Davis Faculty Association

The board of the Davis Faculty Association has voted to endorse the strike called for by Occupy Cal to occur on November 15.

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided — with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly — to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation. [source]

Re-Fund California Coalition, which the Council of UC Faculty Associations has endorsed, has now produced a statement that provides more background and context to this issue:

Today we announce a student strike at UC Berkeley on Tuesday, Nov. 15th to reject the excessive police force used against our protests to make Wall Street — and the corporate elite on the boards governing our universities — pay for refunding public education. Some faculty are expected to join the student strike, and the actions will add to the growing momentum for statewide convergences at the CSU Trustees meeting in Long Beach and the UC Regents meeting at UCSF Mission Bay on November 16th.

There is a crisis today for California’s students and their families, but not for the Wall Street and corporate elites who control the economy and dominate the governing boards of California’s universities.

California leads the nation in tuition increases with nearly 100 percent rise in tuition costs since 2008, inflating student loans to $1 trillion nationally. We keep paying the price while Wall Street and corporations are left off the hook. We didn’t cause the economic crisis — they did.

That’s why we call on the board members and executives of our universities to sign the ReFund California pledge to support real solutions to fund public education and improve the economy for California families. They should join the community whose interests they say they represent instead of irresponsibly using police force to silence our freedom of expression.

Again, more information about this issue will be posted here as it becomes available.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Calls to Action, Student Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.