“What Will You Do to Save Cal Poly?” asked the green and gold signs waving at the Save Cal Poly Rally yesterday morning. Put on by the Cal Poly branch of the California Faculty Association (CFA), the rally was in response to fiscal problems in the California State University (CSU) system, furloughs and the College Based Fee (CBF) delays at Cal Poly.
The event, designed to educate and initiate action by students and faculty, attracted a majority of faculty and staff members but only about 40 students.
The looming threat of large-scale layoffs, or “non-renewal” of contracts for faculty and staff, at Cal Poly continue to grow as professors have taken furloughs and further CBF decisions continue to be delayed. On the other hand, students are worried how this is going to affect their education.
The speakers spoke of the need to communicate with legislators, CSU administrators and parents to initiate greater involvement from all parties.
“If we want to change this we have to ban together and let our voices be heard in Sacramento,” Joan Kennedy, President of the local CSU Employees’ Union, said. “If we don’t fix what’s happening in Sacramento right now we’re facing massive layoffs come June.”
The state and Cal Poly have not been seeing things from the same point of view recently. For instance, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed denied Cal Poly’s increase in CBFs, which students voted in favor of last spring.
Cal Poly’s Associated Student Inc. (ASI) President Kelly Griggs briefly addressed the audience and expressed her frustration at Cal Poly’s situation in the CSU by saying that the term “state-supported” in regards to Cal Poly should now be placed in quotations. We’ve been denied our desire to keep our education at the same level, Griggs said.
“I feel the need to protect the status of our education at Cal Poly.”
Keeping Cal Poly at its currently esteemed status (voted No. 1 by US News and World Report as best public-masters university for the seventeenth year in a row) was a main focus.
Speakers noted that Cal Poly is in better shape than the majority of the other CSU schools but will begin to hurt as time goes on if actions aren’t taken.
One of the options the CFA was pushing is the passage of Assembly Bill 656, which would put a tax on oil and gas extracted from California. This tax, which the majority of other oil-producing states have some version of, would bring $1 billion to the school system California. Tentatively, $600 million would be allotted to the CSU system and would then be divided by Chancellor Reed from there. The speakers urged students to sign cards supporting AB 656.
Many of the speakers expressed disappointment at the student turnout.
“The only regret I have is that this lawn is not filled,” Cal Poly President Warren Baker said. “This is such an important issue.”
Baker said that he was impressed with the faculty’s ability to adapt in the difficult situation. He stressed the importance of not reducing the intellectual capacity of the Cal Poly institution. In the face of non-renewal of faculty and staff contracts, furloughs and CBF delays this could prove to be quite the challenge.
The Academic Senate is responsible for keeping the Cal Poly curriculum up to its standards and has no plans to eliminate any programs, Rachel Fernflores, Academic Senate chair and professor of philosophy, said. “What we’re trying to do is preserve the integrity of the curriculum,” she said. Fernflores warned the audience not to be downtrodden by the odds against them and to be resourceful in the face of adversity.
Although the speakers were addressing the issue, there was a lack of clear ideas or solutions on how to attack the budget shortfall.
Some students saw this as a problem. “To me it seemed like a lot of scapegoating,” Aristotle Ou, an environmental engineering senior, said. “I didn’t really hear any real solutions,” he said. It seemed their solutions to the problem were not tangible but just to think of further solutions, Ou said.
“I don’t have any good ideas either,” he said.
Students, faculty and staff can get involved by logging on to csualliance.com and signing petitions for AB 656.