Graduation And Retention Rates Or . . . Affirmative Action For Italian-American Staffers?

More than 60 years after Little Flower left office, Italian-Americans are still shockingly underrepresented in the CUNY system:

As Columbus Day approaches, a number of prominent Italian-Americans are expressing concern that the City University of New York has a vendetta against them.

Nearly 30 years after that ethnic group was included in CUNY’s affirmative action program, Italian-Americans still face discrimination there, according to a university-commissioned report.

A three-member panel appointed by CUNY officials and the Calandra Italian American Institute determined there has been no significant progress in boosting the proportion of Italian-Americans in CUNY’s faculty and staff since 1977. The figure that year was slightly more than 6%. The panel’s report found that number largely unchanged today.

“One would have to say it’s disappointing, considering that Italian-Americans have been identified as an affirmative action group,” said panel member Richard Alba, a sociology teacher at SUNY-Albany.

The panel report was mandated by a 1999 settlement of a landmark class-action civil rights suit filed by Bronx native Joseph Scelsa, former head of the Calandra Institute, which was named after the late Bronx state Senator John Calandra.

Local leaders in the Italian-American community are blasting CUNY over the report.

“It has been 30 years of affirmative ‘inaction’ against Italian-Americans,” said Bronx Columbus Day Parade Committee member Jay Savino.

Is part of the reason CUNY supposedly sucks so bad that they’re dithering over affirmative action for Italian-Americans?