Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

Somewhat weak-kneed response from the Academic Senate says:

The Berkeley Senate Divisional Council shares the deep concern of all faculty, students, and staff about the terrible effects of the budget cuts imposed on the public teaching and research mission of the University. However, after discussion, the Divisional Council also recognizes the diversity of faculty opinion on the merits of a walkout. We therefore neither endorse nor oppose a walkout, regarding participation in it as a matter of individual faculty conscience, and knowing that faculty will meet their obligations to their students. We know that the campus administration sees matters in the same light.

Diversity of faculty opinion? Sure, diversity is all good, but the fact is, classes are not being held when and where they were originally scheduled!

Where is the list of faculty supporting this walkout? I would like to make sure that their “diversity of opinion” does not hurt my learning environment and avoid their classes if possible. Surely if you are brave enough to have an opinion (and voice them), you are brave enough for the consequences?

UC President Mark Yudof addresses criticisms, explains the situation:

I actually think the students ought to be angry about the fee increase proposal. I mean, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be. They are going up by tens and tens of percents. I’m angry about it too. I liked the old system. The closer it was to being free the happier I was. But that’s not the world I live in. And that’s not the world the Board of Regents lives in. And you could have 18 or 26 new board members and a new president and 10 new chancellors. But unless President Obama gives them a printing press, they are going to have much the same sort of decisions. Maybe some nuanced differences, but there aren’t many choices.

No one is happy about the fee increases (perhaps the one thing students, especially those from middle class who actually pay tuition, unlike graduate students or students from families earning under $60,000, might really be angry about). Everyone has done everything, except for relying on “faith-based budgeting”, to avoid that, and now it has to be done as a measure of last resort.

I’d recommend you to listen to the whole video (or read the whole transcript, as I did). I myself am personally taking this as the true account of our situation that hasn’t been muddled and corrupted by unions and other special interests. But even if you do not have the same faith in the university administration as I do (to me, the University is mother and father; nothing I have today has come from anywhere but from the University, so I am not an impartial judge of what the University does), the least you can do, if you are fair-minded and open-minded as so many college students claim to be, is listen to both sides.

Weigh the evidences they present, not the rhetorics or publicity stunts, and decide for yourself: how will my walking out on the 24th improve the situation? Whom and whose policies are you really protesting, and do you really have any other alternative (this is Alinsky’s rule #11, by the way)?

While some classes may be closed due to the walkout on Sept. 24 being publicized right now, I have great hopes that classes that actually teach something (i.e. anything but humanities, such as political science or English, really) will go on as if nothing happened. In case my hopes, that reasonable teachers would not participate in a political publicity stunt at the cost of their students, are dashed to bits, I am determined to make sure that my students are not affected, not in my class.

This supposed protest didn’t come up in our weekly Physics 111-BSC GSI meeting, and I hope it never will (because that would indicate that no one plans on skipping work that day). But in case it does, and in case any of the GSIs normally in the lab on Thursdays walk out, I will volunteer to be in the lab.

I know unions don’t like that v-word. People who volunteer don’t make any money and that means they can’t get a piece of the paycheck. Fuck the union. Fuck United Auto Workers Local 2865, a.k.a. the GSI union.

I have tried hard to keep politics out of my classrooms, whether it’s from me (you might have seen that I leave most … inflammatory political posts off this website) or from anyone else. I haven’t had to so far worry about the “anyone else” part, but if you think that I would let anyone harm the learning environment to serve their political cause just because opposing would be unpopular among my peers or because the damned GSI union would be displeased, you would be wrong.

There are only two things, short of me falling deathly ill, that can keep me out of the BSC lab on Thursday, Sept. 24: (1) my fellow GSIs show up to work and I don’t have to do their job for them; (2) none of the students come to the lab due to their enthusiasm with this walkout.

We will see what happens.

I’m just going to post two (somewhat old) emails I have in my inbox. I think I’ve made it fairly clear how I feel about these issues, so I don’t think I need to add my own commentaries. I think the emails themselves and who sent them speak clearly enough.

First, the email from the chair of physics department:

From: Frances Hellman <phys...@berkeley.edu>
To: ALL Faculty <facu...@physics.berkeley.edu>,
        Staff All <sta...@physics.berkeley.edu>,
        Grads all <gra...@physics.berkeley.edu>,
        Undergrad majors <maj...@physics.berkeley.edu>
Subject: [Grads] Department budget cut information
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:34:26 -0700

[-- Attachment #1 --]
[-- Type: multipart/alternative, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 16K --]

Dear Physics faculty, staff, grads, majors, post-docs, visitors,

I attach (and insert below for convenience) a summary of how the
department is handling its budget cut.  To date, most of you have been
focused on the furlough program, which affects our salaries and our
ability to do our jobs, but which is temporary.   In addition to this, the
Physics Department is taking what is being called a permanent budget cut of
approximately $400,000 (~20% of our permanent state budget, similar to
other departments).  I have worked hard with staff and faculty to arrive at
what we think is the best way to handle this cut, and outline the details
below.  A cut of this magnitude will have impact. There is without doubt
things here that will make you angry and frustrated - I share that
frustration, and am doing what I can to mitigate it.  This mainly consists
of trying to choose as wisely as possible how and where to make the cuts,
keeping eyes open for places to recover money, and fund raising to offset
cuts where possible.  Your input is and will be appreciated.

We looked hard at all parts of the department to find the best ways to
make this cut.  We anticipate being able to do this without layoffs, which
I note many departments are facing, but by necessity there are going to be
some difficult choices and some services provided in the past will have to
be eliminated or reduced.   I wrote you previously concerning one
significant part of the budget plan, which involved an increase and
restructuring of shop recharge rates.  I am now writing to you with the
other parts of the reduction plan for this upcoming year.  I apologize for
the fact that some of these changes are being implemented with virtually no
notice (e.g. lecture demos; end of semester teaching schedule announced by
the university).  This is not how any of us like to operate, but the
process is cumbersome and not easy to anticipate what and when we will get
information from which we must make decisions.  I reiterate that none of
this is being done lightly -- it is not possible to take a budget reduction
from the state of this magnitude without incurring some pain.  It is also
not possible to say much about what is likely next year -- the university
is looking at a variety of ways to help reduce our reliance on state
funding, while still supporting excellent research and teaching and
remaining committed to being an open public university.   I do want here to
inject one personal comment -- I still believe that Berkeley and
particularly our Physics Department is and will be a great institution.  I
am committed to finding ways to make that continue to be true, and will
work with you as best as I can do to achieve this.

The changes for our department described below have been arrived at in
consultation with faculty and staff of the department.  We are working
hard to find ways to increase income, and have targeted several opportune
fund raising efforts which have already begun-- ranging from support for
the Advanced Lab (Physics 111), to SPS, to graduate student fellowships
(two endowments), to (hopefully) a new endowed chair.  Our successes in the
past have in fact been most helpful in mitigating the impact of the state
budget disaster on our department.  Our block grant (grad student support)
and our TAS (GSI and lecturer) budgets have not been cut, so negative
impacts on some of our core functions are somewhat less severe than might
have been.

One important point to note --the below are associated with cuts in our
permanent budget.  There is in addition the furlough program, which will
impact all staff and faculty (graduate students, post-docs and anyone 100%
on non-state funding are exempt).  Furlough days will inevitably have an
impact on how department services can be handled.  The staff in our
department work very hard to meet departmental needs, but furloughs will
impact their ability to do this, and faculty and students need to
understand and work with staff to avoid missed deadlines and other
problems.  It is therefore extremely important to anticipate your needs
such as purchasing or grant handling or lecture demos; get requests in
early and recognize that staff may not be able to provide all the services
you have previously received (although I note that the search for another
accounting analyst is still underway and will help relieve pressure when it
is successful).

Specific cuts (approximate savings in parentheses):
1.    The shop recharge rates have been modified as previously discussed.
The Electronics Shop manager position (budgeted at 100%) is reduced by 50%,
allowing us to continue to employ our present (temporary) 1/2 time E-shop
manager Jerry Przybylski. In addition, the shop tool allowance has been
temporarily suspended.  Recharge income and shop usage will be carefully
monitored during the year.

2. Instructional support services will be reduced by ½ person.  This takes
advantage of Cindy Holmes' retirement -- she was full time FTE but will be
replaced by a ½ FTE.  Instructional support (lecture demos, lower division
labs, advanced lab) will re-organize to minimize impact on teaching, but
you should expect to see reductions in availability of demos for classes.
Guidelines on how this will be handled will be sent to instructors and
GSI's for affected classes.

3.  Our main administrative office is discontinuing its student helper,
and Nathan Proctor will be covering assignments in other parts of the
department, in addition to his primary duties as web master, colloquium
and special events organizer.  He will also be helping to cover for
Madeleine Gordon, who will be retiring this fall.  A number of other staff
have opted for a temporary time reduction (in addition to the mandatory
furloughs) which help offset costs in other areas.

4. Colloquium travel budget and special events budget (Segre and
Oppenheimer, annual staff, student, faculty holiday parties) have been
maintained, but with reduced budgets where possible; support for colloquia
entertainment expenses is reduced to a maximum of $175 per dinner.

5.  Faculty recruiting allowance has been eliminated for now (~$12,500);
funding for bringing in diversity speakers to the department has been
reduced to $2000/year, with a max of $400 per speaker, first come first
serve; funding for AMO seminar has been reduced to $1500 per year.

6.  Support for SWPS, SPS, COMPASS, CalDay, graduation, and 111 lab have
been maintained, as has grad student recruiting budget.

7.  Cookie/tea will only be provided on Mondays (colloquium day).  On
other days, the department will provide tea only.  (~$3000 per year)

8. The faculty lunches will no longer be held in the faculty club --
attendance was too light to justify the cost.  (~$2500 per year).  For
this upcoming year, we will try holding this informally in room 324
LeConte on Thursdays and see if attendance improves.

9. Telephone lines-- we have already identified 16 phone lines that have
been eliminated (saving ~$6000 per year) and estimate that there are an
additional ~16 lines that can be eliminated.

10.  PANIC room charges are currently being assessed to see if there is
room for savings.  Other small cuts have been made in all areas of the
department.

11.  There have been shifts of personnel from state funds to more
discretionary funds -- this may impact the availability of matching and
recruiting funds and other discretionary costs.  The impact of this will
be seen in time, particularly as we see if/how increased recharge rates
decrease shop usage.

Sincerely,
Frances Hellman, Physics Department Chair

[-- Attachment #2: Physics dept budget reductions.pdf --]
[-- Type: application/pdf, Encoding: base64, Size: 48K --]

[-- application/pdf is unsupported (use 'v' to view this part) --]

[-- Attachment #3 --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 0.1K --]

_______________________________________________
Grads mailing list
Gra...@physics.berkeley.edu

http://physics.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/grads

And the second email is from my GSI union “executive board”, or, as I like to call them, union pigs:

From: UAW 2865 Berkeley <berk...@uaw2865.org>
Subject: UC employees hold no-confidence vote on President Mark Yudof
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:24:15 +0000 (UTC)

August 26, 2009

Dear UAW 2865 member,

Employees throughout the University of California system will be participating
in a no-confidence vote on UC President Mark Yudof. The vote will take place
from today through Wednesday, September 2 on all UC campuses, and results
will be announced on September 3rd. The vote has been organized by a coalition
of unions protesting Yudof’s budgetary policies and rejecting the notion that UC
has a fiscal emergency.

The university union coalition is encouraging all employees to register their
rejection of Yudof’s policies by participating in the no-confidence vote.

The remaining vote times/locations for your campus are:

Thu, 8/27
Bancroft/Telegraph, 11:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
University Village, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Dwinelle Hall, 8:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Thu, 8/27 thru Wed, 9/2
Moffitt Library/Free Speech Movement Café, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Northgate (Hearst/Euclid), 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Westgate (Center/Oxford), 7:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.

Fri, 8/28 thru Wed, 9/2
Bancroft & Telegraph, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Tue, 9/1 thru Wed, 9/2
Yali's/Stanley Hall, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Lawrence Hall of Science, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
1111 Franklin (UCOP), 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Richmond Field Station, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Wed, 9/2
College/Bancroft, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

In solidarity,

UAW Local 2865 Executive Board

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
UAW 2865 Berkeley
2855 Telegraph Ave, Suite 305
Berkeley, CA 94705
phone: (510) 549-3863  /  fax: (510) 549-2514
berk...@uaw2865.org  /  www.uaw2865.org

mail-list.com    1302 Waugh Dr. #438    Houston, Texas    77019    USA

As a commentary not on the emails but on my own sentiments, this is all I have to say: my jobs at UC Berkeley were my first ever. As a first employer, I could not have asked for a better one—and as a continuing, 6th-year employee, I could not ask for a better workplace.

As for “my” union, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what they do with my $9 that they take out of my paycheck every month. Aside from giving salaries to the union pigs, I mean.

Because the future of UC Berkeley (and the whole UC system) is in private funding.

In the last 20 years, private gifts, grants and contracts have increasingly accounted for a larger portion of campus revenues. In 1990, private funds accounted for 7.7 percent of total campus funds, a percentage that jumped to 15.8 percent in 2007-08, according to data from the UC Berkeley Campus Budget Office.

And in fact, private funding from willing donors is the only ethical way to fund an education system—if the system isn’t paid for by its direct beneficiaries in its entirety.

As for what they propose to do with tax dollars stolen from the people, I can’t say I agree with their goal.

Yudof said the reduction in the state’s General Fund commitment, which totals almost $800 million for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 fiscal years, would place in jeopardy its historic commitment to provide access to all eligible high school graduates and would force UC to rely more heavily on higher student fees.

Why should UC, as a government institution, actively distort the labor market by giving diplomas those who neither deserve it or want it strongly enough? If there are too many people “eligible” for UC attendance—so many that after accounting for those who go out of state or go to private colleges, UC cannot accept those who want in (if it’s cheap)—then it probably means that the bar for “eligibility” is too low. After all, it’s an arbitrary bar set at an arbitrary percentage of GPA with no mechanism for self-correction. I would say lack of funding should play the role of that self-correcting mechanism. Is there not enough funding to accept expected student enrollment next year? Raise the bar now—so we are not changing the rules in the middle of the game, and we are not over-committing our system to those who shouldn’t have 4-year college education (or at least haven’t proven that the public should fund their education) anyway.

Raise the fees, and in fact, publish fee increase schedule for next 4 years, at a slight overestimation. Those to whom the education is worth it (and cannot pay out of pocket) can take out loans to get the education—their post-graduation salaries would presumably be worth it. If not, then they made stupid choice not dissimilar to running up a credit card debt.

Those to whom the education is not worth it will go into the society and be productive—until they feel that additional formal education is worth it, if ever.

No natural law of society says that every productive person has to have a college degree—in fact, some of the most successful people became successful after dropping out of Ph. D. program or even bachelor’s program.

UAW 2865 reports:

CALIFORNIA. Members of UAW Local 2865 voted by a 96% margin to ratify a new contract yesterday, ending three days of voting state-wide.

96% margin ?!?! That tells me there is some high-level manipulation going on here. In a true democracy, you should NEVER be able to get more than 90% in a group of 100 agree on anything. No US president wins by a landslide of more than 90%. But I’ll bet Kim Jeong Il will win by 96% or better every time there is a vote.