CFA's series of 22 campus teach-ins focuses attention on CSU system's crisis
Following a successful month of teach-ins around the state, the California Faculty Association (CFA) promises to take its battle over the future of the California State University to the CSU Board of Trustees.
Through its series of teach-ins on all 22 CSU campuses in October, CFA focused attention on what it calls a crisis within the CSU system. Events featured such guest speakers as Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Manchú, United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta, author Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist Alexander Cockburn, and educators David Noble and Stanley Aronowitz, in addition to supportive politicians and colorful demonstrations of solidarity by faculty, staff and students.
Faculty members carry messages for CSU administration as they listen to Aronowitz(below) at Sonoma State teach-in.
"The turn-out for the events exceeded our expectations, the student response was encouraging, and the press coverage we got was great," says CFA President Susan Meisenhelder, an English professor at CSU-San Bernardino."
The teach-ins grew out of CFA's "Future of the CSU" project, which brought together faculty, students, staff, alumni, political and community leaders in a series of hearings over the past two years. Some of the issues causing concern for CFA include non-competitive salaries for faculty, increasing size of classes and a declining proportion of permanent faculty. Faculty members point to statistics that show enrollment has skyrocketed for the seventh year in a row, while only one new permanent faculty position has been added in the entire system. CFA has also criticized the increasing corporatization of the university system.
One of those criticizing the corporate model of delivering education was Stanley Aronowitz, a professor at City University of New York and author of The Knowledge Factory. He spoke at teach-ins at CSU-San Marcos, Sonoma State and San Diego State. Aronowitz called on his audience to reject the idea that professors are employees, that students are clients, and that instruction can be delivered easily by part-time teachers.
"The teachers' working conditions and the students' learning conditions are inextricably intertwined," he said during the rally at Sonoma State.
CFA, the bargaining agent for 22,000 full- and part-time instructors, is at impasse in contract talks with Chancellor Charles Reed's administration. CSU has imposed terms and conditions of employment on faculty for the third year in a row. CFA's delegate assembly, meeting in October, directed the board of directors to begin preparing for a statewide campus-based strike authorization vote.
CFA hopes instructors, staff and students alike will become active in their cause. Students are being urged to speak out about the importance of preserving the university as an institution where they can obtain a quality education from tenured, full-time instructors who focus on turning out independent thinkers.
Faculty members carry messages for CSU administration as they listen to Aronowitz(below) at Sonoma State teach-in.
