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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Akkeem Polack, Vice Chair for Legislative Affairs of University Student Senate at CUNY
1:32:42
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152 sec
Akkeem Polack, representing the University Student Senate at CUNY, testified about the need for free MetroCards for all CUNY students and addressed other financial barriers to higher education. He emphasized that the student organization has collected data and signatures to support their initiatives, contrary to CUNY's claim of lacking numbers.
- Polack criticized the Fair Fares program as insufficient, pushing for full access to transportation rather than half-measures.
- He highlighted the high costs of textbooks as another significant financial barrier for students.
- The testimony underscored the importance of addressing non-tuition expenses like transportation and course materials to support student success.
Akkeem Polack
1:32:42
Alright.
1:32:43
Hello.
1:32:43
Good day everyone.
1:32:44
I'm Akim Polak.
1:32:45
I'm the vice chair for legislative affairs for the University Student Senate where we represent over two hundred and forty five two hundred and forty five thousand CUNY students.
1:32:53
I just want to make some clarifications before I start, starting with the fact that CUNY made the comment that they don't have the numbers.
1:33:00
Well we do.
1:33:01
We have shared this for over a year, we have all the numbers surrounding the pilot program, the groups, the funding attached that would be necessary, as well as we've heard arguments about fair fares and we we push back on that saying that we we believe that we want full access, not half the access.
1:33:24
This this this hearing is about removing financial barriers, not half of a barrier and that's what we're pushing for.
1:33:31
So we we considered all of that as well and we have petitions.
1:33:35
We have the numbers we had and we started a petition in February when we went down to the caucus.
1:33:42
We have over 5,000 students who signed on, we went back to Somos, we had a lot of students who stopped by and signed up for more updates, that's why it was included in the people's budget to fund free metric cards for all CUNY students.
1:33:56
So we have the numbers and CUNY definitely they can meet with us, and we meet with them.
1:34:01
But just continuing, I reviewed the report from the center of urban future and it was concerning a lot of things such as non tuition expenses like premature cards, textbooks and other barriers such as childcare that a member mentioned.
1:34:15
I suspect that everyone understands and is not surprised by the findings and the rising cost of living functions as a barrier to higher education.
1:34:25
And at the top of that list, it's transportation.
1:34:27
We are students, we we definitely want to get to class, we want to get to our internships, we want to support our families and a free metro card or OmniCard is just as important.
1:34:40
And we added other things like open educational resources such as textbooks.
1:34:44
Textbooks is a very expensive thing and if I could just finish on that note, just last week alone I have to pay $200 to do homework from a textbook because you have unique codes and I will never use these textbooks ever again for this for future semesters, but this just shows you what we have to go through when we're trying to fund our lifestyle, we're trying to finish this degree.
1:35:09
So textbooks, free metro cards, we're all for it and we have the numbers.
1:35:13
Thank you.