CUNY SEEK
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The CUNY SEEK initiative, standing for Search for Education, Elevation [orig. Enlightenment], and Knowledge, is a City University of New York scholarship program for 4-year colleges. Championed by New York State Assembly members Shirley Chisholm and Percy Sutton who led a 1966 "midnight march" in the state capital, it was incorporated into a larger CUNY spending bill that year.[1] SEEK was conceived at the time as a policy of racial inclusion to promote greater participation of disadvantaged students from New York City high schools predominantly of African American and Puerto Rican backgrounds.[2]
Its current full title is the Percy Ellis Sutton Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) Program, aligned with the 'College Discovery (CD) Program' for CUNY's community colleges,[3] along with other state efforts such as the Higher Education Opportunity Program.[4]
Legislation
SEEK's legal foundations came from New York State Assembly members Shirley Chisholm and Percy Sutton (the eventual program namesake), who led a 1966 "midnight walk" or "midnight march" in Albany to the Dewitt Clinton Hotel room of Speaker Anthony J. Travia. During the 176th New York State Legislature, Travia had become dependent on minority legislators for his leadership[5] amid the reapportionment revolution, and they established the New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus at that late-night meeting with the funding of SEEK as their initial legislative demand, that they had earlier worked out as an amendment at the Harlem office of the New York Amsterdam News.[1][6]
It was attached as a condition for passing the much larger City University Supplemental Aid and Construction Act[7] that had first been proposed in the New York State Senate chamber by Manfred Ohrenstein.[1] Buffalo-based Arthur Eve joined Chisolm and Sutton as sponsors of the legislation. SEEK is historically seen as an early affirmative action program, but without being based on explicit racial criteria.[2] Instead it was in support of students from high schools in "poverty areas" as to be determined by the city's Anti-Poverty Operations Board,[7] often equated with "ghetto schools" at the time .[8][9] The program developed within the context of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, in the era of President Johnson's "War on Poverty".
Implementation
Originating in September 1965 as a Rockefeller-funded City College's Pre-Baccalaureate (Pre-Bac) program,[10] it expanded throughout the CUNY system as Operation SEEK after the state legislation was passed the following year.[11]
Mina P. Shaughnessy led SEEK in its formative years starting in 1967 and there developed the concept of basic writing.[12] It was still a relatively small program concentrated at City College,[2] with participating students there protesting for improvements to the program in 1969.[2][13] It was subsequently grown in size after 1970 in support of the open admissions policy,[14] which SEEK itself helped to pave the way for.[11][8][15] The program suffered with the fiscal crisis of 1975[12] and the end of free tuition policy, as well as changes in testing systems that followed.