More than 50 students at UC Berkeley demonstrated in Sproul Plaza last Thursday in support of the upcoming 9/24 UC faculty walk-out protesting faculty pay cuts. Berkeley's Graduate Student Organizing Committee has written a letter of support, the undergraduate Associated Students of the University of California is voting on a bill next week to support the walkout and the state-wide University of California Student Association is likely to support the faculty as well.

The faculty pay-cuts come in the form of forced furlough days that cannot be taken on teaching days, thus effectively cutting their pay while requiring the same amount of teaching. University of California President Mark Yudof drafted the policy despite recommendations against it from each of the 10 UC Faculty Academic Senates.

The Graduate Student Organizing Committee of UC Berkeley wrote a letter of solidarity that offers both support to faculty and alternative solutions to California's budget crisis. The letter reads, "Recent actions by the Regents and the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) raise serious concerns about the future of the UC system and our own future as university students and instructors. We think it imperative that graduate students take a stand now against what threatens to be a disastrous transformation of the UC. The crisis we face is both real and artificial: real because the recession...has resulted in a severe drop in state funding; artificial because the UC can easily meet the budget gap by tapping unrestricted reserve funds from its revenue-generating wings and by trimming its substantial administrative excess."

More undergraduate student support for the walk-out is expected to develop this weekend when the board of directors for the University of California Student Association, the statewide student association, meets at UCLA. Next week, the ASUC will also vote on a bill to formally support the faculty walk-out.

"If that passes, that basically means that all the students that ASUC represents ... will stand in solidarity with the faculty walkout," said Susan Li, external vice president of ASUC.

A different letter to the UC Berkeley student body from Berkeley professor Catherine Cole mentions that "there is talk of [a] “teach in” about the budget crisis in October. And there is talk of a formal Academic Senate vote of no confidence" for UC President Mark Yudof.


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