Q&A
Discussion on CUNY complaint process and delays
3:51:00
·
3 min
Council Member Vernikov questions Ilya Bratman about complaints filed through CUNY's portal and the delays in addressing them. Bratman describes long wait times for responses, sometimes months, and a lack of action on complaints.
- Many complaints filed over the past two years, with significant delays in responses
- Example given of complaints filed in December/January not addressed until August
- Reasons given for delays include being overwhelmed and having too many complaints
- Bratman expresses frustration with the system's ineffectiveness and loss of student trust
Inna Vernikov
3:51:00
Mister Bratman, can you talk a little bit about the complaints you filed via the portal?
Ilya Bratman
3:51:07
Absolutely.
3:51:09
Thank you, council member Vernicoff.
3:51:11
So we filed in the past 2 years, many dozens of complaints, and the process obviously has been incredibly delayed.
3:51:20
Often, we do not hear from the DEI's office, that's who investigates these complaints on our campuses, for many months.
3:51:29
The example would say at City College where we filed a couple dozen complaints last December, January, after October 7th, after our initial meeting, we didn't hear from them again till August about any of the adjudication or any of the results from our complaints just to hear that they found none of our complaints measurable to be, to be adjudicated.
3:51:52
The complaint that, Aidan spoke about that we filed on on September 3rd, it's been 70, 80 days, and there has been no adjudication towards that even though as Kayla Aaron said, we have, submitted the names to both the college and, the DA's office of the actual individuals who threatened us at the at the restaurant.
3:52:15
And these students are still walking around on campus, and we see them every day, without any repercussions.
3:52:21
So they're all of the of our campuses deal with the same problem.
3:52:25
When we say to them, why is it taking you so long?
3:52:28
The answer is we're overwhelmed.
3:52:29
There's too many complaints and we're not able to adjudicate it in time.
3:52:33
Even though they themselves have a 60 day timeline for which in which they have to have completed their response and have adjudicated their, the incident.
Inna Vernikov
3:52:43
So how long does it take for them to even respond if they do?
Ilya Bratman
3:52:47
Depends on the campus.
3:52:49
Sometimes, for many months, at Bardough College, we had a very long delay for last year as as we had so many complaints, you know, hundreds filed by our students and myself, and so they had very deep delays.
3:53:03
I only heard from the d DEI office in June when when we sat together, and we actually went over every complaint that I filed throughout the year at once, which was so ridiculous because the the complaints were filed throughout the year, and we only were able to sit together in June to discuss them.
Inna Vernikov
3:53:21
Do you thank you.
3:53:22
Do you have any idea why that's happening, why there's such a delay?
Ilya Bratman
3:53:26
We can only claim I can only claim incompetence, and then a level of, overwhelming nature of their work.
3:53:34
I could I could agree maybe that they are overwhelmed, but that's not a problem of mine.
3:53:39
And so if they are not able to, deal with our complaints in a timely manner, then they should just acknowledge that.
3:53:46
And then the the whole portal doesn't seem to work and has lost the the trust of the students.
3:53:53
A student would not now file a complaint if they know that nothing's gonna happen and that no one is gonna even get back to them in 4 months.
Inna Vernikov
3:54:01
Thank you.
3:54:01
Can you talk a little bit about your interactions with the chief diversity officers?
