Queens Senator Stavisky calls for CUNY to cancel tuition hike

State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky chairs the Senate’s Higher Education Committee. Eagle file photo by Victoria Merlino

By Victoria Merlino

The chair of the state senate’s Higher Education Committee has urged CUNY officials to cancel a $200 tuition increase and a new $120 mental health and wellness fee due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a letter to the CUNY Board of Trustees, Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky requested that the public school system rescind the $320 increase — a rate hike fiercely opposed by some students when it passed in December 2019. 

Stavisky said CUNY must better support students whose financial situation and emotional health have been affected by the coronavirus and related shutdown.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had multiple negative impacts on CUNY’s student body, exacerbating and magnifying inequalities that existed prior to the current pandemic,” Stavisky wrote. “It is important that the CUNY system does what it can in order to mitigate the fiscal, social and psychological impacts on its system without creating new obstacles for students as they seek to complete their education.”

CUNY’s university system features 25 campuses, including five in Queens, and serves nearly 275,000 students across New York City, according to its most recent enrollment data. CUNY bills itself as a means of upward economic mobility in the city, with many of its students coming from low-income households. 

“If the Board of Trustees increases tuition this year, hundreds if not thousands of students will not be able to attend school in the fall,” Timothy Hunter, chair of CUNY’s student-led University Student Senate, said in a statement. “The Governor and the Board of Trustees need to give the students a break and not increase the cost of public higher education this year."

CUNY classes moved completely online starting in March, due to the threat of COVID-19.