Walkout Called Over UC Budget Cuts

Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 (09-15) 14:45 PDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hundreds of faculty, students and staff from the University of California's 10 campuses are calling for a systemwide walkout Sept. 24 to protest UC's handling of its budget crisis.

The protest is intended to disrupt classes to call attention to the deep impact of millions of dollars of budget cuts on the quality of education throughout the UC system.

What began in recent weeks as a proposed faculty walkout coinciding with the first day of school next Thursday at some campuses - including UCSF, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz - has grown to include graduate and undergraduate student groups, and labor unions representing thousands of employees.

"We hope to accomplish a freeze on tuition increases, protection for the most vulnerable employees, and a return to respect for democratic process," said Joshua Clover, an associate professor of English at UC Davis who helped draft a petition urging the walkout that has been signed by 743 faculty members representing each campus.

UC's governing Board of Regents is meeting in San Francisco today and will hear a proposal by UC President Mark Yudof to raise student tuition by about 30 percent by fall 2010. The university says it is trying to close a budget shortfall of at least $753 million for this year and next.

In July, the regents approved a furlough plan requiring every employee to take between 11 and 26 days off during the school year without pay. Employees with higher pay would take off the most days. Each campus was to decide how the furloughs would be implemented.

Faculty anger fermented at the end of August, when interim Provost Lawrence Pitts announced that faculty would not be permitted to take their furlough days during teaching days.

This was not what faculty groups had decided. Assuming they had a voice on instructional matters under UC's system of shared governance, they had voted to split the days off among teaching, research and office hours "to send a message that budget cuts do in fact negatively impact the University's instructional mission," Mary Croughan, then chairwoman of the Academic Council, representing faculty, had written in a memo last month to Pitts.

The petition calling for a walkout began as growing numbers of faculty complained that UC had flouted their will. It demands that furloughs be permitted on teaching days and that there be no pay cuts for employees earning less than $40,000.

Pitts, flooded with letters of protest, said in an open letter to faculty last Thursday that furloughs on teaching days would be too hard on students and would be perceived as using them "to make a political point in Sacramento."

Yet support for the walkout has been growing. The Graduate Assembly, UC's graduate student government, and the UC Student Association both approved resolutions in recent days supporting next week's walkout.

"I'm absolutely supporting this walkout, and am working to educate other graduate students about it," said Annie McClanahan, a doctoral student in English at UC Berkeley who is organizing a noon rally on Sproul Plaza on the day of the walkout against employee pay cuts and student tuition hikes.

McClanahan said she knows of many faculty members who, instead of walking out of class, say they will use the day to teach their students about UC's budget crisis.

UC employs more than 12,000 faculty members and about 3,500 lecturers. It's unclear how many plan to participate.