Francisco Curiel, one of the co-authors
Queens College is a special place. As one of the country's most culturally diverse campuses—we serve men and women from more than 150 countries—the college seeks to "prepare students to become leading citizens of an increasingly global society," as our mission statement notes. We pride ourselves on being accessible and offering a rigorous education. In keeping with our motto—"We learn so that we can serve"—we provide an education that will enable our graduates to better serve their communities and the needs of our beloved New York State.
We strive to make Queens College as accessible as possible to all New Yorkers who meet our high admissions criteria. But there is a major roadblock confronting many DREAMers (undocumented immigrant students). The roadblock is that, because of their status, DREAMers are ineligible for financial aid.
All of New York State's colleges and universities would benefit from the passing of the DREAM Act. Its passage would open up the state's Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to DREAMers who meet TAP's eligibility criteria. We would also be better able to achieve our goal of educating all New Yorkers and putting them on the path to high-skilled employment.
There are three main reasons why the DREAM Act should be passed immediately. First, the DREAM Act would open the doors of educational opportunity to thousands of students who otherwise would be unable to earn a college degree. This would be life changing for these young people and their families. The DREAM Act would also benefit immigrant youth who already are on campus. One of us (Mr. Curiel) is an undocumented youth and a Queens College student who maintains good grades and participates in campus life. However, he has no access to state-funded financial aid, which means significant financial strain on his family, as it does on thousands of other New York families.
Second, the DREAM Act could further advance academic excellence on our campuses. Numerous studies show that all students benefit when they are part of a diverse student body. Queens College students benefit from the rich exchange of ideas and experience that occurs in our classrooms, cafeterias, and common spaces among students from different backgrounds—whether those be national origin, race, culture, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Having more DREAMers on our campuses would further invigorate classroom discussions and campus life, benefiting DREAMers and non-DREAMers alike. It could also help DREAMers feel more comfortable on campus by eliminating the arbitrary barrier that immigration status can sometimes impose.
And third, the DREAM Act would enable us to fulfill our mission of educating all New Yorkers and developing a skilled workforce grounded in a liberal arts and science education. In today's global economy, it is essential that we develop an educated workforce to keep New York State ahead of its competition. To do this, we must ensure that every qualified young person who wants to go to college can do so.
Queens College President Matos Rodriguez
A report by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) found in 2014 that "the short-term costs of extending financial assistance to undocumented students would be outweighed by the long-term economic benefits." Having more DREAMers in our colleges would significantly increase the ranks of high-skilled workers contributing to our state economy. It would also strengthen our state's tax base, as the OSC found that "a person earning a bachelor's degree would pay more than $60,000 in additional State taxes, compared with a maximum TAP award of $20,000."
In short, the DREAM Act makes sense on three fronts: expanding educational access to New York's youth, enriching our campus life, and benefiting our state economically and socially.
The only challenge now is the willingness to act. By passing the DREAM Act, New York State would be standing up for its talented immigrant youth. It also would be standing up for the continued excellence and vibrancy of our higher education institutions. These are goals we can all support.
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by Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and Francisco Curiel. Matos Rodríguez is the President of Queens College; Curiel is a Queens College student and a Youth Power Project member of Make the Road New York.
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The Bushwick Inlet (photo: Janos Marton)
I think there is zero chance of developers walking away from this waterfront. Look at this view! This is the best view in New York City, maybe in the whole world. You've got the entire Manhattan skyline right in front of you. - Council Member David Yassky (Williamsburg/Greenpoint), 2005
In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, luxury condos have been popping up like mushrooms after the rain. Yet ten years after North Brooklyn was promised a 28-acre park on the East River, that park's prospects seem as remote as ever, in danger of slipping away for good. Recently, neighborhood groups have revived the clamor for Bushwick Inlet Park. At stake is not only greenspace for a community that desperately needs it, but the fundamental legitimacy of the city's land use policy. In 2005, Williamsburg/Greenpoint underwent an enormous rezoning, allowing today's luxury buildings. That rezoning came with a promise from the city, and if the city cannot deliver Bushwick Inlet Park, New Yorkers should not trust the city when it comes to rezone their neighborhoods.
Some New Yorkers think of Williamsburg as a gentrified monolith, but it is full of working class communities that have been there for decades: Polish and Italian on the North Side, Puerto-Rican, Dominican and Hasidic on the South Side. These cultural groups have clashed a great deal over the years, but little has brought them together like waterfront development, long blocked off to all of them by heavy industry.
Activists began organizing around waterfront development in the mid 90s, collaborating on Brooklyn Community Board 1's comprehensive 197-A Plan for the waterfront. A 197-A Plan is the most powerful (though still non-binding) tool under the City Charter for neighborhoods to chart their own long-term development, and this plan recommended large open spaces, public access to the waterfront, mixed use development along Kent Avenue, and a strong commitment to affordable housing. The plan was approved by the City Planning Commission in 2001 and City Council in 2002.
Yet in 2005, when Mayor Bloomberg went all in on his Olympic bid and needed the Williamsburg waterfront for beach volleyball, his administration tossed the 197-A plan in a recycling bin and put forward a whole new rezoning vision for the waterfront rooted in luxury development. The community fought that proposal with everything they had. Elected officials opposed it. People rallied at City Hall. Guerilla activists in costume raised awareness. Articles were written. Forums were held. Multiethnic alliances were forged. TV on the Radio played a show in support of neighborhood activists! You couldn't have asked for better democracy in action.
When modifications were made to the rezoning proposal, some remained upset, but others admitted that the affordable housing, public park and economic development opportunities made the deal a fair one. City Council Deputy Leader Brad Lander, then with the Pratt Center, raved, "The communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint win because today there is a guarantee of new and permanently affordable housing, instead of a virtual guarantee that new development would price residents out of their homes."
The revised 2005 rezoning, which featured 54 acres of new parkland, including a 28-acre park at the Bushwick Inlet, passed overwhelmingly. To help visualize the promised park, it would be 80% the size of McCarren Park, flank the Bushwick Inlet, and include a beach and boating. North Brooklyn is currently 5% parkland, a third of the city average, is nowhere near a major park, and has one of the lowest open space ratios in the city. If luxury condos were going to change the neighborhood forever, at least the neighborhood would be getting something it needed in return.
The 2005 deal wasn't without its critics, specifically because of concerns that promises to the public wouldn't be delivered. Kimberly Miller from the Municipal Arts Society observed that Jersey City's recent waterfront rezoning had similarly made promises based on private development that never came to fruition. The legendary Jane Jacobs predicted "with utter confidence" that the 2005 plan "will maybe enrich a few heedless and ignorant developers, but at the cost of an ugly and intractable mistake." (Like one developer who built 4,000 waterfront condos after contributing heavily to NY2012, the Bloomberg committee behind NYC's attempt to win the Olympics.)
There's a lot more to this story:
visit Janos.NYC to continue reading
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by Janos Marton for Gotham Gazette and Janos.NYC
@janosmarton
Mayor de Blasio at Rikers (photo: @MonicaCKlein)
After three years of volunteer service, I recently stepped down from the New York City Board of Correction, which is responsible for ensuring that all city jails, including Rikers Island, meet certain minimum standards regulating the care of inmates.
It wasn't the happiest experience I've ever had. While I was on the Board of Correction, Rikers Island became a topic of intense local and national concern. Thanks in no small part to intrepid reporting by Graham Rayman, Jake Pearson, Michael Winerip, Michael Schwirtz and others, there is now widespread agreement that Rikers Island requires significant reform.
One of the statistics we monitored at the Board of Correction is the use of force by correction officers. While I served on the Board, there were a number of horrific incidents where inmates were injured. In several cases, inmates died. Even though I have worked in criminal justice for more than 20 years, I found these incidents shocking and appalling.
On my tours of Rikers Island, I had the chance to meet numerous correction officers. I always sized them up, looking for signs of cruelty. To be honest, what I found more often were signs of compassion. Many (but by no means all) of the correction officers I met expressed real pride in their jobs and real concern for the inmates in their charge. Even in the most horrible of settings – and make no mistake, the jails on Rikers Island are horrible places to be – these officers were capable of small acts of kindness and understanding.
How do we square this reality with The New York Times reports of "medieval levels of violence" meted out with "startling ferocity" by guards at Rikers? Or to ask the question another way, how do we encourage more kindness and less brutality by correction officers?
I have come to the conclusion that the answer is not necessarily more rules or more scrutiny.
In truth, there is no shortage of oversight of Rikers. In addition to the New York City Board of Correction, there is the New York State Commission of Correction, the New York City Council, the media, the courts, and the U.S. Attorney's Office. And this doesn't even begin to list the advocacy groups that keep tabs on what happens on the Island.
Despite all of this, a recent Times headline reported a hard truth: "Even as Many Eyes Watch, Brutality at Rikers Island Persists."
There is an old business adage that "culture eats strategy for breakfast." I fear that the current approach to change on Rikers Island leaves the "deep-seated culture of violence" identified by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara mostly untouched.
Any effort to change the culture on Rikers must reckon with the deteriorating physical plant, which is beyond antiquated. Even with the reductions in volume that we have seen over the past 20 years, there are still too many people on Rikers – the daily headcount is typically around 10,000 inmates. It is exceedingly difficult to manage this many people humanely in facilities that are falling apart. As the MacArthur Foundation and others have argued, we must explore ways to reduce the number of people in jail, particularly those who are detained pre-trial. And, as former NYC Correction Commissioner Marty Horn has said, we should be looking at options to close Rikers Island and create smaller, county-based facilities with modern amenities (like air conditioning).
Even as we attempt to reduce head counts and improve the physical environment, we should also be having an honest conversation about discretion. A generation ago in the seminal book Street-Level Bureaucracy, Michael Lipsky pointed out that the exercise of discretion is a critical dimension of the daily life of frontline government workers, be they police officers, social workers, teachers, or correction officers.
While we can and should develop baseline standards for correction officers, the truth is that it is impossible to create protocols for every situation that they will experience on the job – no matter how hard we try, there will always be room for officers to exercise discretion, for good or for ill.
Given this reality, we must work harder to create a clearer sense of mission at the Department of Correction. Rules cannot do this. As professor Mark Kleiman (channeling the spirit of James Q. Wilson) has written: "Organizations prize autonomy...Deprivation of autonomy tends to worsen morale and thus performance. The impulse to over-regulate the public sector is a destructive impulse."
In visiting Rikers Island, I never once felt I was in a place of "correction," where the dominant philosophy was one of rehabilitation. To change this will require a significant investment of energy, money, and time. This means taking unglamourous steps that may not yield dividends for years to come, including increasing the salaries of corrections officers, changing the union dynamic, raising hiring standards, investing in research to help promote a learning culture, and giving correction officers a meaningful voice in reform plans as a means of increasing their buy-in.
While many demand immediate change, the reality is that Mayor de Blasio inherited problems on Rikers Island that were decades in the making. We should be realistic about what his administration can accomplish in the short term – and encourage the formulation of a long-term plan that truly changes the culture of the institution.
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Greg Berman is the Director of the Center for Court Innovation and author of Reducing Crime, Reducing Incarceration: Essays on Criminal Justice Innovation (Quid Pro Books).
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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.