About
Goals:
1. Establish a unified voice amongst those concerned about budget cuts to higher education at the UofA.
2. Plan a universitywide day of action in solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of the UC system, who are staging a walkout on September 24th (see facebook event).
Background: 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.
Many UA jobs have been lost due to budget cuts. Hiring freezes and layoffs are undermining the integrity and functioning of departments and spreading work around to already over-burdened faculty and staff. In some departments, Graduate Teaching Assistants have seen their salaries slashed. In others, course loads have been expanded overnight, with little explanation and no accountability. 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.
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.
