BUDGET CUTS AFFECT US ALL!
600 UA JOBS LOST ALREADY!
Join a group of concerned faculty, students and staff to learn about how budget cuts will affect us and help plan a university-wide day of action to let state law makers and university administration know we won’t stand by as higher education is dismantled.
When: Friday, Sept 18 @ 2:00pm
Where: Old Main Fountain
Goals: (1) Establish a unified voice amongst those concerned about budget cuts to higher education at the UofA. (2) Plan a university-wide day of action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of the UC system, who are staging a walkout on September 24th.
more info:
> At the University of Arizona we are facing the most dramatic budget
> cuts and restructuring of the University in a generation. These cuts
> will affect every aspect of the University system – from the quality
> of education available to students, to the conditions of our labor as
> researchers, teachers, administrators and staff.
>
> The administration is pursuing a strategy designed to weaken our
> capacity for collective action, our ability to protect our interests
> and participate in the budget and restructuring process.
>
> In some departments, Graduate Teaching Assistants, already working for
> poverty wages, have seen their salaries slashed. In others, course
> loads have been expanded overnight, with little explanation and no
> accountability. Faculty have been furloughed in a way that minimizes
> disruption to teaching, and maximizes the possibility that they will
> continue working without pay. Hiring freezes and layoffs are
> undermining the integrity and functioning of departments and spreading
> work around to already over-burdened faculty and staff. And the
> decisions about whose budget is cut, by how much and why have been
> anything but transparent and accountable, let alone “participatory”.
> All of this while new fees and “tuition surcharges” reduce access to
> and affordability of higher education, redistributing the burden of
> budget shortfalls onto the backs of students.
>
> The UA budget has been cut as much as possible under the current
> stimulus
 package. If it is cut any more, we will lose our
> stimulus funding. The 2010 state budget will not include any stimulus
> money, and state
 revenues are already coming in under
> projection. We will have no protection from further dramatic cuts after
this fiscal year.
>
> By subjecting the budgetary restructuring to an arbitrary and
> subjective process whose impact is felt differentially, we remain
> divided and pitted against each other, rather than capable of uniting
> around our common interests. As long as we remain divided in our
> individual colleges and departments we will have no power or voice as
> our colleagues lose their jobs, as the conditions of our labor and the
> quality of our institution deteriorates, and as the legislature and
> administration continue to pull the rug out from under our feet.
>
> For these reasons, we invite graduate assistants, faculty and staff to
> a meeting on Friday September 18 at 2pm on the fountain in front of
> Old Main organize an action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and
> students of the UC system.
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