Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, and Community Members,
We are writing to have our voices heard and call people to action to defend public education. Our futures are being mortgaged in order to maintain bloated administrative salaries and further privatize critical social services across this state, country, and around the world.
In the past decade alone the UC has seen a 342.2% increase in tuition and fees. This trend directly corresponds with a period of exorbitant administrative growth and devastating cuts to instruction, support services and staff, and other critical UC programs. On December 13, 2011 Governor Jerry Brown announced another $100 million in cuts to the UC system, which brings the total to $750 million this fiscal year alone.
The annual fees for attending a UC were $3,859 in 2001-2002; now they are $13,218, and estimated to increase substantially within the next four years. This trend runs completely contradictory to the 1960 CA Master Plan which calls for tuition-free public higher education in this state. Quality, accessible public higher education is a cornerstone for establishing social and economic equality on local to global levels and as such demands our active support and protection.
Our public institutions of higher education are being actively privatized and glutted by regents, trustees and administrators who are deeply invested in large private business interests. These people and the interests they represent want to continue profiting from a drive to remake our public institutions in the image of private-for-profit models.
We are asking that all of us continue to take a stand and fight back to defend our public institutions against the betrayal of many of those charged with their protection. As the students, faculty, and staff who run California’s public colleges and universities, it is our responsibility to assert every day that these are OUR SCHOOLS and that we are not powerless to further the mission of maintaining affordable, accessible and quality public higher education not only in this state, but around the world. An accessible educational experience is important for people everywhere to be able to obtain if they so choose that we might construct a more equitable, just and peaceful world for everyone.
The UC regents are invested with the responsibility of “managing” the UC system. They have insistently refused to engage in constructive dialogue with students, faculty and staff on critical issues that have been repeatedly brought to their attention. Some of them are personal friends and/or business partners of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or other influential politicians and that is precisely how they obtained their initial appointment as regents. A vast majority of the current regents have no professional background in public education and a corresponding majority of them maintain direct ties to business interests that seek to develop financially profitable relationships with the UC and other public institutions.
Banks and other corporations get bailed out and we get sold out, time and again. The regents’ silence in Sacramento fits the destructive model of privatization that they have in mind for the UC. As part of this agenda, it also fits their interests to raise the salaries of administrators even as they tell the rest of us that we need to “continue making sacrifices.”
We are the instruments of change and the power to create it lies in our hands. Enough is enough. We will let our voices be heard and continue to demand that the UC regents and administrators be held accountable. Please join us for a day of non-violent protest at the regents’ next meeting, which is scheduled to take place at UC Riverside on January 17-19, 2012. A day of mass mobilization to defend public education is being called for Thursday, January 19, 2012 at UC Riverside. Come join us as we continue the fight to defend and maintain quality and accessible public education not only in this state but around the world.
Sincerely,
Concerned Students, Faculty, Staff and Community Members of UC Riverside
p/s: Please click the link & sign the Regent Reform petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/uc-regent-reform
December 26, 2011 at 6:46 pm 4seesun
For the past few years we, as a higher ed. community, have been the subjects of attacks on our access to public funding, and our rights to an education.
Some people would argue, that education is a privilege, and not a right. However, in 1960, the people of California added to our State Constitution the Master Plan for Education, which called for a free, public, higher ed system, consisting of UCs, Cal States, and Community Colleges, with prestige based only on merit, and not on the cost of the institution.
Unfortunately, over the past few years, with well paid lobbyists making the decisions for out funding at the state level, and businessmen making our decisions on the boards, the higher education is being neglected as a priority. Programs are being cut, and we are paying more and more very year for less and less.
At the same time our quality of education is being cut, so are the rights of the workers that make our institutions run.
So, the people being hit, are the ones who don’t have the funding to fight for themselves.
On MAY 15th, UCR IS HOSTING A CONFERENCE FROM 9am TO 7pm TO DISCUSS THESE ISSUES AND COME UP WITH NEXT COURSES OF ACTION TO FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHTS.
Some Workshops include:
- Media Outreach
- Local Coalition building
- Union Organizing
- Critical Race Theory and Class Separation and Inequity
- Art For Movement
- Inter-Campus Networking
- Escalation Planning
- Community Medicine
- Knowing the System and Knowing Your Rights
- CA Dream Act
- HS Students Entering the Fight AND MORE..
PLEASE REGISTER AT http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RWHLDQT.
April 19, 2011 at 7:58 pm 4seesun
A teach-out in solidarity with unions as they continue their fight for bargaining rights and decent wages and benefits. WE ARE ONE.
April 5, 2011 at 4:41 pm 4seesun
UC Riverside leaders consider sweeping cuts in face of budget crisis
The governor’s recent call for $500 million in reductions from the UC system is forcing administrators to consider cutting library hours, reducing power usage and charging for computer use.
UC campuses are being given more leeway to come up with their own budget solutions as the system braces for $500 million in cuts. UC Riverside expects to lose $38 million. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / March 8, 2011)
Should library hours be cut? Could some academic programs be closed or merged? Will turning down air conditioners and fixing leaky sprinklers save much money?
UC Riverside administrators are mulling such questions as they face an expected reduction in the campus’ core budget next year of at least 8%, or $38 million, even as they cope with higher pension costs and energy bills. The decisions could affect the livelihoods of employees and quality of education for more than 20,000 students at the Inland Empire campus.
Chancellor Timothy White recently told worried faculty and others to prepare for “the most difficult decisions you and I will ever make in our professional careers.”
Among the stakes, White said, are the Riverside campus’ ambitions to open a medical school in 2012 and remain a launching pad for minority students and those who are first in their families to attend college.
The 10 UC campuses have been through similar drills over the last three years of state budget crises, and alarms rang again recently with Gov. Jerry Brown‘s call to cut $500 million from the UC system for the 2011-12 school year. What’s different this time is that campuses are being given more leeway to come up with solutions.
Chancellors have been assigned budget reduction targets, based on enrollments and other factors, that range from $96 million at UCLA and $81 million at UC Berkeley to $31 million at UC Santa Cruz and $27 million at UC San Francisco. (Only the five-year-old Merced campus, still considered a start-up, is being excused from the cuts.)
The campus approaches “will vary considerably,” said Nathan E. Brostrom, UC’s executive vice president for business operations, although many are likely to leave empty positions unfilled and hire fewer lecturers. Students may find it harder to enroll in courses, but the goal is to avoid “any overall diminution of the quality of their education,” he said.
UCLA, for example, is considering cutting what officials say are unnecessary course requirements for certain undergraduate majors and boosting enrollment in such profit-makers as summer school and professional master’s degrees. UC Davis says it may lay off up to 500 staff and introduce student fees for computer usage. UC Irvine and UC Berkeley may keep undergraduate enrollment flat but increase the number of out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition. UC Santa Cruz is discussing reductions as deep as 16% for nonacademic programs and 6% for academic units, including library book purchases on the main campus and extension classes in Silicon Valley.
And all campuses say it may become harder to come up with counteroffers for UC scholars who are recruited with lucrative pay and benefit packages by private universities or other public schools.
UC leaders are also looking for systemwide efficiencies in such areas as energy usage and computer purchases and are hunting for additional revenue from federal research grants and elsewhere. UC administrators have said they hope to avoid raising tuition beyond the 8% already approved for next year but have not ruled out an additional hike if the Legislature and voters refuse to extend several tax increases that are also part of Brown’s plan. The university’s Board of Regents is expected to weigh in with its own ideas at a meeting in San Francisco next week.
Whatever UC leaders do faces close scrutiny from faculty, unions and students at Riverside and elsewhere.
Already, UC students are organizing against the possible cuts and several hundred from across the system rallied last week in Sacramento and lobbied legislators. The atmosphere will get more tense and more extensive campus protests may erupt, student leaders predict, if the regents move to raise tuition again.
White’s mention of possibly shortening library hours upset Adriana Cruz, a second-year Chicano studies and sociology major from Anaheim who is active in student government. “That sends the wrong message to everybody who wants to come to UCR,” she said. “If we can’t prioritize our library hours, what does that say about our education?”
Cruz said she was worried that reduced course offerings already are making it harder for students to graduate in four years and that any further cuts will make things worse. “In honesty, we are scared,” she said. The school should reduce administrators’ salaries before taking such steps, she added.
Some critics contend that UC is starting its annual budget conversation early this year to scare students and parents into lobbying the Legislature for more funds. They also say that UC wants to protect a top-heavy and highly paid university bureaucracy and shield research professors from having to teach additional classes.
UC leaders like White say they must start planning now. The budget hole is much deeper than Brown’s $500-million reduction, officials contend, because that does not include the cost of shoring up UC’s shaky retirement funds. The situation also will worsen dramatically if the tax increases fail, they add.
White, a physiologist who became UC Riverside’s chancellor in 2008 after heading the University of Idaho, has formed campus advisory panels to review spending and revenue. And he is holding public forums so no one is caught by surprise.
He has ruled out cuts to police and health services but said he is looking at mergers of some departments, reducing programs at the campus’ Palm Desert facility and layoffs of non-teaching staff and non-tenured lecturers.
White also is pressing faculty to put more of their separately held research and donated funds, totaling about $2 million, toward classroom costs. That money is usually reserved for research trips or conferences. “It is time to change the way we go about hoarding our money,” said White, 61, whose budget planning was interrupted for a few days recently when he was hospitalized for a heart procedure.
Paul Beehler, who teaches writing classes and is president of the union local representing lecturers and librarians, said he appreciated White’s candor but said many people are nervous. “There is concern about maintaining the quality of the education, the preeminence of the UC and concern about jobs as well,” he said.
Beehler said he was particularly worried about White’s plans to protect tenured faculty while possibly laying off lecturers, whose ranks already are down 12% from 2007.
Administrators say this would be a tough time for UC Riverside to take a step back.
Along with preparing for its new medical school, the Inland Empire campus saw a 13% surge in freshman applicants this year, more than double the system-wide figure. For the first time, it was able to offer admission only to students who specifically applied to it and not to UC-eligible students referred there after being denied admission at other UC schools.
According to White, the campus is starting to sprint and the likely cuts feel like “having our tennis shoes tied together.”
larry.gordon@latimes.com
March 9, 2011 at 6:52 am 4seesun
On March 12th, at UCR Arts Building Room 335 from 4:30 to 6:15p.m.
Hosted by Critical Ethnic Studies & the Future of Genocide Conference
Speakers Include:
Summer Hararah, Asian Law Caucus
Nina Farnia, Equal Justice Works Litigation Fellow, Impact Fund, SF
David Lloyd, University of Southern California
Sunaina Maira, UC Davis
Jeff Sacks, UC Riverside
Devra Weber, UC Riverside
What Happened?
Taken from: http://www.irvine11.com/
A little over a year after Israel’s massacre in the Gaza Strip, the student was protesting a visit by Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, for his refusal to acknowledge Israel’s war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.
A police officer walked up to the row from which the protester had stood up to be heard. Accompanied with backup, he gestured to the protester to leave the event. The protester willingly stepped out and was led by police out of the hall into another room where he was patted down and arrested.
Another nine individuals chose to rise up and exercise their right to free speech by sharing their own statements throughout the first half of the event. Each time, there was no resistance, no violence and no misconduct. After making his statement, each student would readily follow police orders to leave the room. Despite each individual’s ready compliance with officers, throughout the event school officials consistently felt the need to reassure the crowd that consequences were to be had, disciplinary action was to be taken, and possible suspension and expulsion was in order if the individuals continued to practice their freedom of speech.
After the tenth individual was escorted out by the police, about a third of the room, consisting of students from different races, ethnicities and religions, peacefully rose from their chairs and marched out chanting slogans, calling for justice both at home and in Palestine. During this time, the cops discreetly arrested one individual – a young man who was a part of the chanting crowd – whose reason for arrest remains unknown. This brought the number of arrests to eleven: the Irvine Eleven.
The audience spat verbal threats at the students as they marched out, denigrating them as primates and other insults. Oren continued his speech for another half hour before concluding. While the crowd who chose to listen to his speech remained inside the room, the marchers gathered outside to continue to peacefully protest with signs and slogans.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “True Peace is not merely the absence of tension, but it is the presence of Justice.” The Irvine Eleven continue to be persecuted by their university for doing nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech to demand that justice be the lens we use to see the world.
Watch to see what happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52aXasRvdAc&feature=player_embedded
March 7, 2011 at 6:36 am 4seesun
Students protest proposed education cuts
11:25 PM PST on Wednesday, March 2, 2011
By DAVID OLSON and JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise
Student anger over Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $1.4 billion in cuts to higher education boiled over Wednesday in protests in Riverside, San Bernardino and around the state.
A few hundred people rallied in downtown Riverside, UC Riverside, Riverside City College and San Bernardino Valley College to call for a withdrawal of the proposed cuts and support for Brown’s plan for $12 billion in tax and fee increases and extensions through a planned June voter initiative.
The demonstrations were part of a second annual “Day of Action” against budget cuts that included protests around the state.
Alfonso Maldonado, 21, carried a sign in downtown Riverside that said, “Do We Get a Bail Out?”
“The banks got a bailout,” he said. “We’re asking for the same thing.”
The turnout of about 150 on the downtown Riverside pedestrian mall was lower than organizers predicted and far less than the 1,000 people that organizers said protested last year.
Maribel Nuñez, an organizer of the protest, said there was less outreach this year and some students may have been dispirited that their tuition rose 14 percent last year despite the big 2010 protest.
This year, Nuñez said, there is a bigger push for long-term political involvement. Volunteers on Wednesday were registering students to vote.
“Students realize that because of their low level of civic engagement and voter registration, they are targeted with budget cuts,” she said. “This sends a strong message that they will go out and register and vote.”
Republican legislators have proposed the opposite as the demonstrators: Large cuts with no tax increases.
Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, who represents part of San Bernardino County and is vice chair of the Assembly higher education committee, said by phone that GOP job- growth proposals would lead to more tax revenue, and cuts in six-figure university administrative salaries and pensions would leave more money for classroom instruction.
Student after student agreed with Donnelly on administrative salaries. Former congressional candidate and Corona-Norco Unified School District board member Bill Hedrick said the state should also institute an oil-extraction tax, as other states have, and should lift caps on taxes of large corporate landholders.
Hedrick said the cuts and tuition hikes threaten equal opportunity and equal access to education.
“This is an unprecedented attack on education in California,” he said. “It has never been this bad or severe.”
Luz Nuñez, 18, fears the cuts will lead to the elimination of more class sections and force her to work even more hours to pay for UC Riverside tuition. Next week, she is starting a 19-hour-a-week tutoring job and wonders how she will pay the 8-percent tuition increase this fall.
“I’m working all these hours and I won’t be able to study and do homework,” she said.
At San Bernardino Valley College, about 100 protesters lamented government spending on prisons and war while the governor’s proposed cuts could more than triple their $26-per-unit fees.
“We have money for everything else, why not education?” asked Daniel Burrus, 22, of San Bernardino.
He is in his second year at the college, where he is studying business administration. Burrus receives a fee waiver from the California Community College Board of Governors that saves him several hundred dollars each semester.
If his financial aid is lost to budget cuts, Burrus said he would not be able to return to school in the fall.
Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com
March 4, 2011 at 8:39 pm 4seesun
Students rally in Riverside over cuts to education
JAMES RUFUS KOREN and CANAN TASCI, Staff Writers
Posted: 03/02/2011 10:04:08 PM PST
Updated: 03/02/2011 10:05:19 PM PST
UC Riverside student Brenda Olguin, 20, leads the crowd in a chant during a rally in downtown Riverside to protest the proposal to raise in student fees at universities. (AL CUIZON/Staff Photographer)
Students from Inland Empire universities and community colleges gathered Wednesday in downtown Riverside to protest cuts to education funding and to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s call to extend past tax increases.
Javier Hernandez, a Chaffey College student who attended Wednesday’s rally with hundreds of other people, said more funding for community colleges is vital.
“We don’t have as many classes as we used to,” he said. “We find ourselves in a campus with more students but not enough funding to accommodate all these students.”
Brown’s budget proposal calls for deep cuts to the University of California, California State University and community college systems. It also calls for a special June election in which voters would be asked to extend a set of tax increases approved in 2009.
If the tax extensions aren’t approved, Brown has said there will be deep cuts in K-12 education and other programs.
“This is a road block. It’s been a struggle,” said Carlos Mendez of Pomona, a student at Mt. San Antonio College who attended the rally.
“I have received a few scholarships here and there and I work on the weekends part time and those funds can only go so far. Some of the books I’m going to purchase this semester are going to cost $90 so I’m not sure I’m going to be able to (afford) those books.”
“Right now, the best we can do is put our voices out there and let Sacramento know that students are here and they want an education and they want the budget cuts to stop.”
Jesus Barrios of Pomona, a Cal State San Bernardino student and part of Students for Equal Access to Education, said students want lower fees and more classes.
“We have a list of demands – an end to higher fees, and end to cutting classes,” Barrios said. “Also, for California to get it together as far as where they’re putting in money. We need to be putting money into effective programs, not corrupt police departments, corrupt corporations and corrupt prisons.”
As part of an attempt to close the huge budget deficit, the governor has also a fee increase of $10 per unit from $26 to $36 for the state’s colleges.
“Multiple generations are going to be affected by this,” said Hector Guzman, a student at San Bernardino Valley College who spoke at the rally.
“It’s either we fight now and stop this while we can, or it’s just going to continue and go into the next generation.”
“They (state leaders) have already screwed up so much of the K-12 system, and now the kids are dealing with that. Now they’re going to have to deal with the issues of the college system.”
Mendez feel politicians are ignoring the value of education.
“Honestly, it feels like in a way (politicians) hide education under the rug,” he said.
“They’re funding wars and local prisons and their budgets are ridiculous compared to what higher education and the public school districts need. It just really seems like a slap in the face.”
james.koren@inlandnewspapers.com
909-386-3826
canan.tasci@inlandnewspapers.com
909-987-6397, ext. 425
March 4, 2011 at 8:33 pm 4seesun
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