We CUNY faculty (adjuncts, graduate teaching fellows, tenure-track, and tenured) pledge to withhold our Spring 2020 grades in protest of the massive wave of layoffs and the June tuition hike and wellness fee proposed by CUNY management. The purpose of this pledge is to build an action capable of forcing the CUNY administration to reverse its policy of preemptive layoffs and austerity, and to negotiate with the union in order to secure every single job at the university for the Fall 2020 semester. We commit to sharing this pledge with colleagues in our departments and programs, across all disciplines, to garner the broad participation needed for this action to succeed.

PLEDGE ACTIONS:
* All of us pledge to wait to submit grades UNTIL May 28, CUNY’s deadline date at most colleges for accepting S20 grades.
* If we reach a 70% CUNY faculty pledge support by May 27, we will withhold our Spring 2020 grades AFTER the respective grade submission deadlines on our campuses, as well as after May 29, the date by which teaching adjunct faculty receive their reappointment or non-reappointment letters via email.

          We anticipate that withholding grades will lead the administration to pit us against the students and the staff in the campuses’ Registrar—but students, faculty, and staff have much to gain in common. We will communicate the reasons for this action with our students to garner their trust and support, and explain that this action is also in their interests as the adjuncts’ mass layoff implies fewer classes and choices for them, larger class sizes, and a general worsening of our teaching and their learning conditions. We will also build dialogue with the campuses’ Registrar staff about this action, in order to maintain transparent communication with our HEO co-workers, and to not jeopardize our students’ graduation, scholarships, or visa status.

          We don’t take this action lightly, but we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that is exacerbated by Governor Cuomo making drastic cuts to CUNY and SUNY. We must protect our livelihoods and our university. If a wave of adjuncts’ classes are terminated this Fall, many of us would lose our healthcare, and we would be forced to search for other job opportunities in a health/economic crisis that has left at least 36 million people unemployed nationwide. Cuts to adjunct-taught courses will negatively affect tenure-track/tenured faculty, and others whose employment is not immediately threatened as well, resulting in larger class sizes and teaching loads.

          This massive layoff could gut the bargaining power of our union, the Professional Staff Congress, for years to come. By fighting these cuts now, we demonstrate that it is the educators and staff who make up CUNY and our union, the Professional Staff Congress, who will re-imagine public education in New York City after the pandemic.

This Grade Action Pledge was launched by Rank and File Action (RAFA). Contact us at RAFA.CUNY@gmail.com, Facebook.com/RankandFileAction, Instagram.com/RankandFileAction, Twitter.com/RanknFileAction.

***All names will be kept confidential***