By: Jordan Darling, Editor-In-Chief
CFA
It’s been a busy semester for the California Faculty Association, the union that represents the California State University’s faculty, coaches, counselors, and coaches. From gearing up for the next round of faculty salary negotiations (the current contract expires in 2020) the CFA represents more than 23,000 members at California’s 23 CSU campuses.
Here are three issues the CFA is either currently engaged in or recently concluded.
Chancellor White Retires
Chancellor Timothy White announced his retirement on Oct. 22 2019, which becomes effective after the 2019-20 academic year. The search for a new chancellor is on and the CFA is taking an invested role in the search and encouraging members to attend a series of public forums held by the search committee.
At the first meeting held at Sacramento State on Nov. 12, CFA Associate Vice President Margarita Berta-Ávila laid out a list of qualities that the CFA would like to see in the next chancellor. Avila called for a new chancellor who will work tirelessly for the CSU’s, their students, staff, and faculty.
“It is the people’s university and they deserve an open search process with meaningful participation in choosing the system’s next executive,” Avila said. There will be four additional meetings: Nov. 20 at the CSU office in Long Beach; Nov. 22 at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Dec. 13 at California State University, San Marcos; Dec. 5, at California State University, Fresno
CFA Petitions CalPERS to Divest from Private Prisons
In an Oct. 23 CSUDH Academic Senate meeting, Dr. La Tanya Kiffer announced a victory for the CFA. The co-president of the CSUDH chapter of the CFA, Kiffer informed the senate that after a concerted lobbying effort, CalPers, the pension fund for CFA members, announced it was selling its holdings in private prison facilities GeoGroup and CivicCore. The CFA has pushed CalPERS since April to divest from private prisons, adopting a resolution April 14 to “actively engage CalPERS” on the matter of investing in private prisons.
“Standing up and speaking truth, that’s not where we want our retirement pensions to be invested. It’s not in our value, Skiffer said.
In a separate interview Samila Amanyraoufpoor, political action chair for the CSUDH chapter said, “We are all against it. We are not for private prisons. There must be a process when there is a standard of living and you are dealing with human life there should not be a profit involved period.”
Postponing The Quantitative Reasoning Requirement
In August 2019 there was a push from the CSU Board of Trustees to add a fourth year of quantitative reasoning into the requirements for incoming CSU students.
“Those requirements are going to be supposedly at the high school level, but require them to have a fourth-year math requirement prior to entering the CSU,” Skiffer said in an Oct. 23 Academic Senate meeting. CFA and SQE, Students Support Quality Education, are going to be organizing around that and pushing back. So we’re hoping to see that proposal get tossed.” The CSU Board’s vote was supposed to be held on Nov. 20 but has been pushed back.
