Electeds and students push for Hunter College High
School entrance exam to be suspended this year
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
A group of nearly 40 New York City
elected offi cials along with students
are calling for the Hunter College
High School to suspend its entrance exam
this year and for the school to revamp its
admissions process in order to diversify the
student body.
Elected offi cials sent a letter to CUNY
Chancellor Felix M. Matos while members
of Hunter Students for Diversity sent a
27-page-long letter to college and high
school leadership pushing for the change on
Monday. In the letter, students list a number
of demands to increase diversity at the
high school with the fi rst requiring school
leadership to release statics on students
eligible for Hunter’s entrance exam versus
those who actually sit down for the test.
Other demands include revamping the
school curriculum to include more writers
of color, educating faculty and staff
on racism in the classroom, and hiring
one administrator dedicated to increasing
diversity among students and faculty.
Hunter rising senior Amanda Cui said
during a Zoom press conference hosted
in partnership with the Public Advocate’s
offi ce on Monday that although she is grateful
for the opportunities that have been
presented to her at Hunter she questions
whether benefi ts she could have received
Hunter College Campus School on the Upper East Side.
by attending another, more diverse high
school.
“I constantly wonder what my high
school experience would have been like if
I never got into Hunter if I went to my local
high school and were surrounded by people
with a similar background as me,” said Cui.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have imposter syndrome
at such a young age, maybe I would have
felt more confi dent and less isolated and far
more hopeful.”
Cui is a fi rst-generation Asian American
student who comes from a low-income
PHOTO VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
household. “At Hunter, I constantly feel
like I’m at the bottom rung of the ladder,”
she added. The fi nal pages of the letter are
fi lled with student and faculty anecdotes
about Hunter’s environment of “casual
racism” made them feel excluded. Some
of the “anecdotes” are general comments
about the school’s Eurocentric arts and
literature curriculums while others are far
more disturbing stories.
“When one of my English teachers read
the n-word in a book we were reading, I
was shocked. We all were. I remember
taking a look around the classroom and
seeing everyone make nervous eye contact
with one another,” wrote one student from
the class of 2020.
Out of the city’s 1.1 million public school
students, 25% are Black, 40% are Latino,
about 16% are Asian and 15% are white,
according to Department of Education data.
But at Hunter, Black and Latino students are
severely underrepresented with only 2.4% of
the school’s students identifying as Black and
6.2% identifying as Latino during the 2018-
2019 school year, according to the letter.
In addition, while roughly 73% of New
York City public school students come from
lower-income households, only 9% of Hunter
students that same school year were reported
as being economically disadvantaged.
The letter, which reads more like a
research paper, fl eshes out how Hunter’s
diversity problem and culture of “casual racism”
has worsened over the last 25 years. In
1995, the number of Black students entering
the 7th grade at Hunter was three times as
high than what it currently is.
“The University administration takes the
concerns expressed in the letter very seriously.
We are working with Hunter College
to ensure HCHS’s admissions practices
are consistent with the values inherent in
CUNY’s mission to afford equality of opportunity
to all students, regardless of background
or means,” said CUNY spokesperson
Frank Sobrino to amNew York Metro.
Blaz signs off on Brooklyn, Queensboro Bridges bike paths
BY MARK HALLUM
Mayor Bill de Blasio will be opening
sections of roadway on the
Brooklyn Bridge and the Queensboro
Bridge, which will be announced
in his State of the City address later on
Thursday.
Advocates have long pressured the de
Blasio administration to pedestrianize the
south outer roadway of the Queensboro
Bridge, with the Department of Transportation
coming back to them with the excuse
that the fences are too low to allow foot or
cycling traffi c.
Pedestrians and cyclist have been forced
to share space on the north outer roadway
while the same cramped conditions have
been augmented by tourists on the Brooklyn
Bridge.
“Now, it’s time to bring them into the
21st century and embrace the future with
a radical new plan,” De Blasio’s prepared
remarks will say according to a City Hall
spokesperson. “On the Brooklyn Bridge,
The city will be dedicating the outer roadway of the Ed Koch-Queensboro
Bridge for bicycles.
we will ban cars from the innermost lane
of the Manhattan-bound side to transform
it into a two-way protected bike lane and
turn the existing shared promenade space
into a space just for pedestrians. On the
Queensboro Bridge, we will begin construction
this year to convert the north
outer roadway into a two-way bike-only
lane and convert the south outer roadway
to a two-way pedestrians-only lane.”
On the Brooklyn Bridge, the inner most
of the three Manhattan-bound lanes will
be converted for cycling use, leaving two
lanes for cars. This will happen by the end
of 2020.
The time to complete the conversion on
the Queensboro Bridge side will be slightly
longer, according to the mayor’s offi ce,
due to unrelated construction. The south
outer roadway will go to pedestrians while
cyclists will have the run of the north outer
roadway.
“The mayor has agreed to open up the
outer roadway of the Queensboro Bridge
for cyclists, which is something I’ve been
fi ghting for for years, and Councilman
Ben Kallos joined me in that effort because
the bridge spans our two districts,”
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer said during
Thursday’s stated City Council meeting.
Van Bramer and Kallos offered to front
the money needed to replace the fence in
order to move this initiative forward over
the summer when the city was struggling
for funds.
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