Letters

‘Imagine’ Rensselaer freed from landfill

Last month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a new initiative with billionaire Bill Gates to “reimagine” education here in New York. He said, “When we are reopening schools, let’s open a better school and let’s open a smarter education system.”

I, too, have a vision for education where each student and adult can learn and work in a healthy environment. How about a new state law or regulation to hat would immediately close any dump that operates within one mile of a school?

The governor could even use his recently expanded emergency powers to immediately close the S.A. Dunn construction and demolition and whoknows-what-else landfill that literally borders the Rensselaer public school campus. The dump poisons and ruins the quality of life of thousands of Rensselaer and East Greenbush residents with noxious odors, noise, dust, dirt and diesel exhaust from heavy truck traffic.

The governor receives plenty of positive regional, state, national and even international news coverage for his COVID-19 initiatives while continuing to not acknowledge or terminate another public health emergency less than two miles from his Albany office. tom ellis

Law school tuition hike not justifiable

While many of us face physical, mental and financial struggles during this unprecedented time, we believed that our academic institution had our backs. We were wrong.

On April 15, Albany Law School announced it would be raising the 2020-21 academic year tuition. Although the administration claims the current pandemic was taken into consideration, we do not believe this to be true because the tuition increase was contemplated in the fall of 2019 and is the same percentage. We do not believe this decision was in the best interests of the students. Since all classes are now being conducted online, we feel our quality of education has dwindled. It is now harder to participate, focus and learn. While we do not fault the law school for having to move to an online format, we do not believe a tuition hike is justified when we are not currently receiving the education and experience that our tuition dollars paid for.

In addition, students who normally work during the semester now face unemployment. Students are already stressed about paying for the bare necessities, which makes paying for school even more difficult.

As students face crippling amounts of debt, we feel that to raise tuition at a time like this reveals that our administration does not have students’ best interests at heart. This sentiment is shared not only by the authors, but by the many students at Albany Law School who helped in the writing of this letter. Antonia Minutoli and

Jessica Haller