WEBCAST: FACULTY PERSPECTIVES ON THE CURRENT UC BUDGET CRISIS
(recorded 9/16/09)
Prof. Ananya Roy / City & Regional Planning
What is planned for September 24, and how can students get involved?
Prof. George P. Lakoff / Linguistics
How did we get in this mess? Prop 13 and the larger historic context
Prof. Chris Kutz / School of Law
Chair, Berkeley Division, Academic Senate
In addressing our current problems, what is the role of the Academic Senate, shared governance and the faculty?
Senior Lecturer Alan Karras / Political Economy (IASTP)
How does the budget crises affect lecturers, and through them, students?
Prof. Brian Barsky / Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Show Me the Money -- Student Fees and Intercollegiate Athletics
Prof. Fiona Doyle / Materials Science and Engineering
Vice Chair, Berkeley Division, Academic Senate
Educating Californians on the value of the University of California
Prof. Catherine M. Cole / Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
Why should this crisis matter to students? What’s at stake here?
Showing posts with label responses to higher ed budget crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label responses to higher ed budget crisis. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Letter From UCSD Doctoral Student Praising UC Merced
Letter to the Merced Sun-Star
I am a lecturer teaching at UC Merced who will complete the Doctorate of Philosophy in literature this fall. My graduate work was completed at UCSD where I studied for 8 years, where I am still affiliated, where I earned my Master’s and C. Phil degrees, and where I taught summer session last year. I remain involved with the literature department at UCSD, which probably accounts for my visceral response to Professor Scull’s letter. I chose to accept the offer to teach at UC Merced as the central valley is where I grew up and was the best of possible options for me; as First Lady Michelle Obama pointed out in her landmark graduation speech, the best use of a UC education is to stay local and utilize the myriad benefits to the community afforded by a UC education. The claims and contentions put forth by Professor Scull et al must not go unanswered, notwithstanding the fact that his proposals will most certainly not be enacted. The hubris in Scull’s tone, to say nothing of his conclusions is outrageous. Scull laments that recent cuts “deprive the excellent along with the less so.” Scull uses the term “excellence” throughout his proposal, which strikingly proves the argument in Bill Reading’s The University in Ruins wherein Reading logically designates the term as “empty,” or vacuous, and states that the university has come “"to understand itself solely in terms of the structure of corporate administration," and so it seems in the minds of Scull and his cohorts. It is well known that much of UCSDs “excellence” by Scull’s definition is derived from the multi-million dollar contracts it has historically won from government and corporate entities. As noted scholar David Harvey states, “difficulties attach to applying corporate logic when the "product" is something as undefined as "an educated student" and when there's a modicum of significance to the distinctions between getting an education and getting a qualification, between thinking and mere information processing, between producing knowledge and consuming it. Higher education for what and for whom?” For whom indeed? Scull suggests that the “pretence” be dropped that “all campuses are equal.” I would be very interested to know his definition of equal, though apparently “equal” in his optic is predicated on “excellence” as government and corporate funding. Indeed, and tellingly, he evidences his argument by likening the current university crisis to the solutions arrived at by automobile corporations. I find it particularly odd that Scull would make such determinations regarding equality and excellence as a Distinguished Professor of Sociology, given his web site message that sociology is “The study of the organization, culture, and development of collectivities… This includes the causes and consequences of collective action by groups, movements, and organizations.” UC Merced is nothing if not an exciting, dynamic, albeit embryonic, example of the consequences of organizational action. Scull has done a great disservice to the students of UC Merced by designating their campus as “less equal.” Apparently he has not done his homework. For instance in the last year UC Merced students of the National Society of Black Engineers took first place at the Conference of Black Engineers held in Redmond, Washington – incidentally besting teams from Stanford, USC and Cal Poly. Also, a team of UC Merced engineering students won Austria’s International Robotics Rescue Simulation competition which develops technology for disaster rescue, and included teams from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Iran, China, and Austria. How dare Scull and his signatories deem this campus “less than equal?” Having taught both campuses, I beg to differ. I have had the privilege here of teaching students who show brilliant promise in each of my classes. Not one of them have told me they are attending the university “because my parents want me to” as I heard repeatedly at UCSD, but many have voiced their desire to contribute in the fields of science, engineering, politics, and yes, the humanities. Some specifically chose UC Merced with the foresight to see that they would receive a more individual educational experience and have the opportunity to emerge as leaders in such a new school They include brilliant students who might otherwise have not had the opportunity to attend a UC, not because they didn’t “measure up” but because many of their parents could not afford to finance living expenses in such locales as La Jolla, and who work incredibly hard in their studies and outside jobs to foot the bill. Given the discrepancy in parent economic status between UCSD and UC Merced, one can’t help but wonder if the attendance demographics figure into Scull’s thinking; after all, UC Riverside has an enrollment of 25.3% Chicano/Hispanic students to 19.3%, “white” while UC Merced, while not posting ethnic breakdowns, would appear to be at least 40%. Many UC Merced students hail from the central valley, are first generation scholars and they will and have, despite Scull’s cursory dismissal of their “equality,” excel. While UC Merced contracts may not approach the income generation afforded a school that is 45 years established and strategically placed in a part of the state that thrives on the military and industry, UC Merced graduates will contribute greatly to society, not in the least to the underserved central valley, a society that Professor Scull so easily dismisses using corporate standards as judgment.
I am a lecturer teaching at UC Merced who will complete the Doctorate of Philosophy in literature this fall. My graduate work was completed at UCSD where I studied for 8 years, where I am still affiliated, where I earned my Master’s and C. Phil degrees, and where I taught summer session last year. I remain involved with the literature department at UCSD, which probably accounts for my visceral response to Professor Scull’s letter. I chose to accept the offer to teach at UC Merced as the central valley is where I grew up and was the best of possible options for me; as First Lady Michelle Obama pointed out in her landmark graduation speech, the best use of a UC education is to stay local and utilize the myriad benefits to the community afforded by a UC education. The claims and contentions put forth by Professor Scull et al must not go unanswered, notwithstanding the fact that his proposals will most certainly not be enacted. The hubris in Scull’s tone, to say nothing of his conclusions is outrageous. Scull laments that recent cuts “deprive the excellent along with the less so.” Scull uses the term “excellence” throughout his proposal, which strikingly proves the argument in Bill Reading’s The University in Ruins wherein Reading logically designates the term as “empty,” or vacuous, and states that the university has come “"to understand itself solely in terms of the structure of corporate administration," and so it seems in the minds of Scull and his cohorts. It is well known that much of UCSDs “excellence” by Scull’s definition is derived from the multi-million dollar contracts it has historically won from government and corporate entities. As noted scholar David Harvey states, “difficulties attach to applying corporate logic when the "product" is something as undefined as "an educated student" and when there's a modicum of significance to the distinctions between getting an education and getting a qualification, between thinking and mere information processing, between producing knowledge and consuming it. Higher education for what and for whom?” For whom indeed? Scull suggests that the “pretence” be dropped that “all campuses are equal.” I would be very interested to know his definition of equal, though apparently “equal” in his optic is predicated on “excellence” as government and corporate funding. Indeed, and tellingly, he evidences his argument by likening the current university crisis to the solutions arrived at by automobile corporations. I find it particularly odd that Scull would make such determinations regarding equality and excellence as a Distinguished Professor of Sociology, given his web site message that sociology is “The study of the organization, culture, and development of collectivities… This includes the causes and consequences of collective action by groups, movements, and organizations.” UC Merced is nothing if not an exciting, dynamic, albeit embryonic, example of the consequences of organizational action. Scull has done a great disservice to the students of UC Merced by designating their campus as “less equal.” Apparently he has not done his homework. For instance in the last year UC Merced students of the National Society of Black Engineers took first place at the Conference of Black Engineers held in Redmond, Washington – incidentally besting teams from Stanford, USC and Cal Poly. Also, a team of UC Merced engineering students won Austria’s International Robotics Rescue Simulation competition which develops technology for disaster rescue, and included teams from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Iran, China, and Austria. How dare Scull and his signatories deem this campus “less than equal?” Having taught both campuses, I beg to differ. I have had the privilege here of teaching students who show brilliant promise in each of my classes. Not one of them have told me they are attending the university “because my parents want me to” as I heard repeatedly at UCSD, but many have voiced their desire to contribute in the fields of science, engineering, politics, and yes, the humanities. Some specifically chose UC Merced with the foresight to see that they would receive a more individual educational experience and have the opportunity to emerge as leaders in such a new school They include brilliant students who might otherwise have not had the opportunity to attend a UC, not because they didn’t “measure up” but because many of their parents could not afford to finance living expenses in such locales as La Jolla, and who work incredibly hard in their studies and outside jobs to foot the bill. Given the discrepancy in parent economic status between UCSD and UC Merced, one can’t help but wonder if the attendance demographics figure into Scull’s thinking; after all, UC Riverside has an enrollment of 25.3% Chicano/Hispanic students to 19.3%, “white” while UC Merced, while not posting ethnic breakdowns, would appear to be at least 40%. Many UC Merced students hail from the central valley, are first generation scholars and they will and have, despite Scull’s cursory dismissal of their “equality,” excel. While UC Merced contracts may not approach the income generation afforded a school that is 45 years established and strategically placed in a part of the state that thrives on the military and industry, UC Merced graduates will contribute greatly to society, not in the least to the underserved central valley, a society that Professor Scull so easily dismisses using corporate standards as judgment.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
CSU Professor Advice to Faculty
1. You have to go after the administrators who have an agenda to destabilize the electorate and make the profs look like a self-serving privileged elite in a depressed economy.
2. The undergraduate degree is worthless. The corporate sponsors and the CEOs who now are at the top of the food chain have sacrificed the undergraduate degree for the cheap brilliance of the grad student working in the science lab.
3. The undergraduate student leaves the University with no expertise, critical thinking abilities, or job readiness.
4. We've let grade inflation and student-as-client philosophy create "the worthless BA degree and in the end create a new definition of The American Dream (more on this later)
5. Do you know if you oppose grade inflation there's (precedence) that I read today can make a case for your being fired.
6. I believe this is a move by administrators to end tenure and with it academic freedom. Can one of the Political theorists give a little input to my suppositions.
7. Threaten to make state audits of administrative overspending visible to the public. It's a war between the administration, the legislature and the Faculty. Now who is going to win if you don't get nasty.
The money is going to foreign countries. Some of these countries are totalitarian. And no one has control the way money is allocated. There is no shared governance. And now if you want to march in order to protest call in a professional organizer who can pull it together.
It's like a film shoot without a director.
- Sharyn Blumenthal CSU Long Beach
2. The undergraduate degree is worthless. The corporate sponsors and the CEOs who now are at the top of the food chain have sacrificed the undergraduate degree for the cheap brilliance of the grad student working in the science lab.
3. The undergraduate student leaves the University with no expertise, critical thinking abilities, or job readiness.
4. We've let grade inflation and student-as-client philosophy create "the worthless BA degree and in the end create a new definition of The American Dream (more on this later)
5. Do you know if you oppose grade inflation there's (precedence) that I read today can make a case for your being fired.
6. I believe this is a move by administrators to end tenure and with it academic freedom. Can one of the Political theorists give a little input to my suppositions.
7. Threaten to make state audits of administrative overspending visible to the public. It's a war between the administration, the legislature and the Faculty. Now who is going to win if you don't get nasty.
The money is going to foreign countries. Some of these countries are totalitarian. And no one has control the way money is allocated. There is no shared governance. And now if you want to march in order to protest call in a professional organizer who can pull it together.
It's like a film shoot without a director.
- Sharyn Blumenthal CSU Long Beach
Continuation: Newfield Response to Chris Edley
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You and I have met once – when you presented Berkeley Law’s financial planning to the Senate’s systemwide committee for Planning and Budget (UCPB) while I was chair – but I remember you as a charming, rigorous persuader, and have always respected your passionate advocacy for your law school unit.
You may not be aware that I have written two books about universities as cultural, intellectual, and financial institutions, as well as many articles on the subject in the US and abroad. But I know you know the UC budget reports I co-authored, which did three things: 1) they correctly predicted the gravity of the current crisis at a time when UCOP insisted that everything was fine; 2) they showed that only undesirably high tuition increases could make up for chronic and now massive cuts in the state portion of UC’s budget; 3) they called on UCOP and the Regents to make the public “ask” for a correct level of state funding.
The history is relevant here. Our Senate budget group calculated a reasonable recovery route as a return to the 2001 state funding effort for UC. In 2006-07 this meant we were down $1.1 billion from where we would have been had we continued to grow at the same rate as state personal income after 2001. The systemwide Academic Senate endorsed this recommendation for a return to the “2001 Pathway” through a UCOP/Regental deal with the legislature for a sustainable ramp-up. That was before the current crisis, when we could imagine this happening reasonably soon.
I and then-chair of the Senate John Oakley presented the Futures Report and the recommendation to the Regents in May 2007. The next year, my committee wrote the Cuts Report showing that the Governor was doing exactly the opposite of what UC required, which was to go beyond the worst of our four scenarios for reductions of public funding. That report recommended that UC set a minimum for state investment per student and not go below that. This would set a floor to the degradation of resources, after which we would reduce enrollments.
UCOP and the Regents ignored these formally endorsed recommendations. Even though we showed that the restoration of proper public funding is the only way to have a high-quality public research university with the widest possible access, I do not know of a single statement made by any UC official that has called for a major restoration of public funding. Instead, this was widely written off as a “non-starter,” although it is exactly how Pres. David Gardner got UC back on track in the 1980s – massive, repeated general fund increases – and although we all know that you will never receive if you don’t even ask in the first place.
You don’t tell us about any of “zillions” of ideas that have been considered - and in failing to offer even one concrete instance, your response reflects the lack of transparency and the vagueness of the financial analysis that the petition signers are rightly concerned about.
But I do know about one idea that you have advocated publicly and with your characteristic energy and eloquence: the era of public funding is over. I also know about your main solution: you got permission from the Regents to raise the fees at some UC professional schools to market, and you have nearly doubled Berkeley law tuition to almost $36,000 a year (Stanford is $42,420). The in-state fee exemption has also disappeared, although I assume Berkeley law still receives a good multiple of state general funds beyond that received per-student by the campuses.
This has protected Berkeley Law, but it is a doomsday scenario for UC as a whole. You help discourage UC from ever asking for correct levels of funding, even though you know that we neither can nor want the Berkeley Law solution of $20,000 rising to $40,000 tuition. We are caught in a trap that is in large part UC officialdom’s own making, and so far, Chris, you are making it worse.
This years cuts are a complete catastrophe for the University of California system. Please redirect your guns not at your own colleagues but at the downsizers who are degrading higher education for a now- minority-majority population at a time when we all need it the most.
It would be great to have you with us and not against us.
Best wishes, Chris
You and I have met once – when you presented Berkeley Law’s financial planning to the Senate’s systemwide committee for Planning and Budget (UCPB) while I was chair – but I remember you as a charming, rigorous persuader, and have always respected your passionate advocacy for your law school unit.
You may not be aware that I have written two books about universities as cultural, intellectual, and financial institutions, as well as many articles on the subject in the US and abroad. But I know you know the UC budget reports I co-authored, which did three things: 1) they correctly predicted the gravity of the current crisis at a time when UCOP insisted that everything was fine; 2) they showed that only undesirably high tuition increases could make up for chronic and now massive cuts in the state portion of UC’s budget; 3) they called on UCOP and the Regents to make the public “ask” for a correct level of state funding.
The history is relevant here. Our Senate budget group calculated a reasonable recovery route as a return to the 2001 state funding effort for UC. In 2006-07 this meant we were down $1.1 billion from where we would have been had we continued to grow at the same rate as state personal income after 2001. The systemwide Academic Senate endorsed this recommendation for a return to the “2001 Pathway” through a UCOP/Regental deal with the legislature for a sustainable ramp-up. That was before the current crisis, when we could imagine this happening reasonably soon.
I and then-chair of the Senate John Oakley presented the Futures Report and the recommendation to the Regents in May 2007. The next year, my committee wrote the Cuts Report showing that the Governor was doing exactly the opposite of what UC required, which was to go beyond the worst of our four scenarios for reductions of public funding. That report recommended that UC set a minimum for state investment per student and not go below that. This would set a floor to the degradation of resources, after which we would reduce enrollments.
UCOP and the Regents ignored these formally endorsed recommendations. Even though we showed that the restoration of proper public funding is the only way to have a high-quality public research university with the widest possible access, I do not know of a single statement made by any UC official that has called for a major restoration of public funding. Instead, this was widely written off as a “non-starter,” although it is exactly how Pres. David Gardner got UC back on track in the 1980s – massive, repeated general fund increases – and although we all know that you will never receive if you don’t even ask in the first place.
You don’t tell us about any of “zillions” of ideas that have been considered - and in failing to offer even one concrete instance, your response reflects the lack of transparency and the vagueness of the financial analysis that the petition signers are rightly concerned about.
But I do know about one idea that you have advocated publicly and with your characteristic energy and eloquence: the era of public funding is over. I also know about your main solution: you got permission from the Regents to raise the fees at some UC professional schools to market, and you have nearly doubled Berkeley law tuition to almost $36,000 a year (Stanford is $42,420). The in-state fee exemption has also disappeared, although I assume Berkeley law still receives a good multiple of state general funds beyond that received per-student by the campuses.
This has protected Berkeley Law, but it is a doomsday scenario for UC as a whole. You help discourage UC from ever asking for correct levels of funding, even though you know that we neither can nor want the Berkeley Law solution of $20,000 rising to $40,000 tuition. We are caught in a trap that is in large part UC officialdom’s own making, and so far, Chris, you are making it worse.
This years cuts are a complete catastrophe for the University of California system. Please redirect your guns not at your own colleagues but at the downsizers who are degrading higher education for a now- minority-majority population at a time when we all need it the most.
It would be great to have you with us and not against us.
Best wishes, Chris
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Continuation: UCSB Town Hall
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First, Elizabeth Robinson, Director of KCSB radio:
We also received this vivid description of the town hall:
Yesterday's town-hall style meeting was remarkable for large attendance (at least 800), for breadth of participation, and for the cogency of the analysis and particular proposals from the floor. Evidently, the specter of a tax upon our salary, imposed without due process and with no promise that it will not be the first of many, concentrates the attention of us all. (as Samuel Johnson famously said of those awaiting hanging).
Post-mortem skepticism: in brief talks and email exchanges after the meeting yesturday most of us strongly suspect that nothing will change with the administration or the faculty senate; that they have fumbled the ball on the budget crisis and that they refused to take the ball we tried to hand them.
So for example, we suspect that there will be no press conference led by Henry Yang, there will be no joint statement by Chancellors as Stephanie Lemenager and Ann Adams recommended, there will be no getting gumption and fight or getting 'pissed' as Lisa Hajjar and Laurie Monahan urged, and there will be no appointment of a broad-based UCSB budget crisis as Jon Snyder and I suggested, and there will be no real transparency of process as Edward
Woolfold and Cindy Cortez and others suggested. As Nelson Lichtenstein suggested after the meeting, Henry and Gene and Joel will get their administrative 'gold stars' if they can get us to accept these salary taxes as our natural fate.
If this skeptical prognosis comes true, what should we do? Reduced to its simplest form, I suggest we do ourselves what we spent 90 minutes asking our administrators to do. This would require harnessing the power of yesterday's town meeting. I think we should hold not a faux town meeting but a real town meeting, in the style of the eighteenth century town meetings of Boston that are part of my current book project. Here is one version of what it would/
could look like.
Triggering crisis: the Regents vote on July 14th to use our salaries (and the household budgets they sustain) as the state's budget crisis cash box.
Schedule a UCSB Town-Meeting for Thursday July 23rd in Campbell Hall at Noon or 3:00PM (when we know that it is probably available). More here.
Option 4 has a letter to Chancellor Yang from Digital Imaging Specialist Maura M. Jess that reads in part:
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First, Elizabeth Robinson, Director of KCSB radio:
The town hall meeting that [Chancellor Henry] Yang had invited all employees to yesterday was an amazing event. Faculty, staff, union and non, lecturers and a sprinkling of students insisted that he and [Executive Vice Chancellor] Gene [Lucas] call for a moratorium on cuts, for establishing a public campaign to save public education and the like. We broke out our buttons, the seal of the UC with prison bars gripped by hands superimposed and a red banner across the whole reading 'I'm for Option 4'. It's catching on. We've called for a planning meeting in front of Cheadle on Monday to which we're inviting other educators, state employees and the general public. I have never seen anything like it in my many years here. We spanked 'em good! More later. Oh, and Monica set up an 'ning', which is option4.ning.com. Anyone can join and add things to it. Check it out.The Option 4 Ning has posted a video clip of a statement by UCSB History Professor Nelson Lichtenstein. He calls for, among other things, a moratorium on cuts pending a read investigation and dialog, and NO emergency powers for President Yudof. This line got huge applause. Nelson is right to suggest that these powers, even as currently scaled back, mark a fundamental shift in shared governance, an increase in the executive powers of the presidency at the expense of everyone else.
We also received this vivid description of the town hall:
Well, we had the usual blah blah blah powerpoint presentations, which some attempted to interrupt. Specifically, A. was to stand up after the admin. team had spoken for 30 minutes or so and we were to take over the mike. S.'s job was to start out shouting "change the story" and then "let her speak" as she approached. S. did it. The audience divided--some for letting her speak while others shouting S. down with "let us listen." Our friend J. delivered the coup de grace by yelling "Sit down" at A. --sounding like Clint Eastwood in one of his recent righteous old man roles. Then the meeting went forward, the administrators very speedily (some gratification) finishing their inevitability spiel. Q and A was mixed. Some excellent remarks: Nelson Lichtenstein, Lisa Parks (excellent, thoughtful set of rhetorical questions), Laurie Monahan, Jon Snyder (substantive), Bill Warner (also substantive, with some rhetorical flourish). Aranye went first and was also quite eloquent. Reaction? [Chancellor] Henry [Yang] refused to agree to setting up a fac-staff-administrative task force to look at the situation, nor would he confirm, when pressed, that he'd bring our complaints to the Regents' meeting next week. There appeared to be no admin support for postponement of the Regents' meeting [ed: decision on cuts?]. [Executive Vice Chancellor] Lucas told us that the real problem was Sacramento and that it wasn't important for the administrators to speak to the press--rather, the job is ours; we are to "write to our legislators," if we want to see real change. The admin is "hamstrung" by Sacramento. Incredible patronizing deflection. J. sat fat and happy, once the insurrection was down, and failed to answer a question about exactly how much of the u.'s funding comes from the state. Truly, they seemed a ship of fools. Faculty, staff, and student response was more promising, but also a little cowed, scared, and at times out and out butt kissing. (Two men got up to say that "we"--whoever that is--"ought" not to shirk "our" responsibilities by asking the Chancellor to speak to the press, speak to the Regents, and take on the university. That kind of media blitz is "our" job. Were these guys plants? I swear they had bodyguards in Campbell. One sat next to Bill and Aranye). That said, some important issues were aired, some good stuff got put on the table (even if it was shot down or ignored), and a few people realized "dissent" isn't a short-form for dysentery.Alice O'Connor provided some context:
I see you still have your senses about you, which is a far cry from the more than usual lunacy that is gripping the state, the university, the whole of officialdom for that matter, as they drag us into the vortex of the great unraveling--and actually ask us to help it along!! Mark Sanford, Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin: these are the great avatars of our political culture, each of them caught up in, and caught short by, their own artifice, each slowly, painfully and then suddenly unraveling before our very eyes, even as they remain immunized against the far great damage they wreak upon others. Sarah, of course, will make a pile of dough on the deal.Bill Warner sent a comment on the Power of the Town Meeting
I'm sure you've been hearing about the "town hall" the other day, which was notably polite and respectful in that Santa Barbara way BUT also really heartening, because in that polite and respectful way the packed hall told Henry et al in no uncertain terms that caving in to the logic of ever more and ever deeper cuts, accepting the "options" put before us, enabling this extraordinary assumption of power, and doing nothing whatsoever to fight back is simply unacceptable. Now, what Henry is going to do at the Regents' meeting next week is anybody's guess. Anyway, there is momentum and when I've got more time I'll talk to you about a couple of ideas I've been kicking around.
Yesterday's town-hall style meeting was remarkable for large attendance (at least 800), for breadth of participation, and for the cogency of the analysis and particular proposals from the floor. Evidently, the specter of a tax upon our salary, imposed without due process and with no promise that it will not be the first of many, concentrates the attention of us all. (as Samuel Johnson famously said of those awaiting hanging).
Post-mortem skepticism: in brief talks and email exchanges after the meeting yesturday most of us strongly suspect that nothing will change with the administration or the faculty senate; that they have fumbled the ball on the budget crisis and that they refused to take the ball we tried to hand them.
So for example, we suspect that there will be no press conference led by Henry Yang, there will be no joint statement by Chancellors as Stephanie Lemenager and Ann Adams recommended, there will be no getting gumption and fight or getting 'pissed' as Lisa Hajjar and Laurie Monahan urged, and there will be no appointment of a broad-based UCSB budget crisis as Jon Snyder and I suggested, and there will be no real transparency of process as Edward
Woolfold and Cindy Cortez and others suggested. As Nelson Lichtenstein suggested after the meeting, Henry and Gene and Joel will get their administrative 'gold stars' if they can get us to accept these salary taxes as our natural fate.
If this skeptical prognosis comes true, what should we do? Reduced to its simplest form, I suggest we do ourselves what we spent 90 minutes asking our administrators to do. This would require harnessing the power of yesterday's town meeting. I think we should hold not a faux town meeting but a real town meeting, in the style of the eighteenth century town meetings of Boston that are part of my current book project. Here is one version of what it would/
could look like.
Triggering crisis: the Regents vote on July 14th to use our salaries (and the household budgets they sustain) as the state's budget crisis cash box.
Schedule a UCSB Town-Meeting for Thursday July 23rd in Campbell Hall at Noon or 3:00PM (when we know that it is probably available). More here.
Option 4 has a letter to Chancellor Yang from Digital Imaging Specialist Maura M. Jess that reads in part:
I am myself a UCSB alumnus, acquiring undergrad and graduate degrees in Biological Science in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. I returned as a staff member in 1991 and have been employed here ever since, 17 years in the Neuroscience Research Institute and most recently 2 ½ years in Instructional Development. I feel fortunate and enriched to work here and to have experienced UCSB through so many perspectives. As a result I am particularly dismayed as it becoming apparent that this campus and the amazing and noble resources and opportunities it provides will be seriously and irrevocably compromised should the decision be made to go forth with any of the budget solutions currently on the table. The system itself has become unmanageable and if we continue to compensate for what isn’t working we are digging our own hole.What is Option 4? UCSB's Defend the University lists 4 demands. At a minimum it is the defeat of J1 and J2, the new emergency powers and the cuts tied to the declaring of a fiscal emergency. Stay tuned.
What are the real solutions? I think they will emerge when we begin an honest appraisal of what is actually going on. Follow the dollar. Is it a budget crisis or a distribution crisis? Over the years co-workers and I have had to resolve in our minds the many inequities that manifest in the “trenches”; questionable pay scales. “revolving-door” retirement practices, heavy handed and wasteful management styles. Should not the waste and inequity in our system be addressed before applying direct cuts (taxes) to people’s income? The damage to morale would have an incalculable cost. It is one thing to take a hit knowing you are valued and represented. It is quite another to feel disposable. To imagine that this would not have the most negative of impacts on our day-to-day operations would be naïve.
The larger impact of bandaging our own wound without regard for the condition of California education in general is in my opinion also short sighted. I agree with the many speakers yesterday who have encouraged UCSB to go public with our current situation and do so in solidarity with all of California’s public education systems.
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Continuation: Save the CSU
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The university system has long served as a foundation for California business and economic growth. These cuts to the CSU undermine California's economic recovery. These cuts jeopardize the future of our students who depend on access to higher education today to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow.
Did you know that our universities are already severely weakened by years of underfunding? California education is celebrated around the world, but the ominous truth is that higher education is already in trouble. Budget cuts now will deny about 50,000 students access to CSU. It already takes 6 years to finish a “4-year” degree at a CSU. Fewer classes will make it even harder for students to graduate. Without a college degree, high school graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed. This heavy burden threatens California’s future.
Renew the promise. Restore the funding. Revive California's future.Click here to send a letter to CSU Chancellor Reed, Governor Schwarzenegger, and key California legislators. The prosperity of California depends on education. CSU students are tomorrow's work force, and they need quality education today. The Future is Now.
Sincerely,
CSU Faculty, Students, Staff, and Friends
Save the CSU
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The university system has long served as a foundation for California business and economic growth. These cuts to the CSU undermine California's economic recovery. These cuts jeopardize the future of our students who depend on access to higher education today to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow.
Did you know that our universities are already severely weakened by years of underfunding? California education is celebrated around the world, but the ominous truth is that higher education is already in trouble. Budget cuts now will deny about 50,000 students access to CSU. It already takes 6 years to finish a “4-year” degree at a CSU. Fewer classes will make it even harder for students to graduate. Without a college degree, high school graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed. This heavy burden threatens California’s future.
Renew the promise. Restore the funding. Revive California's future.
Sincerely,
CSU Faculty, Students, Staff, and Friends
Save the CSU
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UC PETITION - STOP THE CUTS!
LINK TO SIGNATURE SITE
The Governor and the State Legislature have cut the University of California's General Fund since 1990 to date by 40%. The new proposal is to cut another 20%. The UC President’s response so far has been to request emergency financial powers for himself (Regents J1) and to cut state-funded employee pay from 4% to 10% via furloughs. These proposed cuts will severely degrade the quality of the University of California. They constitute a direct attack on the educational future of California’s multiracial population whose educational attainment has already declined precipitously in the wake of two previous rounds of major cuts. The new cuts pose a fatal threat to the University’s ability to remain a world-class institution. The Regents’ and the UC President’s passivity has contributed to the disastrous decline of educational funding in California, to the state’s current dismal educational level, and to its diminished economic future.
In light of all this, We, the undersigned, demand that the Regents of the University of California:
The Governor and the State Legislature have cut the University of California's General Fund since 1990 to date by 40%. The new proposal is to cut another 20%. The UC President’s response so far has been to request emergency financial powers for himself (Regents J1) and to cut state-funded employee pay from 4% to 10% via furloughs. These proposed cuts will severely degrade the quality of the University of California. They constitute a direct attack on the educational future of California’s multiracial population whose educational attainment has already declined precipitously in the wake of two previous rounds of major cuts. The new cuts pose a fatal threat to the University’s ability to remain a world-class institution. The Regents’ and the UC President’s passivity has contributed to the disastrous decline of educational funding in California, to the state’s current dismal educational level, and to its diminished economic future.
In light of all this, We, the undersigned, demand that the Regents of the University of California:
- Implement an immediate freeze on all proposed cuts until alternatives can be openly considered at the September 2009 Regents Meeting.
- Thoroughly investigate alternatives to the proposed cuts in services with a full report due at the Regents meeting in September 2009.
- Immediately initiate a University-wide open dialogue on how the cuts will affect the quality of education, recruitment of faculty and staff, and the future of the University of California itself.
- Begin concerted lobbying of the Legislature and Governor’s Office to stop defunding public education and to independently investigate prevailing status quo assumptions about the state of California’s economy.
- Produce a five-year plan that aims to restore UC quality and integrity. Such a plan should protect and nurture human capital by refusing worker layoffs and pay cuts in a system where the vast majority of employees already lag behind their peers in cost of living standards.
CSU Anti-Cuts Protest July 21
There will be a "Save the CSU" protest rally at the Chancellor's Office,
on July 21, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at 401 Golden Shore, Long Beach
CA 90802. Please distribute this notice widely to students, colleagues, and
supporters of public education, and please plan to attend.
on July 21, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at 401 Golden Shore, Long Beach
CA 90802. Please distribute this notice widely to students, colleagues, and
supporters of public education, and please plan to attend.
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