[GSAUCR] March 4th, March for Education

[Bryan Ziadie]

Hi all,

I'd like to inform you all about the *March 4th, 2010 "March for Education."
* Students workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and
communities will be mobilizing for what has become a nation-wide* Day of
Action in Defense of Public Education. *The march follows the UC-wide
Walk-Out at the beginning of the year, and the protests at the Regents
meeting at UCLA. These student actions are having a significant impact. In
fact, Governor Schwarzenegger has said that his recent proposal to increase
the percentage of the state budget allotted to education was a direct
response to these student protests. By keeping up momentum on this, we can
produce meaningful change.

*Get involved*, whether it be through planning what will happen that day,
helping outreach, or by spreading the word. The number of students involved
is already enormous, and there is also large faculty involvement. But this
is something that everyone needs to take part in.

*The Student Justice Alliance (SJA) has weekly meetings on Wednesdays at
8:00 PM at Sproul 1340. This is where most of the student organizing for the
Day of Action is being done.*

*The Free UCR Alliance, a student/faculty/worker coalition group, meets
Thursdays at 4:00 PM at the Women's Studies Conference Room, INT 2031. This
is where students, faculty, and workers share information and strategize
about how we can work together organizing for the march.*

This is an urgent issue. Recent cuts to education in California have been
devastating. Last quarter undergraduates in the UC system faced fee
increases of 32% (and an increase of 300% since the early nineties);
graduate professional student fees have gone up 55%; and while many graduate
students do not have to pay student fees, it hits us in the form of
decreased TA-ships, larger class sizes, and cuts to our departments, which
mean that they can no longer offer services they once did.

Because of the cutting, certain programs on campus are worse off than
others. The University Writing Center is an example. Normally offering one
hundred courses English 1C (required composition courses for
undergraduates), next quarter administrators have reduced the offering to
sixteen courses, which only juniors and seniors may take. This is still
nowhere near enough to serve all the juniors and seniors who need to fulfill
the requirement, which means many students will not graduate, unless we do
something.

The time to act is now.

For more information contact:

SJAUCR at gmail.com

or

FreeUCR at gmail.com

Best,


Bryan

--
Bryan Ziadie
Legislative Liaison | Graduate Student Association | UC Riverside
951-852-3474
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