-- The Gospel According to the Board, as per my column, a year ago.

I finally got hold of the person I've been trying to get in touch with at the computer lab. On the phone. Seems that she's not looking to employ anybody right now, but I can call back in April to see about the possibility of a summer job.

So... the one hope remaining is that the person I was originally told to speak to is working on a different project altogether, and is still looking for somebody for the job I'd heard about. A bit of a longshot, but worth looking into.

In the meantime-- EEP!

I just realized, looking at my calendar, that I need to come up with the rent by tomorrow. See, I pay on the 15th of the month, and Friday is Lincoln's Birthday, and Monday is President's Day, which basically means that if I'm withdrawing anything, it's gonna have to be tomorrow, I think.

The only catch is that I don't, technically speaking, have enough right now. Which means I have to get hold of my brother, pronto.

Mind you, next month, even a loan from him isn't going to do it, so I'd better find some source of employment really, really quickly.

(Hmmm. Wait. Have I gotten paid for the work I did over Winter Break? I'm not sure. I have to get down to Payroll. That might do it for this month, if I haven't.)

The problem here is that I have too much I want to say, and there's just too much backstory. In a nutshell, our esteemed mayor wants to dismantle the City University of New York, and he's seized the banner of "raising standards" to do so, even though he's actually just causing more problems for the system.

"That's a system we'd blow up," he said about CUNY in his State of the City address. After all, he noted, only 8% of students in the senior colleges graduate "on time"; i.e., in four years.

Fact is, I was surprised that even 8% manage it. Because the statistic in question completely ignores the University's constituency. Two-thirds of CUNY students work. 50% of them work full-time. Over at Queens College, over a third go to night classes. One of CUNY's greatest strengths is the fact that it does accomodate such students; that it makes it possible for people in the work force to get a solid education.

In my experience, CUNY students aren't slackers, going for an easy degree; on the contrary, they're some of the hardest workers I know. I'm not sure how some of them manage to hold down the jobs they hold down and a full college schedule. But they do. And it is to the credit of the system that it works.

Recently, QC added weekend classes, so that even those who work all week can still get an education on Saturdays and Sundays, getting a degree in one of a few majors that way. Naturally, this is going to reduce the four-year graduation rate even more. But, if anything, that's a sign of the system's success, not its failure, as Mayor Giuliani would have it,

He's not the only one. Governor Pataki wants to cut off all state financial aid to students not taking at least fifteen credits in a semester.

I've never taken fifteen credits in a semester, and, quite frankly, I'm pretty close to being a model student. As mentioned above, most students here have jobs. They can't afford to attend here full-time. So we're going to restrict financial aid to those who can afford not to work? Does this make any sense?

Where is it written that "four" is the number of years in which a college degree must be attained? Is it a magic number? Does the Bible say anything about it? Is there some reason why those who take longer to graduate are somehow defective?