Guttman Community College Office of Office of Legal Affairs and Labor Relations provides legal advice and guidance to the College, the President and College representatives on a wide range of legal matters, including governance, ethics, collective bargaining, employment, information requests, contracts, grievances and litigation, and policy questions affecting the College and its related entities.
In addition, the office represents the college in grievance and agency proceedings, serves as records access/FOIL officer, financial disclosure and ethics officer, compliance officer, and acts as liaison attorney with the state attorney general’s office on all litigation.
Contact Us
Main Office:
646-313-8170
50 W 40th St, New York, NY 10018
Richard R. White
General Counsel
Richard.White@cuny.edu
When to Reach Out
Members of the College community – students, faculty and staff – should contact the office immediately if they receive any legal document sent to the College. The College must respond to lawsuits within a specified time after it has been served. Do not discuss the lawsuit or the actions leading up to the lawsuit with third parties, especially with the other side or the attorney representing the other side.
Please also contact the office for assistance with legal matters affecting the College.
Note: We cannot provide legal advice or services on personal matters.
Please follow the links on the left for further information about requesting information from the College, important CUNY and College rules and procedures, and general legal issues related to College business.
Richard R. White is the College’s General Counsel. He serves a similar role for CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. White brings more than 30 years of experience as an attorney and senior manager, including 20 years in executive management. In 2019, prior to his current appointments, Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez named him CUNY’s first ever Vice Chancellor for Risk, Audit and Compliance, overseeing 25 institutions: 11 senior colleges, seven graduate and professional schools, and seven community colleges, serving more than 275,000 degree-seeking students.
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In 2017, New York Governor Andrew M Cuomo appointed White Deputy Secretary for Public Safety/Homeland Security, the state’s first person of color to ever hold the position. There he managed various agencies with a combined workforce of over 36,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $5.5 billion dollars. Those agencies included: NYS Police, Division of Homeland Security, Division of Military and Naval Affairs, Office of Cyber-security, Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Division of Criminal Justice Services, Office of Victim Services, Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, State Commission of Correction, Board of Parole, and Indigent Legal Services.
Previously, he led the Governor’s Tenant Protection Unit (TPU) at New York State Homes and Community Renewal, a unique statewide unit which proactively enforces landlord obligations to tenants and imposes strict penalties for failure to comply with NY’s rent laws.
Prior to working for Governor Cuomo, he served as counsel to Cyruli Shanks LLP. He also served as Deputy Commissioner for Investigation, Trials & Litigation at the NYC Dept. of Correction and Deputy Commissioner of Operations at the NYC Dept. of Probation, and was a senior trial attorney for the late Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
White received a B.A. in Economics from Franklin & Marshall College and a law degree from Delaware Law School. Additionally, he was an executive education graduate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and was a recipient of Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives.
He is admitted to practice in NY, NJ, DC, the Courts of the Southern and Eastern Districts of NY, U.S. District Court for NJ and before the United States Supreme Court.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.
Please refer all FERPA questions to our office.
Service of Process
The City University of New York Administrative Office, located at 205 East 42nd Street, New York, New York, is the university office designated to accept legal service on behalf of the university, the constituent colleges and units of CUNY (including Guttman Community College), the CUNY Board of Trustees, current employees of the Central Office of CUNY, the City University Construction Fund, and the CUNY Civil Service Commission.
The Guttman Community College Office of Legal Affairs and Labor Relations is the college office designated to accept legal service on behalf of Guttman and the College President. The office will not accept service on behalf of individually named college employees; personal service of those individuals is required.