Leave us out of faculty pay flap, CSU students say
Modesto Bee 1/19/07
Student government senators at CSU, Stanislaus, unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday night that urges the California State Student Association to stay out of the battle between the CSU chancellor's office and the California Faculty Association.
Stanislaus State Associated Students Inc.'s resolution is the first of its kind. ASI President Chelsea Minor said she hopes other campuses follow.
Student and faculty organizations are butting heads over providing compensatory salaries for teachers at the 23 CSU campuses while keeping student fees affordable. The beginning salary for lecturers in the CSU system is about $30,000 a year.
ASI senators are reacting to two incidents in which paid student interns working for the faculty association picketed and disrupted two meetings — a November CSU board of trustees meeting and a December statewide student association meeting, Minor said. None of the student interns were from CSU, Stanislaus.
"ASI is not into the logistics of who's right and who's wrong. We're going to continue to fight for low student fees," Minor said. "The CFA has behaved dishearteningly, shown a lack of professionalism."
Some students don't want to be put in the middle of a salary dispute when an increase in their fees might be what funds those raises. CSU funding comes from two main sources — the state general fund and student fees.
"The CSU goal is to educate people. You have to have students and faculty to do that," said Stephen Filling, Stanislaus State CFA president and an accounting professor. There are about 23,000 faculty in the CSU system; 500 at Stanislaus State.
State CFA officials said they weren't aware of the picketing by CFA student interns, and argued that the CFA strenuously objects to any increase in student fees, said Lillian Taiz, vice president of the state CFA and history professor at CSU, Los Angeles.
"For us, fees don't go for our wages. If it does, it's not worth it for us to have raises on the backs of our students," Taiz said.
Officials at the CSU chancellor's office could not be reached for comment this week. Andrew LaFlamme, a student trustee on the CSU board of trustees and a Stanislaus State student, was at Tuesday night's meeting with Filling.
After 18 months of arguing, the CFA and CSU are at a crisis point that might see walk-outs before an agreement is reached. The CFA never has gone on strike.
Gov. Schwarzenegger's 2007-08 budget proposal, released last week, calls for a 10 percent hike in student fees. The jump would mean an extra $250 per semester, and does not include salary increases.
Instead of raising student fees, CFA officials see plenty of places the CSU chancellor's office could cut.
"The CSU management has about $400 million in golden parachutes and perks. That tells us money is not being used properly. There's fat that can be trimmed," Taiz said.
That includes salary increases of 13.2 percent or more that campus presidents received in 2005.
LaFlamme argued that with most of the CSU budget earmarked, there is little wiggle room — not nearly enough to pay for the salary increases the CFA demands.
When it comes to average faculty pay, the CSU system lags 18 percent behind similar university systems across the country, according to a 2006 study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission.
"I'm sick at heart to see bright people I know go somewhere else," Filling said. His accounting department lost two faculty members to other universities last year.
Muddying the water are the different numbers each side is using to make its case.
Officials with the CSU chancellor's office said they've offered a 25 percent salary increase over four years, but CFA officials argue it's closer to 15 percent.
Faculty salary is negotiated at the CSU level, with each campus working within set parameters to hire faculty based on local market forces.
Annual CSU salaries range from $31,848 for a lecturer working nine months to $112,548 for a professor who works 12 months, according to the most recent CSU contract from 2005. The offer includes covering 100 percent of the increase in health benefits for faculty.
"People don't go into teaching to get rich, but they need to be able to live and pay off student loans," Taiz said. "I don't think people expected to slog through graduate school then come out and live hand-to-mouth."
Because Schwarzenegger's 2007-08 budget proposal does not give the CSU extra money for faculty salaries, Minor said, students most likely would see fee increases to cover any raise the faculty gets. The Legislature is set to vote on the budget in June.
In the meantime, the CFA is holding informational picketing this month and next at each campus.