Letter: What's expendable at Sac State

Sacramento Bee 3/15/07

Re "CSU faculty vote today on strike / Pay is central issue as union asks members at 23 campuses to authorize possible walkout," March 5: I am a second-year graduate student at California State University, Sacramento, and I am in full support of the impending strike by the faculty. The students should be the No. 1 priority of any educational facility. The faculty clearly should be a close (very close) second.

It is clear that President Alexander Gonzalez is interested only in helping himself and impressing visiting elites. Providing students with the best education possible seems to have fallen off the table. Fancy signs and a rooster-free campus do not help me finish my degree. Raising my tuition and ignoring the financial needs of the faculty while the entire administrative staff (Gonzalez included) all get raises does not help me either!

The faculty members at CSUS have chosen to work there for the opportunities to educate students in the CSU system, yet Gonzalez seems to think they are expendable. If that is the case, perhaps the students are expendable as well. Perhaps he will not mind if I finish my degree elsewhere.

- Joel C. Marckx, Fair Oaks