Every so often, one looks outside the University of Oregon bubble and finds a truly alarming story. The headline up there makes it sound more alarming than it is. In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the Sept. 24 walkout in protest of salary cuts in the University of California system will be only a one-day gesture rather than a protracted saga.
The situation the Chronicle describes in California is roughly analogous to our own here in Oregon:
The cash-strapped state is cutting its contribution to UC by $813 million, and what’s happening at the university is a microcosm of what’s happening across the entire economy: At UC, prices are also rising while services are diminishing. Pay has been cut. Employee furloughs imposed. People are losing their jobs.
But the faculty protest that the California system’s president ought to use $16 billion in earmarked research grants and medical fees to lower tuition and rescind salary reductions, which the aforementioned president, Mark Yudof, counters is unrealistic. And it appears to have gotten irredeemably personal between the faculty and the president, with him calling the strike a “tantrum” and them calling for his head.
This has little chance of replicating itself here, however, since faculty in the Oregon University System are not unionized.
You can read more about the strike here at its official Web site. Thanks to National Student News Service for the story.