CUNY Closes Amid Student Outrage Over Coronavirus Handling

NEW YORK CITY — CUNY will close its campuses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic after outraged students argued staying open forced them to choose between endangering their families or their grades.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday the City University of New York would transition to online learning on March 19, even as Mayor Bill de Blasio took to MSNBC to argue that New York City's public school system should remain open.

"This will help us reduce density and reduce the spread of this virus," Cuomo tweeted about 2:15 p.m., less than an hour after de Blasio called closing schools en masse "a mistake."

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"If a school has a problem, close it briefly," the Mayor said. "The rest of the schools can continue on."

All CUNY schools will have a five-day recess from March 12 until 18 with no classes on campus as faculty prepare to conduct the rest of the semester long distance, CUNY announced on Twitter.

"As always, the health and safety of the University community remains our top priority," CUNY officials wrote on Twitter. "These measures allows CUNY to continue serving its students while alleviating pressure on our areas during this public health threat."

The final decision to close CUNY campuses came as outrage boiled among the students who said holding classes put their family members at risk.

Maggie McGuire, a CUNY Queens College sophomore, said she missed class at CUNY Queens College Wednesday morning because her mom has been diagnosed with cancer.

"I’m absolutely terrified that I will carry it home to my mother," McGuire told Patch. "What concerns me the most is my family at home."

The CUNY campuses are just the most recent schools across New York City to close in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with 46 novel coronavirus cases confirmed in New York City on Wednesday morning.

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's urging New Yorkers to avoid crowded subways, several CUNY students received emails from teachers warning them absences would not be excused.

One CUNY student, who asked not to be named, shared emails with Patch from a Hunter College professor warning students they needed special permission from the school's Office of AccessAbility.

"Anyone without official permission will be marked absent," the email reads. "This is coming from the top."

The Long Island student told her professor she was afraid to face more than two hours commuting on the LIRR and received a short reply.

"I understand your concern," the professor wrote. "But I am not at liberty to alter the requirements for this class until CUNY/Hunter makes changes to the policies."

The Hunter student felt the decision not to cancel classes forced her to endanger her health, she wrote in an email.

"[CUNY] does not care for its citizens who are low income and mostly are people of color," she wrote. "I am very scared of putting myself at risk."

Additional pressure to attend class came with the timing of the novel coronavirus outbreak, said Stefannie, a Bronx Community College student.

"Some students feel obligated to go because midterms are coming and our grades could be penalize [sic] for it," Stefannie, a mother of two, told Patch in an email. "Emotionally and mentally this has taken a great toll on me."

Bronx Community College students received emails on March 5 and March 6 alerting them that a student and professor had contact with the New Rochelle attorney at the center of the nation's largest cluster of COVID-19 cases, two students told Patch.

Unlike Yeshiva University and New York Law School — two New York City schools that reported a connection to the New Rochelle lawyer — the Bronx campus did not close, one student said.

According to McGuire, some teachers opted to shun school policy by canceling classes and transition to remote, online learning.

"Technically they are not allowed to," McGuire told Patch. " But those who did definitely put the health and safety of themselves & their students first."

CUNY's response thus far has been to close temporarily close the John Jay College of Criminal Justice after one student tested positive for COVID-19, to summon home students studying abroad in high-risk regions and to assemble a Coronavirus Task Force.

The task force, led by Executive Vice Chancellor Hector Batista, will advice and direct CUNY's 25 CUNY campuses on how to respond to the outbreak.

Neither the task force nor the CUNY task force immediately responded to Patch's request for comment.

While individual New York City campuses closed — and school systems in Italy and Japan — health and city officials have argued closing schools would do little to combat the outbreak.

Johns Hopkins University scholar Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo penned a New York Times op-ed in which she argued closing schools could make it more difficult to combat novel coronavirus.

"For true effectiveness, schools need to close before even 1 percent of the population is infected and they need to stay closed until the epidemic is over, which could mean months," wrote Nuzzo.

"Child care programs will likely close too and working parents may have to stay home to watch their children. Health care and critical infrastructure workers would not be able to do their jobs for the same reason."

Yet McGuire said nothing was more important than protecting her mother and her sickly grandmother who lives with them.

"I see a lot of tweets from rude people shouting and accusing us of just having an excuse to stay home," McGuire said.

"That could be the case for some, but for me, I’m just trying to protect my family."