Monday, October 19, 2009

In response to the letter from Executive Vice Chancellor Kliger: : Indybay


In response to the letter from Executive Vice Chancellor Kliger: : Indybay:

"A mass email sent to all ucsc.edu emails in response to the recent propaganda sent out by lying bureaucrat scum Dave Kliger
In response to the letter from Executive Vice Chancellor Kliger:

These are times of crisis. Across the nation, workers are losing their jobs, families are losing their homes, and students are losing access to public education. The administration agrees that these are times of crisis, but they refuse to acknowledge how this affects us all. They ask us to tighten our belts for a year, to take furloughs and budget cuts, to accept massive fee hikes. Now, they tell us that attempts to protest and fight back against this are part of the problem and that they add to the costs placed on students and workers. They accuse us of making worse a situation that they have perpetuated and exploited. This is not the case."

According to EVC Kliger: “When added to cleanup costs following the earlier occupation of the Graduate Student Commons, these efforts will run into tens of thousands of dollars — costs directly borne by taxpayers, students and their families. Those dollars are diverted from educating and supporting students.” We reject this entirely. The figures for repairs they invoke are ridiculous. It is hard to fathom that this “cleanup” should cost “tens of thousands of dollars.” If true, they only indicate the corporate structure of the university and its reliance on inflated costs for services, costs that are indeed “placed on students and workers.” More crucially, these are not dollars “diverted from educating and supporting students.” Kliger, of all people, should know very well that this is not how the university works. These sums that he touts to scare and divide people are only a drop in the bucket compared to the real cuts that the administration has overseen and indeed foisted upon those who depend on the university’s functions and services: students, faculty, and workers alike. To insinuate that it is attempts such as these occupations that are responsible for increased costs is a cynical lie. The funds raised by the proposed fee hike, in addition to the laying off of workers and the slashing of student services, will not be directed to preserving or improving the quality of education or access to jobs. They are directed to preserving the bond rating of the institution so that it can borrow money for unnecessary building projects, and to bolstering the state of California’s credit rating against its own future borrowing. We have no illusion that these actions fully or correctly expressed the discontent felt across the UC system and the state. Many disagree with the tactics, and we encourage those who do to join a wider struggle and to pursue their own ways of fighting against this ongoing trend toward the destruction of our education.