers. Buddhists also useddice casting to search for philosophicalguidance from Buddha or to fulfill a vow.

In the Bhagavad-Gita (Sanskrit for “Songof God”) and part of the Mahabharata,

Lord Krishna, a creative power, is de-scribed as follows: “I am the game of dice.I am the self seated in the heart of beings.I am the beginning and the middle and theend of all beings.” In the Yajur-Veda dicewere identified with the live coals of Agni,the Fire God, who “throws down the dice. . .striving with [the Sun God] Surya’s rays forthe middlemost place among brethren.”

The casting of a lot (from the Teutonicroot hleut, referring to the pebble used incasting) was another form of gambling that

both encompassed the notion ofdestiny and disclosed divinejudgments. Moses was in-formed by God that the land ofthe Hebrews would be dividedaccording to lot (Numbers); Saul waselected king by lot (1 Samuel); and we aretold in Proverbs that lots are an indica-tion of divine will: “The lot is cast into thelap; but the whole disposing thereof is ofthe Lord.”

The casting of lots was popular in an-cient Greece as well. Did not the Godscast lots to divide the universe, Zeus ac-quiring the sky? Had not Zeus, in the Iliad,used a sacred balance to firm his decisionas to whether the Trojans or Greeks wouldwin their war? Indeed, Sophocles attrib-uted the invention of dice to Palamedes, aGreek, who taught the game to his coun-trymen to relieve the boredom of the 10-year siege of Troy.

Patrician Romans, however, consideredpublic gaming shameful. Still, perfor-mances at the Circus Maximus attractedgamblers of all types. Juvenal advised thatif one really intended to indulge in bettingat the gambling table, it was wiser to leaveone’s purse at home. According to Sueto-nius, the Emperors Augustus, Nero, andClaudius were mesmerized by dicing, thelast having written a book on the subject.Caligula was known to have cheated atgambling; Domitian to have enjoyed it;Commodus to have had special rooms setapart for it. Horace warned against it, andTacitus claimed that Germanic tribesmenwere passionate gamblers, losing materialpossessions and selling themselves intoslavery in consequence.

T hough permitted in the Koran, thecasting of lots was forbidden to lay-

men, and even priests and judges couldavail themselves of this method as a lastresort. The Koran warns, “Satan seekethonly to cast among you enmity and hatredby means of strong drink and games ofchance, and to turn you from remem-brance of Allah.”

The special dicing schools (scholae de-ciorum) and guilds of medieval France notonly trained knights in the art of gambling,but helped them to uphold its standards aswell. Countermovements following theCouncil of Mayence in the 9th century mili-tated to outlaw gambling, and John Calvin,convinced that everything was predeter-mined by God, condemned the notion ofchance in his Institutes of the ChristianReligion of 1559.

A s part of their course work for a class on “The American Century,” the stu-dents of Dr. Sally Webster, professor of modern and contemporary art at

Lehman College and the Graduate Center, were required to make several visits tothe Whitney Museum, especially during its Biennial.

Webster thought: why not write to the Whitney’s director, Maxwell Anderson,to ask if admission fees might be waived for them?

Delighted “to hear that this and other Whitney exhibitions have been of interestand service” in Webster’s classes, Anderson responded in a January letter with aneven better idea. “It gives me great pleasure,” he continued, “to extend herewithto all students enrolled in a City University of New York college complimentary ad-mission to the Whitney Museum of American Art through December 2000.”

When Webster passed the good news on, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has-tened to thank Anderson for his “splendid and generous gift” of access “to one ofour nation’s most treasured cultural institutions.” He also expressed the hopethat this new CUNY-student perk would be widely publicized and enjoyed.

Freedom of the Whitney for All CUNY Students

CorrectionIn the Winter Issue, the website for theCUNY Faculty Development Programwas incorrectly given; it is

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cfd

Board of TrusteesThe City University

of New YorkHerman Badillo

Chairman

Benno C. Schmidt Jr.Vice-Chairman

Satish K. BabbarJohn J. Calandra

Kenneth CookMichael C. CrimminsAlfred B. Curtis, Jr.Ronald J. MarinoRandy M. Mastro

John MorningKathleen M. Pesile

George J. RiosNilda Soto Ruiz

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld

Bernard SohmerChairperson, University Faculty Senate

Mizanoor BiswasChairperson, University Student Senate

Jay Hershenson Vice Chancellor for University Relations

Editor: Gary Schmidgall

Managing Editor:Rita Rodin

Letters or suggestions forfuture articles on topics ofgeneral interest to theCUNY community should beaddressed to

CUNY Matters535 E. 80th St., 7th FloorNew York, NY 10021

CUNY Matters is availableon the CUNY home page athttp://www.cuny.edu.

The Office of University RelationsThe City University of New York535 E. 80th St.New York, NY 10021

12

Archives, continued from page 3Book Talk, continued from page 10

guardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu)contains more than 20,000 photos, whichare categorized by collection and search-able by year, place, subject, or person.The site also offers an index to all thecollections.

Former Mayor Abe Beame was BMOC last March in every sense but the literal one onMarch 22, when the enthusiastic supporter of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives—

his own papers are housed there—came to celebrate his 94th birthday. Speaking onthe happy occasion, Chancellor Goldstein said, “Abe Beame is a stellar example ofhow CUNY empowers all New Yorkers to achieve their dreams, and to contribute to ourcity and our society.” He was referring to the fact that the City’s 104th Mayor, who wasraised on the Lower East Side, graduated with honors from “City College downtown”(later Baruch College). Present for the occasion were, from left, Trustees Chairman Her-man Badillo, former Mayor David Dinkins, Queens Borough President Claire Shulman,City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Goldstein, LaGuardia’s Interim President RobertaMatthews, and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden. Photo, Randy Fader-Smith.

Big Man on LaGuardia Campus for his 94th logical study of part-time work in theAmerican business landscape. The Part-Time Paradox: Time Norms, Profession-al Life, Family and Gender (Routledge)is authored by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein,Bonnie Oglensky, Robert Sauté (allbased at the Graduate Center), and Car-roll Seron (Baruch).

The study focuses entirely on the legalprofession and explores the various di-mensions of the part-time work solution ata time when flex-time work arrangementsare steadily increasing. Among the topicsaddressed: “Cultural Perspectives on Part-Time Work,” “Career Issues and Prob-lems,” and “The Family and Part-TimeWork.” Said one reviewer, Richard Abel,author of American Lawyers, “Lawyersnow rival medical interns and residents inworkaholism (though at least they kill onlythemselves). This book...shows thatlawyers can...effectively serve employersand clients—as well as themselves andtheir families.”

Several thousand new and recentCUNY graduates were greeted by127 employers at the University’s

Big Apple Job Fair on April 6. This wasthe largest number of employer partici-pants in the 12-year history of the JobFair, which took place at the Jacob K.Javitz Convention Center.

Breakfast keynote speaker for theevent was Joseph J. Grano Jr., Presi-dent of PaineWebber Incorporated, theleading full-service security firm. Hehighlighted the aggressive recruitmentstrategies that are intensifying in thebooming economy, observing of his firmthat “we compete with no fewer than 10major firms, and in today’s society the

competition is not about market sharebut about people and growth.”

A member of the CUNY Business Lead-ership Council and holder of an honoraryDoctor of Humane Letters from QueensCollege, Grano outlined some of the ef-forts of PaineWebber (and doubtless manyother major corporations) to respond tothe heated job market, including the es-tablishment of a “diversity council” thatreports directly to him—Grano noting that“three of every five of tomorrow’s replace-ment employees are today’s minorities.”He also noted that at PaineWebber“women already constitute 46% of ourlabor force. . .The glass ceiling is begin-ning to crumble.”

The last of 10 specific recommendationsGrano left his audience with was to urgethat “business leaders acknowledge theimportance of our City University systemby interviewing and hiring its graduatesand by demanding of our government offi-cials the competitive requirement of hav-ing the best college and university systemin the country. The best city in the worldneeds the best academic foundation if it isto remain the best.”

Among the first-time participants at theFair, which is administered by the Office ofStudent Affairs and the CUNY CareerCounseling and Placement Association,were ChaseMellon, ComScan, Keyspan En-ergy, LSG Sky Chefs, Tiffany & Co., andUnited Healthcare of New York.

PaineWebber President Grano Sounds Reveille at Job Fair

At left, PaineWebber President Joseph Granoduring his kick-off speech at the 12th annualCUNY Job Fair. Above at left, Morgan Stanley'srepresentative Ed Vladich, greets DwayneBarrett, a frequent Dean's Listee at YorkCollege until he graduated in 1997 with a B.S.in Accounting.Photos, Andre Beckles.

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