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Taxpayer-funded CUNY is dealing with calls to crack down on its vetting of adjuncts after since-fired professor Shellyne Rodriguez — who proudly shows anti-cop tattoos — was arrested Thursday for holding a machete to a Post reporter’s neck.
Rodriguez, who has “FTP” (for “f–ok the police”) inked on her fingers, flashed a brazen smile after she was slapped with harassment and menacing prices and escorted out of the NYPD’s forty third Precinct in The Bronx in handcuffs.
The 45-year-old artist and neighborhood organizer — who had gone viral for cursing out pro-life college students at CUNY’s Hunter College within the lead-up to Tuesday’s machete saga — was promptly fired by the varsity.
Now, some are questioning how somebody like Rodriguez – a self-described “black Marxist” who has helped arrange “FTP” protests that led to mass arrests — even ended up instructing on the public faculty within the first place.
“This is so past, past,” former CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld informed The Post on Thursday, including “there must be an inquiry of this professors’ hiring.”
“CUNY has change into a farce,” he continued, including, “You have revolutionaries and lunatics operating the place.
“What you want is for the governor and mayor to create a fee to scrub up CUNY.”
The formal hiring course of for adjunct professors at CUNY is missing as a result of vetting is just right down to division heads – permitting for somebody like Rodriguez to be recruited, a supply conversant in the method mentioned.
“The folks doing the hirings are radicals and they search out radicals,” claimed the supply, who’s a division head at one other CUNY campus.
Unlike full-time college positions the place there’s intensive vetting, the supply mentioned adjunct professors are sometimes simply employed by a selected division’s personnel and finances committee.
Almost all division chairs concerned in recruitment are members of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents CUNY professors and adjuncts, in response to the supply, which described the group as left-wing and radical.
“The union attracts lunatics each full-time and part-time,” the supply mentioned.
In the wake of the Rodriguez saga, New York Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar known as on CUNY to take a brand new have a look at their hiring insurance policies.
“It’s turning into an increasing number of obvious that they, on the school stage, the professors ought to most likely additionally undergo a little bit of a psychological analysis,” Kassar mentioned.
“I don’t essentially suppose you’re imagined to be inspecting them such as you study a police officer … this is likely to be the primary time [with] a machete, however it isn’t the primary time now we have heard about CUNY — and to some extent SUNY — faculty professors being the one who is most excessive within the school rooms.”
CUNY has 25 schools throughout the 5 boroughs, whereas SUNY, the state college system, is comprised of 64 establishments.
Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens), who obtained his MFA from Hunter and spent a long time instructing at CUNY, mentioned he hoped the hiring of “illiberal, radical” people akin to Rodriguez wasn’t a part of a sample.
“People must be vetted. People must take heed to either side. And folks must be tolerant,” he mentioned.
Rodriguez “ought to have by no means been allowed to work with college students,” Holden added. “I believe the provost ought to study her class observations and pupil evaluations to see who dropped the ball within the division and allowed this maniac within the classroom.”
Under CUNY’s present insurance policies for hiring adjuncts, would-be professors are required to signal an oath to the US Constitution in the course of the software course of.
Before she was axed on Tuesday, Rodriguez had labored at Hunter College as an adjunct arts professor since at the very least 2018, in response to SeeThroughNY. Her highest annual paycheck was $26,684, which she obtained final 12 months, in response to the location.
CUNY’s four-year schools, akin to Hunter, will get a significant chunk of their funding from the state, whereas town pitches in to again the community’s neighborhood schools.
CUNY didn’t instantly reply to The Post’s request for remark about its vetting course of.
In a press release, PSC President James Davis mentioned the union “has an obligation to make sure that each employee that we symbolize is afforded the complete protections of their contractual due-process rights.
“The PSC doesn’t condone violence, nor will we touch upon members’ ongoing disciplinary proceedings. The union has not launched or endorsed any assertion relating to any incidents involving Professor Shellyne Rodriguez,” Davis mentioned.
The mounting questions over the varsity’s vetting course of got here as Rodriguez turned herself in Thursday morning over the caught-on-camera ordeal involving the machete.
The ex-professor held her head excessive as she was later led out of the Bronx precinct along with her slew of tattoos on full show, together with the “FTP” inked on her fingers, in addition to a picture of brass knuckles and the boxing time period “southpaw” scrawled throughout her left hand.
She refused to reply questions as she was escorted to an NYPD car, however began grinning when The Post requested why she opted to tug the machete within the first place.
A second-degree menacing cost in New York is a misdemeanor that may deliver as much as a 12 months in jail, whereas harassment within the second diploma, a violation, is punishable by as much as 15 days.
The surprising chain of occasions that led to Rodriguez’s arrest unfolded Tuesday when a veteran Post reporter knocked on the door of her Bronx condo to ask her concerning the May 2 footage of her cursing out Hunter College pro-life college students.
“Get the f–ok away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete!” the manic artwork professor shouted from behind her closed door simply seconds earlier than barging out with the blade.
After the reporter and a photographer exited the constructing, dashcam video captured Rodriguez — nonetheless armed with the machete — chasing them down the road.
Rodriguez is at present embroiled in a authorized saga with the NYPD over allegations officers abused her when she was arrested within the Bronx throughout a George Floyd protest in June 2020. The professor additionally helped arrange several violent “FTP” protests within the Bronx by 2020.
