Leaving home to move on to a college campus is all about new connections – living with roommates, going to classes, joining clubs, playing sports, socializing, dating… all of which, of course, are either severely curtailed or banned outright under COVID protocols. So what is it like to live in a dorm right now? In this episode, Char gets the insider’s view from Seth Grossman, Director of Housing and Residence Life at City College, and Angie, a freshman living on campus at the College of Staten Island.
Mar 4, 2021
17 min
It's 2021, and we finally have several viable vaccines for COVID-19, but that doesn't mean the pandemic is over. They need to be manufactured, they need to be distributed... and even then very real cultural obstacles exist to vaccinating enough of the population to allow social distancing to end. In this episode, we hear from people in the CUNY community who are working hard to make the vaccine not only available but also acceptable to the people who need to receive it.
Feb 3, 2021
27 min
Many of us don't often associate college with homelessness, but as many as 14% of CUNY students have no fixed address - some living on couches, and many relying on shelters or living on the street. How does someone manage to work and study with that kind of personal instability? What if you're also trying to take care of a family while doing it all? And how about now, when COVID-19 has made everything more difficult for everybody? To find out, Char speaks to Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor at CUNY School of Public Health and recent graduate Kassanda Montes, who lived in shelters with her young son for the majority of her time as a student at Lehman College.
Nov 18, 2020
23 min
The 2020 presidential election is only days away, and everyone agrees the results are going to have momentous consequences for the country, but the importance of this election only serves to underscore serious systemic questions about participatory democracy in the US - who votes? who doesn't? and why? and how? In this episode, we hear from CUNY Law student Melissa Shohet, and Professors Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY Graduate Center and Don Waisanen of Baruch College as they discuss their perspectives on this insidious and complex problem.
Oct 28, 2020
21 min
Along with doctors, nurses, and first responders, COVID's media "heroes" included an unlikely and previously unheralded group, the "essential workers" - custodians, supermarket employees, delivery drivers, and other solidly blue-collar, often underpaid and under-respected men and women who all of a sudden seemed to be the only ones holding society together. What has this sudden spotlight revealed about the nature of work in America and what we do and don't value and why? Charles Scott, Director of Facilities at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Krinsky, Professor of Political Science at City College weigh in on what was, what is, and what should be in the future.
Sep 30, 2020
18 min
Theater is big business in New York, and central to its cultural identity, but the novel coronavirus has brought it to a standstill, and thousands of actors, directors, writers, technicians, and support staff are left scrambling to figure out what the next couple of years might look like, and if their industry will survive at all. In this episode, Char speaks to Frank Hentschker, Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the CUNY Graduate Center and Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Playwright and Professor at Medgar Evers College about the present and future of theater in the age of COVID.
Sep 23, 2020
19 min
Nursing homes were some of the first and hardest-hit centers of COVID-19 infection, and have remained extremely challenging places to live and work in the face of the pandemic. Queensboro Community College nursing students Adam Kern and Kristen Rodriguez have been on the front lines of this battle for months now, caring for the residents of the Parker Jewish Institute in Glen Oaks through the worst of New York City's first-wave COVID crisis and beyond.
Sep 16, 2020
15 min
Protesters marched for weeks following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The demonstrations sparked a national conversation about the role of police in society — and protesting in the middle of a pandemic. All this and more in my conversation with community organizer, and incoming Graduate Center student, Shadley and Brooklyn College professor Alex Vitale.
Sep 9, 2020
15 min
More than 160,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the country, with over 32,000 of those fatalities in New York. There’s no way to measure the emotional and financial toll so much death has taken on the nation. But THE CITY, a nonprofit news organization covering New York, is dedicated to honoring the thousands who have lost their lives in New York. I spoke with Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism students Luca Powell and Michaela Roman working on the massive memorial project, “MISSING THEM.”
Aug 21, 2020
17 min