More Tacit Support from Berkeley Administration?

Today Berkeley campus community members received an email from the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs regarding the restoration of library hours to their normal level.  Due to the budget cuts most libraries were closed on the weekends and they would not be open for 24 hrs during finals week.  The hours were restored using donations from parents.  Contained in the email was the following sentence:

Recent events and concerns raised by students, faculty and staff served as important reminders to all of us that libraries are a critical resource for students and a vital part of this university.

This is an allusion to the library 'study in' which occurred at the anthropology library last weekend.  I might be reading too much into it, but I imagine that its a bit of tacit approval.

Solidarity, What is a Public University?

For me this poem by Isaac Miller, a Berkeley junior, was the best part of the rally.  It was electrifying, particularly after the first two minutes or so.  Give it a watch.

Our University

September 24th, 12pm Sproul Plaza: Be there

To all my Berkeley friends,  12 pm at Sproul plaza tomorrow.  Together with the faculty, staff and students of all 10 campuses of the UC system, we are going to let the UC leadership and the state of California know that they cannot continue to underfund education in this state.  I'll be at the north end of LeConte at 11:40 if you want to walk over together. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons

"When I am out on the quad tomorrow, it will be with the intention of motivating the leadership in this university to fight, fight like hell, to make the case to the public and the legislature that we MUST support a public option for higher education." --John Conway, UC Davis Physics Professor 

Update: SAVE the University, an organization of Berkeley faculty, has an excellent, reasoned document on the details of the situation.

Update on Why I'm Walking Out

The Daily Cal has a good editorial today, I've picked out the part I particularly agree with:

Walk the Talk (Daily Cal Senior Editorial Board)

University Issues: We endorse the walkout as a critical attempt to demonstrate to voters that higher education must be prioritized.

.....

This walkout should target voters across the state; only they are empowered to institute remedies for the ultimate root of the crisis-the failure of the Legislature to fully fund higher education, partially due to the 2/3 majority requirement. By consolidating and unifying the message the walkout aims to send, we can more coherently argue for fundamental, systemic change, rather than simply forcing administrators to acquiesce to the immediate demands of a loud, hostile and disruptive crowd.

As a board composed entirely of students, we understand the concerns of the community and each of us has personally felt the struggles inflicted by the budget cuts. We acknowledge that administrators largely have their hands tied this year, and we each have to sacrifice in the wake of unprecedented budget cuts. But though we will bear our burden cooperatively this year, that's not to say this system can continue.

Enough is enough-enough tuition hikes, enough pay cuts, enough layoffs, enough enrollment cuts. Now is the time to advocate for future change, and the walkout is an important symbol and initial step to effect this change on a broad scale. To this aim, we urge students to participate in the walkout, educate themselves and show voters that students do value public higher education. Most importantly, do not allow yourselves to be sucked into unproductive extremism. This movement can only be successful if participants remain united behind a cause, and pointing fingers will not achieve that end. It's time to move forward.

Why I'm Walking Out

Apologies for this post being so unpolished!  It was hastily written, but you get the point!

A University of California wide walk out has been called for this Thursday, September 24th, to protest the UC President and UC Regents' handling of the budget crisis.  The walkout is a joint effort of faculty, students and the unions.  The demands as laid out by the faculty are:

1. No furloughs or paycuts on salaries below $40,000.
2. The immediate institution of the Academic Senate Council's July 29 recommendation regarding the implementation of furloughs.
3. Full disclosure of the budget.

I've thought long and hard about taking this action.  Much of the propaganda in favor of the walk out have been populist claims of excesses in executive compensation and hordes of money stashed away by UC administrators, planting images of fat cats gorging themselves on caviar while the poor, downtrodden university community withers away, starving.  The reality is that you have to pay people to run the best public university system in the country and that there are no piles of cash lying around.  These arguments are dubious at best, and only serve to obscure the real problems.

First and foremost the blame lies with the legislature.  When adjusted for inflation it allocates to education half of what it did in 1990.  California ranks in the bottom 10 in the nation in education spending.  We spend as much on prisons as we do educating the people who will one day drive the economic engine of the state.  The problems in our state governance are systemic.  It is harder to raise taxes than it is to take away a fundamental right.  The uninformed voting public essentially determines the budget through the ridiculous proposition system.  However, as hopeless as it may seem, every person who cares about the University of California, especially those participating in the walk out, should call, email or write their representatives to tell them that the cuts to education are absolutely unacceptable, that education insures our future, and when they cut funding to education they are crippling California.  You can do this through this website http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/cal/home/

However, the walkout is not about the legislature, it is about the actions the UC administration has taken to deal with the budget situation.  From what I've read and from listening to Mark Yudof, the UC President, whose address to the Regents and students is below, the administration is taking a defeatist stance which is additionally out of line with the mission of the University. 

Mark Yudof at the Regents Meeting: Part 1 of 3

Watching Yudof's address I was struck by how whiny and defensive he sounds.  Nobody argues that this crisis will take sacrifices from all of us, however, he insinuates that the student body is trying to avoid them.  He flatly says that he has given up on the legislature, and petulantly complains that his opposition won't engage the politicians as he has.  That defensive and combative posture does nothing but entrench the idea of the administration pitting themselves against the University community.  They have ignored the faculty recommendations and are filling the budget gaps on the backs of the middle class.  The following video by Ananya Roy, a distinguished UC Berkeley professor, articulates the arguments for the walk out much better than I could.

Ananya Roy at Berkeley ASUC Meeting

Most importantly, I am participating in the walk out because I love the University.  Walking out and joining my voice with other Cal community members, even if I don't agree with some of their specific arguments, is a way of saying to the world that what is happening to the UC is unacceptable.  What the University of California stands for is too important to let slip quietly away.

Besides, what kind of Berkeley student would I be if I didn't go to a protest at least once a year?!?!

Here is a list of links if you want more information:

A compelling open letter by Cal faculty member Catherine Cole
A website detailing the faculty resolution, over 800 UC faculty have signed
A blog compiling news coverage and other information
A faculty member, Brad DeLong, on the academic ramifications of some of the cuts and how the administration couched them.
Also related, the legislature is trying to make a power grab and control UC, using the populist executive compensation arguments as justification, tell them to stop!

And again, please please please email your representatives and the governor.