‘
Clad in blue and gold armbands and customized caution tape, about 100 students, faculty and staff gathered at the steps of Peterson Hall last Thursday for an hour-long teach-in addressing the effects of the budget crisis.
While the coinciding walkout was heavily attended by students, only an estimated 40 undergraduates attended the teach-in. The rest of the assembly was made up of faculty and staff.
Communications professor Brian Goldfarb, who helped organize the teach-in, said it was an event intended to educate and inform.
‘We had questions, but we were not trying to promote one particular way of dealing with it, because it’s a long-term issue,’ Goldfarb said. ‘The call for a strike or a walkout was generated by faculty on other campuses. [Some faculty] thought the first day of action was not the best day, but it was nothing we could really stop.’
About a dozen faculty members spoke on issues ranging from concern over the new furlough plan to rising student fees, and presented possible ways to confront the perceived long-term privatization of the university.
‘Turning around the privatization that has been occurring over the past 25 to 30 years is going to take another decade, but this is a good time to start,’ Goldfarb said. ‘There is a certain silver lining of this as a wake-up call.’
Faculty discussed various alternative solutions to plummeting state funding, including an enrollment plan modeled after the University of Michigan ‘mdash; one that would significantly increase out-of-state enrollment and create revenue. Others argued that such a system wouldn’t work in California.
Visual arts professor Micha Cardenas voiced support for an alternative budget proposal created by AFSCME that would utilize profits from the five UC Medical Centers and only cut salaries above $200,000.
Cardenas also encouraged students and faculty to go on a prolonged strike in order to cause maximum systemwide disruption.
‘A one-day walkout will create some bad press [for the university] and cost them some money, but tomorrow will be business as usual unless faculty and staff go on a longer strike, which is what I hope happens,’ she said.
In addition to possibly increased fees, students are also witnessing the impact of the cuts on current course instruction.
‘The faculty-student ratio has increased enormously over the last couple of decades,’ Goldfarb said. ‘Places like Texas are taking our faculty, and we can’t get them back. We’re facing real huge losses.’
Literature professor Fatima El-Tayeb e-mailed her students before classes started last week to inform them that she could no longer hold meetings with students outside of office hours because of the strict limitations placed on furlough days.
She is also posting class material online instead of requiring textbooks, in an effort to limit costs for students.
Like many professors, El-Tayeb held class on Thursday, but dedicated part of her lecture to educating students about the walkout and explaining the effects of the budget cuts on education.
‘There were very few people who strictly walked out,’ Goldfarb said. ‘What many of them did was create curricular units in their class based on the economic issues facing California and the education system. There is a very strong educational component to this event.’
A larger, more comprehensive, systemwide teach-in is planned for Oct. 14. Future events and updates to the budget situation can be found at http://savingucsd.ning.com.