GUEST OPINION
By Emily Wilson
On the first day of the spring semester at City College of San Francisco (CCSF)—the nation’s largest community college—some of the school’s neediest students were told they don’t count.
On Jan. 12, teachers gathered at the Civic Center campus, which sits in the shadow of City Hall. But rather than teaching classes in English as a Second Language, literacy and GED as planned, they came to let students know that the campus was temporarily closed and classes would be shifted to a much smaller basement site in two weeks.
The announcement was unexpected, and many of the students—being beginning English speakers from all over the world—had no idea what was going on. Some were in tears. Some went directly over to the new site at 33 Gough Street, not understanding that the classes there were scheduled to begin in February.
Teachers had found out about the move just three days earlier—at a meeting when Chancellor Arthur Tyler told them the campus would be shut down temporarily for seismic repairs. Diane Wallis, a teacher at the campus, said she and her colleagues felt blindsided and betrayed—especially since an architectural firm had given the administration its report back in August. Tyler and CCSF spokesman Jeff Hamilton said they didn’t want to make an announcement until they had a new location.
Working at a school under this sort of threat is demoralizing —the constant explaining that CCSF is open and that the accreditors found nothing wrong academically; losing thousands of students meaning the loss of more funds; the elected Board of Trustees replaced with a “special” trustee, and the frustration that the accreditation commission members seem to be making up things as they go along, accountable to no one.
So maybe the disruptive closure of the Civic Center campus—the administration not negotiating with the union as required, and treating faculty as an obstacle rather than a partner—shouldn’t be surprising. But it is. It’s appalling. If the building is that unsafe, and they knew in August, why were classes held there in the fall semester? Why the move right now?
Then there is the way students at this campus—many of them poor and on the margins—are being treated. The site they are being moved to has inadequate space and there are (unconfirmed) accounts of mold. Teachers have been telling them, “You’re important, you matter, education is the way out and up.” This unexpected move gives the opposite message—it shoves them into a basement.
Tim Killikelly, president of the faculty union, AFT 2121, thinks this sort of non-transparent administrative decision, would not be happening if the Board of Trustees was still in power and the administration was accountable to someone. AFT 2121 held a rally Friday Jan. 16 at the Civic Center campus and City Hall, where they held ESL lessons on democracy, with a visit from Supervisor David Campos.
Democracy should be a key part of how CCSF operates.
Responding to actor Tom Hanks’ recent op-ed in The New York Times where he wrote about getting his start at Hayward’s Chabot College, and offered support for Obama’s proposal to expand free community college, Chabot President Susan Sperling called two-year schools “democracy’s colleges” that offer opportunity for everyone.
So let’s see some democracy and opportunity for all at CCSF. In his morning address at an all-school meeting, the day he told those at the Civic Center campus he was closing it down, Tyler said Martin Luther King inspired him. That’s the Martin Luther King who talked about poverty being one of our most urgent issues, and how we “must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ of the world.”
Closing, even temporarily, a campus that serves mostly poor students is really, really far from going all out to bridge the economic gulf. If we genuinely believe in the transformative power of education, let’s show that by making education as accessible and welcoming as possible.
Emily Wilson teaches in the Transitional Studies Department at CCSF. This commentary was first published on New America Media on Jan. 20.