Dear fellow members of the CFA:
This is a reminder that we are having a general membership meeting to address the administration's "imperfect options" memorandum.
This meeting will be on Monday, February 15th from 2-4. Here is the zoom link (we will be sending reminders for the next two weeks) https://calfac.zoom.us/j/94610404316?pwd=THliMlltR0NoaUpFdHJPY1NCVlFWQT09
See as many of you as possible on Monday!
In solidarity,
CFA-SFSU executive board
President’s letter 2.4.21
Dear fellow members of the SFSU faculty:
As the semester gets off the ground, I wanted to update you all, members and non-members alike about a serious challenge to faculty autonomy, as well as our working conditions that has now been released in the form of a memo laying out “imperfect options” by the administration. Next week, I will send all members a letter detailing the various other campaigns the chapter is engaged in for the spring involving issues about renewing covid leave, demands about combating anti-Black racism and other forms of social injustice, bargaining towards a new contract, the repopulation of campus in the fall and sabbatical issues, among many others.
This message is singularly focused on the administration’s plans for our campus. We adamantly oppose these options and we do not agree that the situation is so dire that we need to permanently alter the nature and shape of our university as a result. In short, the “imperfect options” outlined in a recent memorandum by the administration will lead to:
· a permanent increase to faculty workload
· permanent damage to student success
· drastic reductions to work assigned to lecturer faculty in the midst of a pandemic
· permanent loss of faculty autonomy and place in shared governance
Our response to this missive is to argue that:
· the proposed budgetary changes aren't necessary and are unfairly targeted toward faculty
· the proposal itself bypassed any sense of shared governance
What follows is an elaboration of these points.
Budget
Let me start with the budget issue. We are indeed in a terrible crisis, but we have faced many crises before. This one is no worse and does not require the extraordinary steps that the administration has proposed as “imperfect” (a massive understatement) options.
Here are a few statistics about the California state budget:
According to the State of California Budget Office ”CSU Has $1.7 Billion in Core Reserves, $1.1 Billion in Noncore Reserves.”
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4295
Governor Newsom announced an increased budget for the CSUs, in fact he has increased the total budget by 3% totaling $144.5 million. He is also adding a one time investment of $225 million for “for emergency financial aid grants to support students, ‘culturally competent’ professional development and deferred maintenance.”
The State of California ended its 2019-2020 fiscal year with $16 billion in reserves. The proposed new budget (2020-2021) that uses a part of these reserves, and has increased revenue will still leave $11.4 billion in reserves.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4263
· The CSU system received a total of $567.7 million from the Federal Cares Act in 2020 ($14.3 million went to SFSU). It will receive another $853.9 million from the most recent new package approved in December. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-26/cal-state-will-not-raise-tuition-for-next-academic-year-amid-pandemic-hardships
A new study released by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by mid-2021 we should go back to the real GDP pre-pandemic level.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56965
Also, we just got a very preliminary report from the auditor that we hired to do an independent audit of SFSU’s budgets. We will release the full report to all of you when we get it but even at this preliminary stage, the auditor suggested that the crisis is phony and the need to cut faculty and staff unjustified. To give just a few points from the initial audit, the auditor said that reserves should readily cover any deficits this year and that SFSU had a very high bond rating which indicated a very favorable balance. The auditor also noticed that the two biggest gains in the last two years were the President’s office, with a 15.1% raise in costs and University Enterprise with a 15% raisein costs as well, demonstrating misplaced priorities. During that same period the amount of money spent on Academic affairs was virtually flat with an overall 1.8% increase (this average reflects a 3.6% increase in the first year while this academic year the budget was decreased by 1.8%). This tracks with our earlier findings that SFSU led the CSU in expanding administrative positions, a whopping 66% in recent years. Furthermore, the auditor noted that only 38% of the total budget goes to the core mission of teaching and research and yet this is the area from which the most cuts are being proposed.
For all of these reasons, we reject the notion that we have an unprecedented budget crisis staring us in the face.
Proposed Cost Saving Measures
Course Caps
The university administration tends to be very precise with the scope of the deficit that they face but entirely vague about the savings that their proposals might bring (such as raising course caps). Additionally, increasing course caps will enable the elimination of a large number of lecturer faculty who have been teaching here for decades, not only degrading the education of students, and adding hugely to the burden of tenure track faculty but also casting out highly skilled and veteran members of our faculty into unemployment and no health insurance while the virus still ravages California.
Furthermore, the administration always looks first to make cuts that impact faculty and staff. Despite the hiring freeze (no longer a chill!), the administration is hiring for a high-level position as we speak. No real major reshuffling of the administration has taken place while staff have suffered layoffs and a huge number of lecturer faculty have lost work. Similarly, the administration has never been willing to have a review of all of its favored programs which often include bringing in very expensive platforms like Academic works, PeopleSoft, Concur and other costly platforms and systems. None of this comes under any kind of faculty governance.
Why does the administration do this? In a word, two words, actually, it’s a case of disaster capitalism. The administration is under enormous pressure from Long Beach and elsewhere to rationalize and privatize our university. Things like tenure, intellectual engagement, the fact that not all classes will be equally popular, academic freedom and other distinctive features of the academy that have been hard won by a long history of struggle do not fit in with a neoliberal business model. Universities today are meant to be run like businesses where profit (something that is not equally shared and distributed) is the arbiter of all decisions, going directly against the spirit and purpose of a public university like our own. This is of course not unique to SFSU but is being faced by many other university administrations. This pressure becomes particularly enormous during times of economic crisis such as we are going through now. One administrator at another US university said that it would be “waste of a good pandemic” not to render the faculty of that university more precarious. Something of the same thing is happening here to us.
Shared Governance
The process by which these decisions have been made has not been democratic or transparent. As Faculty, we have all been aware that something of this kind was coming, but were not allowed to help shape or give any input in a meaningful way. The transfer of decision making from faculty to administration (effectively bypassing the academic senate) is part of a long and slow appropriation of faculty self-governance by the administration.
Teaching load
It has been suggested that full professors who do not adequately research or do service will be asked to teach a fourth class. We oppose this idea 100%. Instead, we should be pushing for a reduction to a 4/4 load to count as full time for lecturer faculty, as well as move to reduce the teaching load to 3/3 for tenure track faculty in education. The move to a 3/3 load for tenure track faculty was a rare case of faculty self-governance asserting itself against the administration. It was created by the academic senate and now the administration wants to claw it back. Not only that, but this was a policy that was explicitly stated to not be under consideration:
In November of 2020, Senate passed resolution RF20-410: Resolution in Support of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities as a Core Academic Commitment. During the 11/17 Senate meeting, Provost Summit misrepresented her intentions about the 4/4 as a possible option:
“4.2. Provost Report
Please come to the December 4th open forum. Discussion about the Portfolio of Imperfect Options is an important conversation and everyone’s input is important. Everything is on the table in some ways, but everyone should know that some items are not currently being discussed. To be clear moving to a “4/4” model is not something we are considering at the moment. We believe we can meet our goals with other ideas."
And yet now a proposal to allow some 4/4 teaching is being promoted after all.
Additionally, the administration consistently subscribes to a narrative of lazy, incompetent faculty. When I was asked to join a workgroup on the workload issue, it was pitched to me that some lazy full professors weren’t pulling their weight. I am extremely dubious about what I call the “faculty deficit model.” While I am sure that there are a small number of such faculty, the vast majority of faculty that I know at all levels of teaching work heroically and under intense and ever-increasing pressure. A false narrative of lazy professors means cracking the wall of the 3/3 work load. I can easily see that once that crack is breached, junior faculty will be under pressure too to teach an extra course (in fact this already happens in some cases). Before we know it all tenure track faculty could well be teaching 4/4 regardless of statements to the contrary.
Course caps/program elimination
This memo makes it clear that henceforth only deans and the provost's office will have any control over course caps, making an effective and permanent transfer of a critical feature of academic life from the faculty to the administration. There are sound pedagogical reasons that help to determine a class size. Taking this power away from faculty entirely means that the knowledge that faculty bring about their classes and what is an appropriate size for them is entirely lost (the deans, even if drawn from the ranks of the faculty, although that is not always the case anymore, can’t know every discipline). The same can be said for enforcing minimums. We find this to be a very pernicious way to think about course sizes. Rather than say that some classes will be big and some quite small, but on average a certain ratio will be maintained, it simply cuts off all classes at some arbitrary number. This kills off small and niche courses that students have as much right to have access to as the larger and more popular courses.
As another example of soliciting feedback at the most cursory level, The Research Service Organizations (RSO) Workgroup was charged with reviewing the current costs and budget models governing RSOs. They were charged to give recommendations and admitted that they had a very short timeline. (See September 24th 2020 minutes). The UBC had two months to review all RSOs. Each RSO was not allowed more than a 15-minute presentation. RSOs were allowed to submit a 1-page description and the current budget. At a Dec. 4th UBC meeting, RSO work groups gave a first reading to recommendation that RSO’s become self-funded in 3 years. With 15 minutes to comment. RSOs were NOT invited to the meeting directly! On Dec.16th there was a second reading of recommendations. The provost passed the RSO directives when faculty were overwhelmed with grading and finals.
Consultation, when it occurs, tends to be cursory and rarely heeded. It feels more like a “listening tour” than any meaningful form of faculty input.
Next Steps
This is an attack on the faculty full stop. We must fight back. Here is what the union is prepared to do about this.
1) As noted previously, we have commissioned an audit of SFSU’s finances (with preliminary reports already coming in). We hope that this can be concluded in the very near future so that we can see for ourselves what the true budget situation at SFSU is.
2) We have begun a campaign to get the Academic Senate to fight back. We are organizing letter writing campaigns to the senators to oppose this roll back of academic self-governance. Although this memo is presented as a fait accompli we believe that it is not too late to reverse this unprecedented assault on our pedagogy and our working conditions. We will be reaching out to many of you to help us in this campaign.
3) We are investigating filing an unfair labor practice with PERB (the California Public Employee Relations Board). We see the change in course caps as a major change in our working conditions without any recourse to the contract and thus an illegal infringement of our contractual rights.
4) We are going to host an emergency general meeting for all faculty to discuss what to do next. This meeting will be on Monday, February 15th from 2-4. Here is the zoom link (we will be sending reminders for the next two weeks) https://calfac.zoom.us/j/94610404316?pwd=THliMlltR0NoaUpFdHJPY1NCVlFWQT09
5) We will be activating the department rep system so that everyone of you who is in a department with reps can hear more about what is going on and also to give each of you a chance to make your concerns about the “imperfect options” heard and acted upon. If you do not have dept. reps in your department, here is what you can do. First, to check to see if your department already has reps (there is always room for more of course!) visit: https://www.calfac.org/san-francisco-state-university-department-representatives
Then, if you want to become a department rep, or if you know someone who might want to, please email Maureen Loughran at mloughran@calfac.org.
6) In our poll of faculty, we asked under what conditions faculty would be willing to undertake job actionsand the announced policies of the administration more than amount to such conditions. For this reason we will begin to study what kind of job actions we might engage with.
7) We are working with other chapters and other unions on campus to close ranks and not be divided and conquered.
These are scary times but the union is not deterred. The answer to the current crisis is not to panic, not to throw out the baby (our status as a public university with a core mission of social justice) with the bathwater (the current financial and health crisis). We can emerge from this keeping all that is best about this university intact if we stick together and don’t submit to doomsaying and disaster capitalism. If we do that, we will prevail and this crisis, like other crises before it, will pass.
In solidarity,
James
James Martel
CFA-SFSU chapter president