"Restructuring" the CSU or Wrecking It? -- A CFA White Paper

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December, 2009

Dear Colleagues,

On every one of our campuses, we are seeing signs of a profound change in the mission of our California State University that is being implemented from the top under cover of the economic crisis.

The CFA White Paper-"Restructuring the CSU or Wrecking It?"- is our effort to make sense of the big picture swirling around us. (click here to read) We hope you will read it and discuss it with colleagues on your campus and among the communities served by the CSU.

Every day, we encounter new evidence that the changes being made are not intended to help weather the economic crisis, but rather to make the CSU smaller, more elite, and structured to serve the strict needs of corporate interests rather than the broad interests of a participatory democracy.

At the CSU Trustees' meeting in November, CFA President Lillian Taiz and other faculty members as well as staff and students spoke to the Trustees about the issues we address in this paper. As usual, each speaker was allotted only three minutes in which to frame and analyze the "restructuring" process underway.

After listening to the speakers, the chair of the Board's only comment was to chastise the speakers for taking too much time-instead of the allotted 30 minutes the public comment lasted 50 minutes. Clearly the Chair regards the "public comment" period as an annoying legal requirement rather than a meaningful opportunity to hear from the public who have a stake in the future of their university.

The executives and Trustees of the CSU are rapidly reducing the number of students in the CSU, in order to address the state funding shortfall. They have furloughed employees to save money and raised student fees by one-third this year alone. They are preparing to slash entire academic programs, to destroy remediation programs, and to move courses in unprecedented numbers to the more expensive "self-support" operation.

They have done all this without any public discussion at the Board of Trustees, with the legislature, or with the communities our institutions serve.

CFA believes that the drastic change in the mission of the CSU moving apace on our campuses deserves public dialogue, analysis, and debate.

As one piece of the conversation, we offer this paper. And we call once again on the faculty, staff and students of the CSU to step forward. We are the ones who must stand up for the CSU.

Click here to read the white paper. It is also accessible from the front page of the CFA website www.calfac.org

The officers of the California Faculty Association:

Lillian Taiz, President Andy Merrifield, Associate VP North
Kim Geron, Vice President Dave Bradfield, Associate VP South
John Halcón, Secretary Jonathan Karpf, Associate VP Lecturers North
Peter Kreysa, Treasurer Elizabeth Hoffman, Associate VP Lecturers South
Cecil Canton, Associate VP Affirmative Action