Pulitzer Center Update February 7, 2025
The Demands of Equity in Higher Education
Country:
The following reflection was written by Kayla Cato-Piersaint and Norka Blackman-Richards, recipients of the 2024 1619 Impact Grant. Piersaint and Richards implemented their project at Queens College, CUNY (City University of New York).
The City University of New York’s Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge program (CUNY SEEK) was the first education opportunity program established in the nation. Despite being a public institution situated in a diverse urban environment, CUNY's student population was predominantly white—over 90%—at the time of the program’s founding. In 1966, a group of Black activists and legislators, Shirley Chisholm, Percy E. Sutton, and Charles Rangel among others, advocated before the New York State legislature for the establishment of a program aimed at increasing the number of students of color attending CUNY. This led to the creation of the SEEK Program. A few years later, in the largest and longest student takeover of a college campus in U.S. history, students from the SEEK Program at City College demanded CUNY to accurately reflect the demographics of New York City public schools in its admissions policies and practices.
Almost 60 years later, the CUNY SEEK Program still serves incoming freshmen who are first-generation, low-income, students of color, or children of immigrants. These students encounter challenges when transitioning to college including limited access to resources, financial constraints, and cultural adjustments.
Our role as SEEK Program facilitators includes teaching students this university history, helping them understand that it was Black and Puerto Rican students involved in the SEEK Program who compelled CUNY to broaden its admissions policies and embrace diversity. The 1619 Project's reframing of U.S. history, which centers the arrival of the first enslaved African peoples and contributions of Black Americans to the country, serves as a compelling lens through which to view the transformation of admissions at CUNY. Though the history of the CUNY SEEK program is a lesser-known narrative, it compliments The 1619 Project in providing another example of African Americans pushing this nation toward greater justice and respect for civil rights. The Demands of Equity in Higher Education project aimed to couple SEEK Program history with The 1619 Project themes in order to challenge traditional notions about race, history, and education in the United States by guiding pre-college students through an educational journey of Black history.
Our project was implemented with over 250 students during the 2024 SEEK Summer Program. We introduced The 1619 Project through the Hulu docuseries and the interactive New York Times Magazine site. The 1619 materials complemented articles from the CUNY Archives and the film The Five Demands by Jezebel Productions. The film is a documentary of the 1969 events at City College that led to open admissions in the CUNY system. This decision to blend in the innovative insights of The 1619 Project with SEEK history marked a significant departure from the programmatic format of the SEEK Program for the last 50 years, which was solely focused on college advising and content area preparation.
We focused on five key themes: Origins, Struggles and Demands, Reparations, Progress, and Black Joy, which helped us create a timeline that highlighted both historical advancements and the ongoing work that remains. Each lesson plan was thoughtfully designed to integrate elements from The 1619 Project alongside the history of the SEEK Program, ensuring a rich and impactful learning experience. The dynamic combination sparked engaging class discussions and critical inquiries into topics like equity versus equality, reparations, immigration, labor and wages, civil and human rights, and the necessity for increased opportunities for higher education. We fostered a judgment-free environment where students felt safe to explore, express, and question each other and history, encouraging them to challenge ideas and engage deeply with the material.
The course was delivered at a brisk pace, exploring the five distinct themes over the span of 10 days. We were concerned about overwhelming students with too much information, leaving them little opportunity to fully grasp the intricacies of the content. To address this, we uploaded all course materials to Google Classroom, enabling students to review them at later dates. We did have one professor express concern that the course was emotionally overwhelming for students, noting they seemed drained in her math course. After further review, it seemed students were carrying discussions from the 1619 class into the math classroom. Instead of feeling drained, they were finding significant value in their learning and expressing the need for more time to derive deeper insights. In future iterations of the course, we might consider focusing on three themes to allow for deeper exploration of each. However, the five themes were so well-integrated that condensing them into three could prove to be a challenge.
Educators contemplating this journey should firmly embrace their passion for teaching and their commitment to guiding students with integrity. As we face unpredictable times, especially with the challenges posed by the new presidential administration and potential threats to education, it’s essential to stay grounded in your love for this profession and its power to foster significant change. Students gain wisdom and a clearer understanding of their world by understanding history. When we compared students who participated in this course with those from previous years who did not, we noticed a marked increase in readiness, confidence, and willingness to engage with controversial subjects among those who took the 1619 course over the summer. Although the truth can be intricate, difficult, and uncomfortable, it serves as the bedrock of our existence.
By recognizing the flaws in our nation’s foundation, we can always discover ways to mend them. This is why this work is crucial in educational environments. It consistently reveals what is necessary to address our societal and communal fractures. Most importantly, this essential work reassures us that these imperfections do not define us. Just as our ancestors envisioned a better future, this hope can continue to drive us toward justice.
