CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
  • Home
  • About CA-AAUP
    • History & Mission
    • Mission Statement
    • Activities & Services
    • CA-AAUP Committees
    • CA-AAUP Constitution
  • Join CA-AAUP
    • Benefits of Membership
    • CA-AAUP Chapters
    • CA Union Chapters
  • CA-AAUP Events
  • CA-AAUP Official Documents and Resolutions
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • CA-AAUP Zoom backgrounds
  • Weekly AAUP News Clips
CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

Chancellor  white  turns  back  on  faculty

3/23/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Hank Reichman
PictureDavid Bradfield
BY HANK REICHMAN

Last week shortly before I left for Washington, D.C. to attend meetings of the AAUP Foundation Board and the AAUP Executive Committee, I learned that California State University (CSU) Chancellor Timothy White would be addressing a breakfast there hosted by the California State Society, “a social networking organization” serving Californians in the nation’s capital.  So I decided to join two CSU colleagues and a few supporters and attend the event, while about a dozen or more additional supporters demonstrated outside in support of the California Faculty Association’s (CFA) “Fight for Five.”  Perhaps, I thought, my attendance might offer White an opportunity to respond to some of the questions I had asked him on Academe's blog.
 
See Hank Reichman stand up for CFA faculty and students in DC  here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUzxTjZyc4 

Well, it’s hardly a surprise that this didn’t happen.  Instead, we three faculty members found ourselves seated as far away from the Chancellor as possible.  Moreover, owing to the layout of the restaurant where the event took place, White literally spoke with his back to us, a fitting image given the content of his remarks.
White’s topic was the CSU’s efforts to improve graduation rates, with special emphasis on the importance of Pell Grants in achieving this goal.  One might think that any effort to improve graduation rates might involve a university system’s teachers.  Yet for the entire time White talked the words “teacher,” “instructor,” or “faculty” never crossed his lips.  The Chancellor spoke — although hardly eloquently, as, to be frank, judging from the two times I’ve now heard him speak, he is among the least engaging orators I’ve ever encountered — about efforts to better align curriculum with student needs.  But somehow this was something that “we” in the CSU are doing  — the Chancellor was accompanied by a few campus presidents, including the president of my own campus, and some other administrative bigwigs — and apparently faculty were not involved.

Impatient with the Chancellor’s vapidity, David Bradfield, Professor of Music at CSU, Dominguez Hills, rose to ask White why he was refusing to respond to calls from CFA President Jennifer Eagan to resolve the contract dispute.  White declined to answer.  Soon after I interrupted the speech — and I must admit here that I was getting a bit hot under the collar — when White went on about the need to address the fact that many of our students struggle to find adequate housing and even to eat.  This is a genuine problem, of course, about which I have previously written on the Academe blog (see also this post by Marty Kich).  But the issue on everyone’s mind today in the CSU is the ability of faculty also to find affordable housing and even, in the case of many of our small army of part-time lecturers, even to eat given the low salaries we are paid.  The Chancellor responded that we must “live within our budget,” a comment suggesting he might have read my previous post and recognized how impolitic it was to say we had “live within our means” given the size of the “means” he is provided by the CSU compared to that given to its faculty.Let’s get the facts straight, the facts that White not only refused to mention but even to acknowledge:
  • Average annual salary for a faculty member in the CSU — $46,016
  • Average annual salary for CSU managers and supervisors — $110,713
  • Loss in purchasing power for full-time equivalent CSU faculty since 2005 — down $7,000
  • Percentage of CSU faculty who hold “temporary” appointments — 60%
  • Average annual salary of those “temporary” faculty members — $27,567
  • Increase in full-time equivalent CSU students over the last decade — 75,366 (+24%)
  • Change in the number of full-time equivalent faculty since 2005 — +14%
  • Change in number of tenure-line faculty since 2005 — down 2%
  • Change in number of “temporary” faculty since 2005 — +24%
  • Change in the number of CSU managers and supervisors since 2005 — +22%
  • Change in the CSU net operating budget since 2005 — +40%
  • Change in CSU expenditures on faculty since 2005 — +25%
  • Change in CSU expenditures on managers and supervisors since 2005 — +48%
  • Additional state funding CFA lobbying helped secure for the CSU in 2015-16 — $97 million
  • Movement by CSU management at the bargaining table after the $97 million augmentation — ZERO!


Finally, Susan Green, Professor of History at CSU, Chico, rose to politely ask the Chancellor whether he wants his legacy to be that of the leader who provoked the largest strike of higher education faculty in U.S. history.  Given his silence in response, I guess he does.  At that point we walked out, leaving the Chancellor free to drone on about accomplishments he claims for himself and his administration while ignoring the elephant no longer in the room, but now leafleting and talking with people outside the door — the faculty.

Picture
Picture
Susan Green
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    September 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    AAUP Annual Conference On The State Of Higher Education
    AAUP Career Center
    AB 2705
    ACCJC
    Accreditation
    Adjunct Action
    Adjunct Faculty
    Agency Fee
    Brewer
    CA-AAUP Resolutions
    California Competes
    Campaign For The Future Of Higher Education
    Campus Equity Week
    Campus Equity Weel
    CCSF
    CFHE
    City College Of San Francisco
    Community Colleges
    Community Colleges
    Constitution
    Contingent Faculty
    Corporatization Of Higher Education
    CSU Dominguez Hills
    CSU Executive Orders 1100
    Department Of Education (DOE)
    EO 1100 + EO1110
    FACCC
    Faculty Handbooks
    Janus Supreme Ct. Case
    Joint Statement On The Rights Of Students
    KALW
    Mills College
    Muslim Ban Executive Order
    National University
    New Faculty Majority
    SEIU
    Summer Institute
    Supreme Court
    Talbot
    Tenure
    Wright State University Strike 2019

Proudly powered by Weebly