See: https://www.franklin.edu/blog/transfer-from-community-college-to-4-year-university

Dear Commons Community,

This following article was published yesterday by the Associated Press.

First came the good news. After taking classes at a community college, Ricki Korba was admitted to California State University, Bakersfield, as a transfer student. But when she logged on to her student account, she got a gut punch: Most of her previous classes wouldn’t count.

The university rejected most of her science classes, she was told, because they were deemed less rigorous than those at Bakersfield — even though some used the same textbooks. Several other courses were rejected because Korba exceeded a cap on how many credits can be transferred.

Now Korba, a chemistry and music major, is retaking classes she already passed once. It will add a year to her studies, plus at least $20,000 in tuition and fees.

“It just feels like a waste of time,” said Korba, 23, of Sonora, California. “I thought I was supposed to be going to a CSU and starting hard classes and doing a bunch of cool labs.”

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students start at community colleges hoping to transfer to a university later. It’s advertised as a cheaper path to a bachelor’s degree, an education hack in a world of ever-rising tuition costs.

Yet the reality is rarely that simple. For some students, the transfer process becomes a maze so confusing it derails their college plans.

Among nearly 1 million students who started at a community college in 2016, just one in seven earned a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

One of the biggest obstacles is known as credit loss: when students take classes that never end up counting toward a degree.

Sometimes it’s a result of poor advising. Without clear guidance from community colleges, students take courses they don’t need. Blame can also lie with four-year colleges, which have varying rules for evaluating transfer credits. Some are pickier than others.

The outcome, however, is often the same. Students take longer to finish their degrees, costing more in tuition. For many, the extra work becomes too much to bear. Ultimately, roughly half of community college students drop out.

“It’s completely defeating for some students,” said Jessie Ryan, vice president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, a research group. “These systems have been designed to work for colleges and educators, but they haven’t been designed to work for students.”

The search for solutions has yielded scattered success. In many states, colleges and universities have formed partnerships to make sure certain classes transfer. More than a dozen states have adopted common class numbering systems to create consistency across schools.

Still, problems remain frustratingly common.

A recent study at the City University of New York system found, among students who transferred from a community college to a bachelor’s program, nearly half lost at least some work. On average, those students lost the equivalent of almost a full semester.

“The pipeline from community college to a bachelor’s degree is a very leaky pipeline,” said Alexandra Logue, one of the researchers and a former provost at the CUNY system. The outcomes are worst among Black, Hispanic and low-income students, who are more likely to start at community colleges, she said.

Korba thought she was taking the right classes at Columbia College, a community college in Sonora. She worked with a counselor and used an online catalog showing which courses were supposed to transfer to CSU schools.

But when officials at Bakersfield reviewed the transcript, they said most of her classes wouldn’t count toward her major.

University officials declined to comment on Korba’s case, but said a small number of transfer credits can fall into a “gray area” and require extra review. Dwayne Cantrell, Bakersfield’s chief enrollment officer, said credit loss is rare and many classes from California community colleges are accepted automatically.

Facing an extra year of school, Korba likely will run out of financial aid before she graduates. She’s making plans to go part-time in school and work longer hours so she can afford tuition and rent. But she wonders how long she can juggle it all.

“I worry how much more interested I’ll be in school than just focusing on getting money from a job,” she said.

Columbia College officials said they will advocate for Korba as much as possible as she continues her education.

“We consider the transfer process a high priority as such we will continue to provide focused career counseling and transfer services to assist students with this occasionally challenging process,” said Lena Tran, president of the college.

Stories like Korba’s aren’t uncommon, especially in California, which has long struggled to connect its 116 community colleges to more than 30 public universities.

Mea Montañez will graduate from San Francisco State University in May, but only after retaking nearly a year’s worth of classes she already passed at a community college. The school didn’t accept her classes in psychology, her major, because they weren’t considered a match.

“I’m taking the classes and I’m like, ‘This is exactly what I took,’” said Montañez, 34. “If anything, it was much more challenging at the community college level.”

University officials said classes can look the same on paper, but the details of what’s taught don’t always line up. Still, they acknowledged room for improvement.

“Credit loss happens, but it’s something we’ve been working hard on for a long time,” said Lori Beth Way, dean of undergraduate education at SFSU.

When students transfer to any school, their transcripts are often reviewed by faculty. For instance, biology professors would decide whether a biology class from another school should count.

But those judgments can be colored by stigma — some faculty look down at community colleges — and financial incentives, Logue of CUNY said.

Refusing credits, she said, means students must take more classes at their own school. Faculty also sometimes hold a higher standard for accepting a class toward a major than just accepting it as a general requirement.

“That’s money, and it keeps people’s jobs,” she said. “But it’s a very short-sighted viewpoint.”

Some states have intervened to take subjectivity out of the process. Under a new Maryland rule, a class must be accepted if it shares 70% of the learning objectives with a comparable class. If credits are denied, students and community colleges must receive an explanation.

California made strides with a 2010 law requiring community colleges to offer special associate degrees guaranteeing admission to a CSU campus. A 2021 law will put all eligible students on that track unless they opt out, and create a set of general education classes that must be accepted at all state universities.

Two Virginia colleges have gone further. From their first day on campus, students at Northern Virginia Community College are offered a direct path to a bachelor’s at nearby George Mason University. Students receive dual admission at both schools and they can choose from 87 academic pathways telling them exactly which classes they need.

Known as Advance, the program is designed to minimize credit loss and increase graduation rates. George Mason is working on expanding the model to other community colleges.

“Students understand from Day One what they are required to take,” said Jason Dodge, director of the program. “They know the rug is not going to slip out from under them along the way.”

As the article makes clear, the transfer credit policies at many senior colleges have been a great disservice for community college students.  While there has been some movement to ameliorate the issue, it will not go away any time soon without firm policy action on the part of government and university systems.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dennis “Maliq” Barnes, a Louisiana high school senior, was offered a record $10 million in scholarships from nearly 200 colleges, and has announced he will be attending Cornell University in the fall.

During a press conference Friday, Barnes revealed he would be attending the Ivy League university’s school of engineering to pursue a degree in computer science.

“It is an honor and a privilege to be accepted to the Ivy League,” Barnes said as he pulled on a bright red Cornell sweatshirt, surrounded by family members also donning the school’s gear.

A 16-year-old senior at the International High School of New Orleans, Barnes received offers from at least 188 colleges and universities, CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV reported. Despite his multitude of options, Barnes said he always knew he wanted to attend Cornell, and choosing another school “was never really an option.”

“Once I received the admission, I knew that’s where I was going,” Barnes said.

The teen said he plans to pursue a career in software development, and chose Cornell due to the strength of its engineering program — and its location in New York.

“I love my city, but I do want to venture out and experience new things and see different things that I haven’t seen before,” the New Orleans native said.

Barnes’ $10 million-plus scholarship haul is the most of any college-bound senior in U.S. history, his high school said, breaking a Guinness World Record held by another Louisiana high school senior who received nearly $9 million in scholarships in 2019. The school is contacting Guinness to make Barnes’ record official, CBS affiliate WWL-TV reported.

While Barnes didn’t specify the amount of his scholarship from Cornell, he said he was “very happy with the offer.”

The senior pursued college credits while dual enrolled at Southern University of New Orleans for the past two years, according to WWL-TV, and will graduate from the International High School of New Orleans later this month.

Barnes cited his belief in God, prioritizing his education and staying focused on his goals as keys to his success.

“It’s easy to get distracted as a teenager,” Barnes said. “There’s nothing wrong with having fun and doing different things, but I think that whenever you have your mind made up and you’re determined to get something done then it can have a definite effect.”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Barnes continued. “So when you have a will to get done what you want to get done, it’s definitely going to happen and your dreams and aspirations are going to come true.”

Good luck, Maliq!

Tony

Republican Representative Nancy Mace

Dear Commons Community,

Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina is calling on her GOP colleagues to adopt a more centrist approach to abortion ahead of the 2024 election cycle.

“I know that if we’re going to win hearts and minds, we can’t be assholes to women,” Mace said during an interview with Yahoo News. She argued that Republicans should, instead, embrace a more “compassionate and compelling message” that is both “pro-woman and pro-life.”

“They can do both,” she said.

Mace, whose district includes much of South Carolina’s East Coast, including Charleston and Hilton Head Island, has been an outspoken proponent within the Republican Party of reproductive rights. She pointed to a string of abortion-related defeats for the GOP since the Supreme Court’s decision last spring to overturn Roe v. Wade as proof that abortion “is an issue that we have to address head on.”

First, there was the wave of successful ballot measures on abortion rights that passed during the 2022 midterm elections, even in traditionally conservative states.

Then last month, Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who campaigned on her support for abortion access, won a hotly contested race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by 11%, giving Democrats a majority on the bench in the key swing state and showing, again, that the issue of abortion is top of mind for many voters.

And just last week, South Carolina’s state Senate voted 22-21 to reject a near-total abortion ban. It was the third time since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that a near-total abortion ban has failed to pass in the state’s GOP-led chamber.

The only five women in the state Senate — three Republicans, one Democrat and one Independent — joined together to lead a multi-day filibuster against the bill. State Sen. Penry Gustafson, a Republican, said that while she is pro-life, she opposed the bill because it left “no room for empathy, reality or graciousness.”

It’s this kind of position that, Mace argues, Republicans would be wise to adopt if they want to win in 2024.

“If we just bury our heads in the sand and ignore the issue, we’re going to lose and we’re going to lose big.”

The issue of abortion access is personal for Mace, who was raped when she was 16.

Mace first revealed her traumatic experience to the public in 2019, during a debate over South Carolina’s fetal heartbeat bill, when she was serving in the state Legislature.

She told Yahoo News that she hadn’t planned to share her story, but she felt compelled to speak out on behalf of victims of rape to ensure that the bill, which banned abortion after six weeks, would include exceptions for victims of rape and incest.

Since then, she said, her own trauma “has made me a different type of lawmaker because it really informs everything that I do.”

It’s why she’s currently working on legislation to address the massive backlog of untested rape kits across the United States, and why she’s been critical of a recent abortion ban signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that requires a pregnant person to show proof of rape or incest to qualify for abortion exceptions up until 15 weeks.

Based on her own experience, Mace said thinks the “restrictive strings” attached to the exceptions are unrealistic.

“In terms of reporting it to the police or getting evidence from a hospital, by the time I told my mom I was raped, it was too late,” Mace said. “There’s no way in hell you would’ve been able to get me to go to the police, no way.”

While she may be a singular voice within her party, Mace notes that she’s not alone, pointing to legislation that conservative South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law last year, that would give women access to the birth control pill from their pharmacist without having to see a doctor.

She told Yahoo News that she’s now working on legislation “to cut the time in half and reduce the pricing for self-administered birth control and contraception.”

In addition to her own experience, Mace’s views are shaped by the attitudes of her constituents, which, she said, have shifted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe. While she was willing to support her state’s six-week abortion ban with exceptions in 2019, she now says she thinks the gestational limit on abortion should be 15-20 weeks.

Recognizing this shift is a key part of the approach that Mace argues her party must follow: “Be compassionate to women, be pro-life and win resoundingly.”

“We have to be able to read the room,” she said. “People aren’t where they were five years ago.”

Glad to see some sanity among Republican representatives on the abortion issue.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The White House took a victory lap after Friday’s jobs report posted a surprise gain with new data showing the economy added 253,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in April while the unemployment rate dropped to 3.4%.

The report wasgood news  for Biden and his top economic aides. The administration zeroed in on one number in particular: an increase in labor participation among workers aged 25 to 54, or so-called “prime age” workers.

“The really good news is working age Americans are participating in the labor force at the highest rate in 15 years, not just since the pandemic,” President Biden said Friday afternoon during a cabinet meeting focused on implementing his economic agenda.

The prime-age labor force participation rate stood at 83.3% in April, the highest since March 2008. This increase also pushed prime age participation above the Trump-era high of 83.1% seen in Jan. 2020 on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The White House was also enthusiastic about a host of other numbers in the report, including the overall unemployment rate, which is now at its lowest level in 50 years, as well as a Black employment rate, which fell to 4.7% in April. The latter reading marks a record since the measure was first introduced in 1972.

The Black unemployment rate is something Biden and his aides have focused on since the beginning of his administration but the attention Friday returned again and again to participation.

“Workers’ ages 25 to 54 are being attracted back into the labor force because it’s a great time to get a job,” added Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council, during an interview with Yahoo Finance Live on Friday morning. “We think that’s a very positive story.”

Preston Mui, an economist at Employ America, wrote in a note Friday this uptick in prime age participation shows, “that the answer to ‘worker shortages’ is to bring people off of the sidelines into the labor market, not to destroy labor demand and increase job losses. Running the labor market hot gradually boosts labor force participation.”

Ramamurti touted the strength of both this month’s report as well as “several in a row at this point” during Friday’s interview, adding that he feels confident that the overall economic picture is bright and — failing some disruption like a debt ceiling crisis — a recession can be avoided.

“I think we can continue to see that balancing act over the next several months,” he said.

People working is a good thing.  It will keep a recession at bay!

Tony

Peter Schwartz

Dear Commons Community,

Peter Schwartz was sentenced yesterday to a record-setting 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the U.S. Capitol with his wife on January 6, 2021..

Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The judge who sentenced Schwartz also handed down the previous longest sentence — 10 years — to a retired New York Police Department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 24 years and 6 months for Schwartz, a welder.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Schwartz to 14 years and two months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.   As reported by the Associated Press.

Mehta said Schwartz was a “soldier against democracy” who participated in “the kind of mayhem, chaos that had never been seen in the country’s history.”

“You are not a political prisoner,” the judge told him. “You’re not somebody who is standing up against injustice or fighting against an autocratic regime.”

Schwartz briefly addressed the judge before learning his sentence, saying, “I do sincerely regret the damage that Jan. 6 has caused to so many people and their lives.”

The judge said he didn’t believe Schwartz’s statement, noting his lack of remorse.

“You took it upon yourself to try and injure multiple police officers that day,” Mehta said.

Schwartz was armed with a wooden tire knocker when he and his then-wife, Shelly Stallings, joined other rioters in overwhelming a line of police officers on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where he threw a folding chair at officers.

“By throwing that chair, Schwartz directly contributed to the fall of the police line that enabled rioters to flood forward and take over the entire terrace,” prosecutor Jocelyn Bond wrote in a court filing.

Schwartz, 49, also armed himself with a police-issued “super soaker” canister of pepper spray and sprayed it at retreating officers. Advancing to a tunnel entrance, Schwartz coordinated with two other rioters, Markus Maly and Jeffrey Brown, to spray an orange liquid toward officers clashing with the mob.

“While the stream of liquid did not directly hit any officer, its effect was to heighten the danger to the officers in that tunnel,” Bond wrote.

Before leaving, Schwartz joined a “heave ho” push against police in the tunnel.

Stallings pleaded guilty last year to riot-related charges and was sentenced last month to two years of incarceration.

Schwartz was tried with co-defendants Maly and Brown. In December, a jury convicted all three of assault charges and other felony offenses.

Mehta sentenced Brown last Friday to four years and six months in prison. Maly is scheduled to be sentenced June 9.

Schwartz’s attorneys requested a prison sentence of four years and six months. They said his actions on Jan. 6 were motivated by a “misunderstanding” about the 2020 presidential election. Then-President Donald Trump and his allies spread baseless conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the election from the Republican incumbent.

“There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the ‘great lie’ that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent. Mr. Schwartz is not one of these individuals; he knows he was wrong,” his defense lawyers wrote.

Prosecutors said Schwartz has bragged about his participation in the riot, shown no remorse and claimed that his prosecution was politically motivated. He referred to the Capitol attack as the “opening of a war” in a Facebook post a day after the riot.

“I was there and whether people will acknowledge it or not we are now at war,” Schwartz wrote.

More than 100 police officers were injured during the riot. More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to Jan. 6. Nearly 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment.

The 10-year prison sentence that Mehta handed down in September to retired NYPD officer Thomas Webster had remained the longest until Friday. Webster had used a metal flagpole to assault an officer and then tackled the same officer as the mob advanced toward the Capitol.

As far as I am concerned, Schwartz deserved to get the maximum sentence of 24 years.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The prosecutor investigating interference in the 2020 election in Georgia has agreed to immunity deals with at least eight Republican fake electors who signed a certificate falsely stating that then-President Donald Trump had won the state.

Willis said in late April that criminal indictments could come between July 11 and Sept. 1. On Monday, she signaled in letters to local law enforcement authorities that she would be indicting Trump this summer, warning them about “significant public reaction” when grand jury results are announced.

While the grand jury could decide to indict or not, and she did not specifically name Trump, she asked for “heightened security and preparedness” during that period.

A fresh indictment of the former president — and current White House candidate — would add further complications to both the 2024 election and the future of the Republican Party, where Trump remains a frontrunner for the presidential nomination.

Tony

Proud Boys on Trial

Dear Commons Community,

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right extremist group were convicted yesterday of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

A jury in Washington, D.C., found Tarrio guilty of seditious conspiracy after hearing from dozens of witnesses over more than three months in one of the most serious cases brought in the stunning attack that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021,   As reported by the Associated Press and other media.

It’s a significant milestone for the Justice Department, which has now secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the leaders of two major extremist groups prosecutors say were intent on keeping Democrat Joe Biden out of the White House at all costs. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

Tarrio was a top target of what has become the largest Justice Department investigation in American history. He led the neo-fascist group — known for street fights with left-wing activists — when Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Biden.

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city. But prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.

In addition to Tarrio, a Miami resident, three other Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl.

Jurors have not yet reached a unanimous verdict on the sedition charge for fifth defendant: Dominic Pezzola. The judge told them to keep deliberating.

Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter leader. Rehl led a group chapter in Philadelphia. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Pezzola was a group member from Rochester, New York.

Prosecutors told jurors the group viewed itself as “Trump’s army” and was prepared for “all-out war” to stop Biden from becoming president.

The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf,” prosecutor Conor Mulroe said in his closing argument.

The backbone of the government’s case was hundreds of messages exchanged by Proud Boys in the days leading up to Jan. 6 that show the far-right extremist group peddling Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and trading fears over what would happen when Biden took office.

As Proud Boys swarmed the Capitol, Tarrio cheered them on from afar, writing on social media: “Do what must be done.” In a Proud Boys encrypted group chat later that day someone asked what they should do next. Tarrio responded: “Do it again.”

“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote in another message. “We did this.”

Defense lawyers denied there was any plot to attack the Capitol or stop Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. A lawyer for Tarrio sought to push the blame onto Trump, arguing the former president incited the pro-Trump mob’s attack when he urged the crowd near the White House to “fight like hell.”

“It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your beautiful and amazing city,” attorney Nayib Hassan said in his final appeal to jurors. “It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”

The Justice Department has yet to disclose how much prison time it will seek when the Oath Keepers are sentenced next month.

Tarrio and the others deserve the most serious sentences for what they did on January 6^th but as attorney Nayib Hassan said in his final appeal to jurors. “Enrique Tarrio was used as a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Chris Christie said there’s a reason his one-time ally and friend Donald Trump likely won’t be on the stage when Republican presidential hopefuls have their first debate in August.

“Obviously, he’s afraid,” Christie told conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. “He’s afraid to get on the stage against people who are serious. And I’m sorry to see that he’s that afraid of it.”

Trump, the former president and current GOP frontrunner in the polls, last month indicated that he’s unlikely to attend the debates because he is “leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers” and doesn’t want to subject himself to being “libeled and abused.”  Trump has also commented that he did not like the moderator (Bret Baier) that Fox News had assigned to moderate the debate.

Christie said that if Trump’s ideas were great, his polling lead would only increase after a debate. Since he won’t attend, Christie reasoned he must be afraid a debate could cause him to lose that lead instead.

He said:

“If he’s that afraid of that, how can we count on him to do any better with President Xi than the failures he had in his first term with China? How can we expect him to do any better with Putin than having set the groundwork for the invasion of Ukraine, which his conduct towards Putin certainly helped to establish?”

“This is a guy who seems like he’s afraid,” Christie said. “And if he’s afraid, he has no business being president.”

Christie abandoned his own presidential hopes early in the 2016 campaign and became one of the first big-name Republicans to endorse Trump.

The two were close during much of Trump’s presidency, with Christie getting a COVID-19 infection while helping the then-president prepare for his debates with Joe Biden.

He spent a week in the intensive-care unit.

Christie has since been more critical of Trump, with the two trading barbs in recent months ― a trend that continued during his interview with Hewitt.

Trump, Christie said, doesn’t want to debate because “he doesn’t have a lot of serious answers for the problems that are facing the country right now.”

“All he wants to do is go back and re-prosecute the 2020 election because his feelings are hurt,” Christie added. “He’s a child in that regard.”

Run, Christie, Run!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation Tuesday requiring that public colleges and universities in New York provide students access to abortion pills.

The bill signing capped a multiyear effort in the NYS Legislature aimed at securing medication abortion access on the campuses of the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

The law will allow out-of-state students at New York’s public schools to receive abortion access regardless of the reproductive rights terrain in their home states, Hochul said.

Under the law’s text, SUNY and CUNY schools are allowed to provide pills through their own campus clinics or by offering referrals to local or telehealth providers. The measure takes effect Aug. 1.  As reported by The New York Daily News.

“We are sick and tired of judges and lawmakers telling us what to do with our bodies,” Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference in Albany. “Our state has, from the beginning, fought this great fight. Abortion was legal in New York three years before the rest of the nation.”

Hochul signed the measure on the first anniversary of the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the court erased the half-century-old federal right to abortion.

And the governor also authorized the measure as a federal legal battle rages over pill access. About half of the abortions in the U.S. are carried out with medication.

Last month, a federal judge in Texas issued an order intended to halt the federal approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill that has been on the market in the U.S. for nearly a quarter century.

The Supreme Court later halted any steps to curtail access to the drug, at least for now. Mifepristone is typically used with a second drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks.

Misoprostol can be used on its own to end pregnancies, but it is not as effective when used without mifepristone.

Hochul described the Texas order as “an attack on abortion, and ultimately an attack on democracy,” and disapprovingly highlighted a new law in Florida banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to stop the backslide, while expanding reproductive rights here in our state,” said Hochul, the first woman to serve as New York’s governor. “We must meet this moment with tenacity.”

Before the New York abortion pill bill passed the state Senate and Assembly last month, efforts to secure access on SUNY and CUNY campuses had been stalled since 2019.

Sen. Cordelle Cleare, a Harlem Democrat, shepherded the bill through the state Senate. Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, an East Village Democrat, sponsored the measure in the Assembly.

Hochul predicted that “for hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers, this legislation will make the difference between an unwanted pregnancy and a future where they can decide what they want to do.”

“This is what matters to college-aged students,” Hochul said. “With this bill, New York will be positioned to accommodate the health care needs of all of our students, and the students we welcome in from other states.”

The abortion pill bill passed separately from the complex negotiations on the state budget that dragged on last month. The governor and lawmakers reached a budget deal last week.

Hochul also signed legislation Tuesday allowing pharmacists to dispense contraception over the counter.

Congratulations to Hochul and the Legislature  for promoting the rights of women for access to abortion medication.

Tony