As a group, our mission was to find a way for CUNY students to get free metro cards by maintaining a 3.0 G.P.A in school. We decided to get this message across by doing a play, which consisted of a mannequin by the name of, Bob, to play a CUNY college student who hopped the turnstile and got arrested. We then took Bob to court to fight his case and to also demonstrate that it is difficult for CUNY college to buy certain necessities due to financial reasons. In the end, Bob had to face the consequences and go to jail. The message behind the play and our protest is that CUNY students invest a lot of money into their education and lifestyles, in order for us to get a free metro card we are willing to work for it by doing good in school and maintaining a certain grade point average. Although there were people who disagreed with our protest, we still feel like this is a problematic issue in CUNY because there are a lot of students who have low incomes and are struggling to afford a metro card. We believe it is something that should be brought to acknowledgement by mayor of the Board of Education to fix this problem. As we continue to let our voices be heard, we hope that there can be a change in the near future.
The main challenge we faced on the day of our performance was the cold and frigid weather. The cold wind was kind of discouraging but we stood our ground and was able to perform. The other challenge we faced was lack of audience. At times it felt like we were performing at an empty theater even though the foot traffic was decent grabbing the passersby’s attention felt like an astronomical task that day.
Our main goal was to convey the message of free metro cards for CUNY students who maintains a GPA above 3.0. We were able to express our message with the performance may be not to the amount of spectators that we would have wanted but to the few ones who saw our performance.
Overall it was a great team effort. Everyone did a fantastic job with their respective characters. Finally we would like to thank Professor Nora and Christopher for all their hard work and effort in trying to make this class worthwhile.
