To: All Faculty
Dear Colleagues:
On May 18, 2023, the Legislative Assembly endorsed the following Post-Strike Concerns and Budget Cuts Statement. Members voted 84 In Favor, 2 Against, 2 Abstained and 19 were present but did not vote.
Post-Strike Concerns and Budget Cuts Statement
The Legislative Assembly of UCLA’s divisional Academic Senate calls on our campus and the University of California to center the academic mission in our responses to the budgetary and policy challenges arising in the wake of contract settlements with UAW academic workers. Academic units, PhD training, and faculty research must not be undermined, either by design or by default. The faculty stand ready to support efforts to increase public funding in support of our academic mission, and we urge the Administration to take bold approaches to meeting funding needs by making targeted cuts to administrative budgets and non-academic programs rather than from academic budgets. Nothing less than the future of education at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels, and higher education more generally, is at stake. Should we make the wrong choices now, there will be dire consequences in the future for the state’s social, intellectual, and economic vibrancy.
I urge you to ask your department, IDP, or Faculty Executive Committee to endorse this statement, and share the results to jcattelino@senate.ucla.edu as well as with Chancellor Block and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Hunt.
Additionally, the Academic Senate leadership requests that faculty, department chairs, and others contact us at jcattelino@senate.ucla.edu to inform us of any changes to research, teaching, or service that you are experiencing as a result of the contract settlements. Have you and/or your department requested funds from the Administration to cover new GSR or TA costs? Why or why not? Are you able to support graduate students more fully in the wake of the contract settlements, or not? Is anything changing in your research or teaching? We need to hear your stories and needs. Faculty and departments must make decisions even as the impacts of the contract settlements remain unclear. Both in the Academic Senate and the Administration, campus decision-makers need to understand how this is playing out on the ground.
Please consider how you can further the goals of the Legislative Assembly statement* and the accompanying Executive Board cover letter, which you can read at the same link.
Sincerely,
Jessica Cattelino
Chair, UCLA Academic Senate
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*https://dms.senate.ucla.edu/issues/issue/?7174.Post.Strike.Concerns.and.Budget.Cuts.
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