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City College of the City University of New York has shut down the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Student and Community Center, a small physical space that was the center for student activism, and turned it into an annex for career services at the college, The New York Times reported. While the center is much loved by some activist groups, it has been criticized for years by others. It is named for two City College alumni who fled the United States for Cuba -- the former one of the organizers of a Puerto Rican independence group that claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing and the latter a member of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey trooper.
City College officials said that the closing was based on space needs, not politics. But students are organizing protects and calling the move an attempt to squelch student activism. A Facebook page created to defend the room and its programs calls the center "the only liberated space in CUNY."
