I thought this might be of interest...<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><p style="font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/30/california-university-berkeley-budget-protest" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/30/california-university-berkeley-budget-protest</a><br>
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<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><h1 style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-right-color: rgb(0, 97, 166); border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 97, 166); border-left-color: rgb(0, 97, 166); font-family: georgia,serif; width: 460px; line-height: 1.154; font-size: 2.166em; border-top-width: 0px; font-weight: normal;">
Save California's universities</h1></span></p><p style="padding: 0px 0px 34px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; line-height: 1.25; width: 460px; font-size: 1.333em; font-family: arial,sans-serif; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
The promise of affordable higher education is dying. The University of California's students and faculty demand answers</p><p style="padding: 0px 0px 34px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; line-height: 1.25; width: 460px; font-size: 1.333em; font-family: arial,sans-serif; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
by <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/judith-butler" name="124255ebb60d3562_12421886ca6c7cfc_&lid={contentTypeByline}{Judith Butler}&lpos={contentTypeByline}{1}" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Judith Butler</a></span></p>
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<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
It may seem that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/24/california-university-berkeley-budget-protest" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the thousands of people who converged on the University of California Berkeley</a>'s
famous Sproul Plaza, home of the free speech movement, on 24 September
were simply upset about money. Where has all the money gone? Who has
taken it away?And perhaps there is no one to blame.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
The University of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/california" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">California</a> finds
itself with a shortfall of $1.15bn for the next two years, the result
of an $813m cut in state funding and another $225m increase in costs
for student enrolment. Everyone knows that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/27/california-budget-us-economy" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the state government is dysfunctional</a>,
that public funding decreased by 40% between 1990 and 2005 and that
this year alone brought another 20% reduction, accelerating the
abandonment of the premiere public university by a California
legislature fully paralysed by minority rule (a two-thirds majority is
required for sealing any budgetary deal) and<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281978%29" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Proposition 13</a> (the 1978 ban on increasing property taxes that strangleholds any attempt to increase revenues for public services).</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
It would seem like UC faces the same situation as other public services
and institutions: layoffs, cutbacks, decreased services and the
prospect of a seriously compromised education for undergraduates and
graduates alike. So what's the problem?</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Mid-summer, when no one was around, UC president <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Californias-Public-Univers/47867" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mark Yudof invoked "emergency powers"</a> to
implement furloughs on staff and faculty, and sent word to campuses
that drastic cuts had to be made in operating expenses. Claiming that
the UC system has no funds from which to draw in such dire moments,
Yudof devised <a href="http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/jul09/j2.pdf" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">a plan</a>, which includes a graduated salary reduction programme for all staff and faculty who make more than $40,000 a year.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
One might have expected faculty and staff to understand the dire
circumstances that led to these lamentable cuts. But it became clear
that certain cuts actually devastated some programmes, while others
absorbed the setback with ready reserves. The administration did not
wait to reach a settlement with the unions. The faculty briefly
canvassed were certainly not party to the decision.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
As a result, the bad news that deans handed down at the beginning of
the semester eliminated 2,000 positions, gutted programmes that train
high school teachers in science education, closed courses in East Asian
languages and advanced Arabic, overburdened classrooms, shut students
out of their majors, let scores of lecturers go and closed the
university library on Saturday. In addition, the administration
demanded of students tuition and fee increases of nearly 40%,
imperilling the very notion of an affordable public university and
forcing many students to leave the university or scramble for full-time
jobs.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Yudof's attempts to explain himself have only helped solidify a sense
of outrage on the part of faculty, staff, students and the wider
public. The result is a profound and growing scepticism about Yudof's
ability to advocate for the future of the public university.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Those of us who were trying to develop a balanced critique of both the
paralysis of the state economy and the questionable governance by UC
administrators were incredulous when <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27fob-q4-t.html" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Yudof gave an interview to the New York Times Magazine</a> in
which he bragged about his own $800,000 salary, shamelessly displayed
his anti-intellectualism, described his entry into the field of
education as "an accident" and complained that he tries to speak to
faculty and staff about the budget, but it is "speaking to the dead".</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Suddenly, the problem was not only fiscal – "we don't have the money" –
but a more profound loss of confidence in the mode of governance and
the figure of authority entrusted with making the case for public
education to the state and federal government during these hard times.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Faculty, staff and students are collectively outraged that the
university has failed to make public and transparent what the cuts have
been and will be, and by what criteria and set of priorities such cuts
are made. Rage also centres on the devastation of "shared governance" –
the policy that faculty must be part of any decision-making that
affects the academic programmes and direction of the university. In its
place, a "commission" was appointed by the administration with paltry
representation by faculty. Emphatically missing are those in the arts
and humanities.<br style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
<br style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
No answers are forthcoming to a set of burning questions: Why in this
age of slash and burn has the UC administration bloated by 283%, as
their own public financial reports make plain? And why does the
university spend $10m a year on inter-collegiate athletics and over
$123m on a new athletic centre?</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
During a time of corrosive neo-liberalism and rising doubts about
education and the arts as public goods worthy of state support, the
administration ducks and hides – when it is not boasting about its own
stupidity, failing to take up the task of making its decision-making
process transparent, refusing to honour the mandate to bring in the
faculty to share in establishing priorities and weakening the
safeguards against a rampant privatisation of this public good that
will undercut the university's core commitment to offer an education
both excellent and affordable.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
Many sceptics murmured that the call for a walk out and teach in on 24 September would come to nothing. So when over <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13411067" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">5,000 students, staff and faculty crowded the open common of Berkeley</a> alone (and several thousand more <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1926163,00.html" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">on the other 10 campuses</a>), every major national and international media outlet <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/education/25calif.html" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">took stock</a>.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
The vocal and theatrical demands of the demonstrators were not, as governor <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/arnold-schwarzenegger" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Arnold Schwarzenegger</a> quipped, just noise coming from<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/MNVU19SBEV.DTL" style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: rgb(0, 86, 137); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">another "screaming" interest group</a>.
On the contrary, a rare solidarity among unions, students and faculty
sought to "save the university", and their cry clearly struck a chord
across a broad political spectrum. Robert Reich, former US secretary of
labour, joined other faculty for a pointed speak-out the night before.
Faculty and students clustered into an array of groups, pursuing
strategies from mainstream lobbying to anarchist display. The
administration was clearly shaken, and subtle hints of division among
administrators could be detected. Some congratulated the demonstrators,
and others hissed.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
My wager is that the walls of the university will shake again – and
again – until the message is received: This fiscal crisis is also a
crisis in governance. The administration needs to make their books
transparent, re-engage shared governance and set their priorities right
so that the US can continue to claim a public institution of higher
learning where a student does not require loads of money to receive a
superlative education.</p>
<p style="padding: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat;">
This is the promise that we see dying at this moment, and the very thought sends us into the streets en masse.</p><br> <br><hr>Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. <a href="http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/" target="_blank">Get it now.</a></div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><a href="http://www.gabrielajauregui.net">http://www.gabrielajauregui.net</a><br>