Re "Governor looks to radical overhaul of operations," Other views, Jan. 8: Daniel Weintraub is wrong to suggest that university support staffing is "dictated by the needs of an earlier era." CSU staffing is dictated by current situations -- more students, more faculty, more complex duties, reorganization and technology.

Office staff are also the recipients of the downward delegation of duties from management, as a more decentralized workplace pushes tasks onto departments.

True, administrative assistants do not provide personal reception and secretarial services to faculty. We are here for the students, and that is reflected in our job classification standards.

That said, we perform a lot of day-to-day support to faculty in the course of managing our departments. Many of them appreciate it. Weintraub's faculty source is ill-informed, mean-spirited and ignorant about what it takes to run a department.

We are students' first contact, we triage problems, we teach faculty how to use new technology, orient new faculty and department chairs, and squeeze nickels out of pennies to keep our departments functioning on fewer resources. We're loyal employees dedicated to the education mission and proud of what we do.

This problem is bigger than secretaries refusing to type for teachers.

- Kathryn Plunkett, Bakersfield

Deputy Division Director, CSEA/CSU