From: Time Heeald-Record (Middletown, NY) 
May 08, 2009

By Jeremiah Horrigan

NEW PALTZ — Fighting words were the order of the day Thursday during a rally on behalf of the embattled nursing and masters teaching programs at SUNY New Paltz.

Phillip Smith, president of the state's United University Professions union, said Gov. David Paterson has between $500 million and $600 million in statewide SUNY funds that he could apply to the problem.

UUP local president Glenn McNitt said SUNY President Steve Poskanzer should stop trying to make New Paltz a "Harvard on the Hudson" and allow more students and their tuition money into its increasingly "elitist" halls and dorms.

These complaints and accusations came a few days after Poskanzer announced that he would implement the $6 million budget cuts as originally announced several weeks ago, without modification from the faculty.

McNitt dismissed the evident finality of Poskanzer's statement:

"If he thinks it's over, he's in dreamland," McNitt said after the rally.

Eleanor Richards, chair of the nursing program, received rousing applause when she described nurses in the audience as people who typically have put others first.

"Now it's your turn," she said.