Don WILLIAMS describes Destination Higher Education, which introduces students to the UCSC community. Photo by Jessica Tran.

As 33 high school students pile out of buses into Cowell Circle, volunteers, interns and coordinators of Destination Higher Education (DHE) greet them with hugs and welcome signs. These students will spend their next three days immersed in UC Santa Cruz, courtesy of DHE, a Student Initiated Outreach program (SIO).

DHE introduces underprivileged high school students and potential transfer students from low-income communities to the benefits of a university environment. Held from April 11 to 13, the program offered introductory workshops ranging from financial aid to admissions guidelines and bonding activities for the students, each of whom has been accepted to UCSC for Fall Quarter 2013.

DHE is one of several SIO programs funded by Engaging Education, a UCSC student outreach and retention center. Other SIO programs include Oportunidades Rumbo A La Educación (ORALE) and A Step Forward (ASF), both of which collaborate with DHE.

Due to decreased funding and housing limitations, DHE has been forced to cut back on the number of students they take into the program, said DHE coordinator Jabari Brown.

“This year is about 33 participants, as opposed to other years there have been about 50, 60, 70,” Brown said.

This economic downturn is one share in the broad spectrum of programs affected by budget cuts, said director of admissions Michael McCawley.

“Budget cuts have affected all of us,” McCawley said. It is part of the landscape that we’re all dealing with.”

Chancellor Blumenthal helps fund DHE — he meets each dollar raised for DHE with $1.25 — but DHE would like to see permanent funding granted, said Fithawi Kudus, coordinator for DHE and UCSC fourth-year. For now, McCawley said the key to sustaining SIO programs is learning to stretch the dollar in different ways and seeking alternative methods to deliver the same content.

Despite these funding limitations, for Kudus, the mission of the weekend could still be made a reality.

“The goal for me is a 100 percent yield rate. Every student that we bring up on this program can walk away saying, ‘There’s no way that I’m not going to UC Santa Cruz,’” Kudus said.

For Amari Williams, DHE intern and first-year, DHE was crucial in deciding which university to attend.

“If it wasn’t for that program or the program we’re doing here,” Amari Williams said, “I wouldn’t have come here.”

Throughout the program, the students also learned about key campus figures and organizations. Chancellor Blumenthal and director of Rainbow Theater Don Williams were key speakers at the opening and closing events. DHE students also had the opportunity to participate in breakout events, where they met with organizations such as the African Student Union and ethnic fraternities and sororities. DHE intern Shiku Muhire said part of these events’ purpose was to allow participants to engage with African-American and other communities DHE students can participate in if they choose to attend UCSC.

“[The groups give] students a little better perspective about what their own community will look like when they step foot on campus,” Muhire said.

Since its founding about 15 years ago by UCSC graduate Keith Curry, DHE has been committed to welcoming and encouraging voices that are often unheard on college campuses, Amari Williams said. Curry offers one of these DHE members a $2,000 scholarship following attendance of the program each year.

While DHE primarily focuses on black high school students, this year the program encouraged participation from a greater range of ethnic groups from underprivileged communities, Amari Williams said.

“It’s about not just thinking they’re stuck in this one program or one community,” she said. “We want to let them know everyone has their certain struggles, but at the end of the day we’re all the same.”

This year, ORALE, which focuses on Latino and Latina UCSC students, and ASF, which is geared toward new Filipino UCSC students, hosted their outreach programs April 11–13. These programs came together with DHE several times during the weekend to host collaborative events, said DHE coordinator Jabari Brown.

“The great thing about DHE is that it’s not a program alone in its mission to bring diversity to this campus,” said Fiwathi Kudus, DHE coordinator.

Continual support for students who decide to attend UCSC in the fall is crucial, Kudus said. Mentoring and tutoring are essential to easing first-years who haven’t traditionally had as much support as other students into the college environment.

“While this is an outreach program and we show them the vision here on the UCSC campus for the students,” Kudus said, “it’s also about having the retention programs and maintaining these programs, keeping them alive and going and spreading the knowledge.”

Amari Williams would like to see changes with the program in coming years, mainly concerning the degree of campus participation in DHE.

“I would like to see more people reaching out toward the program,” she said, “Not just us reaching out to them, but them trying to help us out because that’s actually what makes the students want to be here.”

Illustration by Christine Hipp

You may have heard about the California state budget crisis. It’s an issue that hasn’t gone away since its start in 2008, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency due to an $11.2 billion shortfall. There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to it.

Since the start of this crisis, the state has been reducing the amount of money set aside for higher education.

The blame for the reduction in funds and the increase in tuition, along with the loss of valuable programs at schools in the University of California (UC) system, goes in many directions. Often, blame is pointed at the state, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) and even at the school itself.

Despite being an economic powerhouse that produces media, foodstuffs and technology, the state of California spends more than it makes, with a revenue of $88 billion to support a $129 billion budget in 2010–11, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). This discrepancy has forced the state to cut funds to various departments.

According to past California budgets, the state has reduced funding to the UC system by almost 31 percent since 2007–08, from $3.7 billion to next year’s proposed $2.6 billion. Since 2007–08, the state has cut (on average) 6.8 percent of funds allotted to the UC system every year. Additionally, California State Universities (CSU) have had to sustain an average cut of 7.6 percent every year since 2007–08.

UCOP governs the UC system and also decides and implements tuition increases. With the state cutting funds that the UC has depended on for many years, UCOP has made steep increases in tuition and fees as well as budget cuts to the UC system.

California resident tuition for the 2012–13 school year rose 17 percent from the 2010–11 school year, an increase of $1,878. According to the UC Santa Cruz financial aid website, tuition for the upcoming school year is now up to $11,220, and with additional fees, the total comes to $13,416 per year.

While the CSUs have a lower tuition than the UCs, they have also felt the bite of the budget. Since 2001–02, albeit before the fiscal emergency, tuition for CSUs has been raised from $1,428 to  $4,335, a 67 percent increase. It has risen 31 percent since 2007–08.

According to the Los Angeles Times, only 10 out of the 23 CSU schools will accept any mid-year transfer students in 2013. The 13 schools restricting admission will require incoming juniors to have at least an associate degree, not just community college transfer credits.

UCSC has faced tough budget decisions due to reduced funding from the state. In the beginning of the 2000s, approximately 40 percent of UCSC’s budget came from the state. According to the UCSC Budget Summary for 2011–2012, less than a quarter of UCSC’s budget is made up of state funding.

One of the major effects of UCSC’s budget crisis has been cuts to academics. Community studies and American studies were effectively suspended in spring 2010 and June 2012, respectively. The suspension limits the majors from taking any new students for at least two years, but it remains to be seen whether they will be reintroduced into the UCSC curriculum.

Also, since 2008, certain academic divisions have sustained large cuts in their funding. The humanities, physical sciences and biology, and the social sciences have all lost over $1–3 million from their budget. While the arts have maintained a steady budget, and engineering has actually had an increase of $0.5 million, UCSC’s funding for the academics in total has dropped 11 percent since 2008.

However, funding for education may see help from taxpayers in the future.

Proposition 30/Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012

On July 18, the UC Board of Regents endorsed Gov. Jerry Brown’s state tax initiative, Proposition 30, which will be voted on in November.

Proposition 30 states, “The chief purpose of this measure is to protect schools and local public safety by asking the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. This measure takes funds away from state control and places them into special accounts that are exclusively dedicated to schools and local public safety in the state constitution.”

The initiative, also known as the Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012, guarantees cities and counties ongoing funding for public safety programs such as the police and child protective services.

Brown’s proposition will raise the state sales tax by one-fourth of a cent for a maximum of four years, and will raise taxes on constituents who earn $250,000 or more a year by 0.5–3 percent, for a maximum of seven years.

Concurrent with the passage of Proposition 30, the state has agreed to increase UC and CSU state funding by 6 percent every year for four years, starting in 2013. K-12 also stands to gain funds from the passage of Brown’s initiative, with a 9.6 percent increase of about $4 billion for the 2012–13 school year.

Revenue expected from Proposition 30 ranges from $5.4 to $7.6 billion per year, from 2013 to 2018, according to the LAO and the Department of Finance.

On Aug. 21, The San Diego Union Tribune reported that a Field Poll found 54 percent of respondents in favor of Proposition 30 and 38 percent against it.

Although Proposition 30 is not a permanent solution to the budget crisis that has afflicted higher education, Mark Yudof, the president of the UC, said it is a step in the right direction.

“Gov. Brown’s 2012–13 budget package, in tandem with his revenue initiative, contains an implicit deal for UC. It is an imperfect deal, and it is not without risks,” Yudof said on July 18 at the UC regents’ meeting at UC San Francisco. “Still, it is a better deal than we anticipated. And it is our best shot at taking an important step toward the financial stability that this university so desperately needs.”

The regents have discussed budget troubles for many years but have not found an answer beyond increasing tuition and cutting the budget allocated to the individual schools of the UC, which has forced many UC schools to cut academic programs and lay off staff.

“I’m hopeful that if [the ballot measure] passes, we will get a multi-year deal and the university will be on the road to recovery,” Yudof said.

At the July 18 meeting, the UC regents voted on and passed a resolution that promises a tuition freeze for 2012–13, concurrent with increased funding from the state through Proposition 30. If Proposition 30 fails, tuition could go up as much as 20 percent midway through the school year. That would increase tuition by about $2,500, for a total of about $14,600 per year.

If Proposition 30 fails, the UC and CSU will automatically lose $250 million from state funding in January, along with another $125 million that has been pledged for the 2013–14 school year.

“It’s impossible to say with complete precision what the impact would be on any given campus if voters don’t approve Proposition 30,” said Jim Burns, director of public information at UCSC. “But obviously, the fiscal impact would be great, as the UC system would face a projected $375 million budget cut. University leaders have indicated that systemwide fee hikes could follow, as well as additional cuts to programs and additional layoffs.”

Funds raised by the new taxes will go to the UC or CSU system, but indirectly. All revenue from the initiative will be allocated for K-12 education (89 percent) and community colleges (11 percent). But should the initiative pass, Gov. Brown’s revised budget plan states that the UC will gain 3.6 percent more funds for 2012–13 than in the past year.

Some money will then be shifted around from the higher education and K-12 budget to other departments and to pay off debt, although funding to public safety and K-12 education will be sustained.

Should Proposition 30 fail, K-12 education will be forced to cut the school year by about two weeks in many school districts.

“We’re 47th in the nation in per student funding and the United States already has one of the shortest school years in the world,” said Michael Watkins, Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools. “We’re trying to ensure that all kids have access to education, but that won’t happen without revenue. I don’t care what your stance is on higher taxes, schools need additional funding.“

According to NoNewTaxes.net — a website paid for by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which opposes Proposition 30 — the real issue at hand is California’s overall tax status in the nation. Citing an income tax that is the third highest in the nation, and sales tax that is fourth, as well as money that taxpayers are paying for the creation of a future bullet train (that Californians voted for in 2008), No on Proposition 30 focuses on governmental mismanagement of money and tax policy. No on Proposition 30 describes itself as “Californians for Reforms and Jobs, Not Taxes.“

Among the supporters of No on Proposition 30 are Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee, and Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association. Those backing the proposition have repeatedly argued that Governor Brown is holding education hostage, forcing people to make the decision between increasing taxes or an automatic cut of $5.5 billion to K-12 education and higher education budgets.

“Prop. 30 supporters are asking voters for $50 billion in higher taxes, yet they admit they can’t

even keep track of the money they have,“ Fox said. “Losing millions of dollars and monitoring finances through an ’honor system’ underscores the need for reform, not taxes.“

While it remains to be seen what will happen, the future of the UC and CSU depends on the passage of Proposition 30.

“The schools need more money and the people we are asking can afford it,“ Brown told CBS San Francisco Local News on Aug. 22. “If voters do not pass the proposition, we’ll be shortchanging California’s future.”

Illustration by Amanda Alten

Against a backdrop of faux marble pillars and potted plants, an epic orchestral tune blares from speakers set up around the football field as the Cabrillo College class of 2012 files in to take their seats. Onlookers blow air horns and shout support from the stadium seating as students are called upon to receive their diplomas and formally end this stage of their education.

Some are in their 40s or 50s and dream of entering a new field or getting a better job than their previous one. Others are in their 20s, about to transfer to a university or enter the workforce for the first time in their lives.

“In 2012, over 18,000 students attended Cabrillo,” said Cabrillo’s vice president of instruction Renee Kilmer as she addressed the crowd. “The oldest student this year is 75 and the youngest is 19. One thousand and 34 of them are receiving their associate’s degrees, over 530 are receiving certificates, and over 500 have plans to transfer to a four-year university.”

Graduating from Cabrillo means different things for each of these students. With degrees and certifications offered in everything from journalism and business to landscape horticulture and fire technology, the class of 2012 is a varied group. Ultimately though, the vast majority plan to use the skills they’ve obtained at Cabrillo to pursue a career, a process that has become increasingly uncertain in the years following the financial crisis of 2008.

The economic outlook darkened again in early June when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the May 2012 Jobs Report, which showed the worst month for jobs added this year. According to the report, the unemployment rate rose in May, going from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent nationwide, and some analysts have voiced concerns that this may cast doubt on the meager recovery we’ve seen in the past few months.

Graduates, while well aware of the economic environment they’re about to enter, nevertheless remain hopeful.

“I’m about 60 percent confident on the economy, but I’m 99 percent confident in myself and that I can do it, especially with the skills I acquired here at Cabrillo,” said Gabby Avila, who graduated with an associate degree in international relations and plans to transfer to San Jose State University to obtain a bachelor’s degree.

“I think I’m more confident than my instructors are,” said Genoa Fox, who graduated with an associate of science degree in nursing and health science, an EKG certification and an associate degree in Spanish. “My instructors have basically been telling us not to get our hopes up but I say you’ve got to visualize it to do it, and I can see myself doing it.”

Fox hopes to get a job in a trauma emergency room intensive care unit, and eventually to become a flight nurse on an emergency response helicopter team. Fox’s experience has become common among students at Cabrillo and other higher education institutions, as instructors take pains not to get their students’ hopes up and stress taking practical classes as a fallback to ensure employment.

“Times are changing,” said Academic Senate head and history professor Michael Mangin. “You know, something that was so straightforward for most of my adult life like teaching, a lot of my history students would be very interested in teaching and my conversation with them now is a little different than it’s been for the last 20 or 25 years.”

Mangin said he now often advises students interested in history to take a few business or economics classes to augment their liberal arts education and make the prospect of employment a bit easier to come by.

A strictly practical path to the workforce might become even harder for some students to obtain next year though, as Cabrillo College is faced with the most extreme year of cuts since 2008 if the tax initiative on California’s November ballot doesn’t pass. If not, programs such as culinary arts, hospitality management, welding and others could find themselves on the chopping block.

“It is conceivable [that these programs and others will be cut],” Mangin said. “Especially if the November initiative doesn’t pass. My guess is that we’ve probably cut about 15 percent of where we were at four years ago, and we’re probably going to cut about another 8 or 10 percent if it doesn’t pass. Something’s gotta give.”

The Student Union Assembly put together a budget forum informational meeting followed by a Q&A session led by Alison Galloway regarding the effects of budget cuts after this month’s revision. Photo by Nallely Ruiz

At the Student Budget Forum with executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway, it was announced that UC Santa Cruz’s budget for the 2012-13 school year will have to stand up to some serious slashing.

Galloway said the most optimistic number for the amount expected to be slashed from the budget is approximately $4.5 million if Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax initiatives are passed this fall. If Brown’s tax initiatives fail, the state is expected to cut approximately $250 million from the UC system budget, and cuts to the UCSC campus are estimated to run from $18–20 million.

Students asked Galloway a variety of questions regarding where and how the budget cuts would be enacted.

“This year, we’re planning our budget around an $8 million cut,” Galloway said. “Money comes in two flavors. There’s permanent money we depend on every year, that we use to pay faculty, give professors tenure, and more. Then we have one-time money. One-time is money we can use back and forth. Typically we have some one time money that we use where we need to. This coming year, we’re planning on taking an $8 million cut out of one-time money.”

When asked about the faculty’s part in deciding what would be cut in collaboration with the administration, Galloway said the dean would first work with department chairs to determine how the one-time money will be spent in addition to planning for permanent cuts in July 2013.

“Then I get the plan, the Academic Senate gets them, and there’s a back and forth,” Galloway said. “For the 2013 budget, it’s going to be a longer process, because the cuts will be much harder to do.”

Chad Oliver, a first-year environmental studies major, asked whether the administration had given any thought to working with students in order to push for more support from the state on the forum’s Facebook page, which was set up so students who couldn’t attend the meeting could voice their concerns to Galloway.

“In the discretionary budget, there is education, health and human services, and the prison system,” she said. “There’s a lot of political pressure to keep the prison system going at the current rate, which tends to pit health and human services against education.”

Galloway also said legislators, like the UC schools, have been met with difficult decisions regarding cuts as well.

“To give the legislators credit, they’re facing some tough choices themselves,” Galloway said. “[Legislators] have to go into one room and listen to educators and their supporters, and then go into the next room where someone is saying if you cut this, I’m only allowed three trips to the dialysis machine in a year and I’m going to die. That’s the kind of pressure they’re dealing with. The concern for us is that if you’re not funding higher education, then you’re not investing in the future of California.”

Student Union Assembly commissioner of academic affairs Jessica Greenstreet said she was concerned about the role that the UC Office of the President (UCOP) plays in taking money out of the campus budget and putting it into their own budget.

“UCOP is projecting a $60 million cut,” Galloway said, “which sounds good, but then they are taking $75 million for special projects on different campuses, so they’re really increasing their budget by $15 million. When we talk to the Office of the President, we say, ‘Well, we can’t cut that — that’s a good program.’ We’re even beyond that now, as we have cut many good programs. We have cut many things that are really good for our faculty, for our students and our staff. But they don’t feel the level of pain that we do.”

Greenstreet also asked if Galloway had any plans to work with UCOP in order to reduce the amount of funds taken from university budgets.

“One of the reasons that we are trying to bring people [from UCOP] down to the campuses is so that they can see the severity of the cuts,” Galloway said. “I would love to show them the Quarry Amphitheater, and tell them we would love to have the money to fix this place up, so it can be a venue again. But we have to fundraise to do that. It’s just not in our budget.”

With the state contribution getting smaller each year, she said, the cuts will keep coming.

“We don’t have anything left to cut,” Galloway said. “There are few things we could cut and still maintain a future for the campus.”

Families and educators from the Walnut Avenue Women's Center gather in front of downtown Santa Cruz clock tower to protest proposed cuts to childcare. Photo by Nallely Ruiz.

With the state budget deadline rapidly approaching, families, teachers and organizers from the Walnut Avenue Women’s Center (WAWC) and other local daycare centers rallied May 5 to save state-funded childcare from the chopping block.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, if passed by California legislators this June, would limit funding for childcare programs and restructure their management from state to county control.

Under new eligibility requirements, parents would have to work at least 30 hours weekly and have legal residency to qualify for subsidies, barring many who currently receive aid. Parents who are full-time students, disabled and unemployed workers, and undocumented immigrants would all have difficulty meeting this requirement.

“A lot of our families will no longer be able to receive childcare, either from us or other areas and other state-funded daycare centers, which means that they’re not going to be able to go to school and they’re not going to be able to work,” said Stephanie Tam Rosas, a family advocate of the Family Literacy program at the Walnut Avenue Women’s Center. “That’s going to have huge effects on their lifestyle.”

About 25 organizers, teachers, parents and children from WAWC and other local childcare centers gathered at the courthouse on Saturday. They marched to the clock tower at the end of Pacific Avenue, holding signs and chanting their concerns as passing drivers honked their horns in support.

The state faces a $9.2 billion deficit, according to the California Budget Project. Governor Brown’s budget proposal slashes resources for the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKS) program by $946.2 million.

Just over half of the cuts would be made to childcare programs. CalWORKS provides grants to 1.1 million low-income children and employment resources for parents, and the new cuts would terminate aid for an estimated 62,000 children and reduce cash available for hundreds of thousands of others.

“We’re an easy target,” said Cathy Lusk, the WAWC’s Early Education Center director. “Not everyone gets why early education is so important.”

Lusk emphasized the importance of teaching reading, as well as social and emotional skills, early on. Not teaching these skills, she said, leaves children ill-equipped for leading productive lives and ultimately creates more liabilities for society to deal with.

“Taking care of children in general is difficult enough,” said Kai Chen, a WAWC teacher who works with toddlers. “Essentially, we’re instilling an early love for learning. It’s our job to provide a way for them to understand the world around them.”

Raquel Vega, who helped to organize the rally, is a Cabrillo College student hoping to study scientific illustration in graduate school. Her daughter receives subsidized childcare, which Vega calls a “lifesaver.”

Because Vega does not work, she would not be eligible for aid after realignment. Without family in the area, she said, she would have to drop out of school to supervise her daughter.

“I don’t want to be forced to stay home,” she said. “I want to take care of my child and I want to build a future for us.”

Kristin Hummel, a UCSC psychology student whose daughter attends preschool on campus, went to the rally to spread awareness about the budget cuts’ effects.

“I can’t imagine trying to get through school, a single parent with a 30-hour work week, trying to be a full time student,” she said. “That’s just impossible.”

WAWC has endured years of dwindling funding, relying on the sacrifice and goodwill of its teachers and volunteers to keep its doors open.

Volunteers provide about 80 percent of the center’s direct services, said Cita Rasul, WAWC’s fundraising and outreach coordinator.

“We’re fortunate that we live in a great area and have a
community that does as much as they can,” she said. “Most of our employees are working for far less than they’re worth. It’s shameful to see where our state’s priorities in funding are.”

Lusk echoed Rasul’s sentiment.

“If it weren’t for the wonderful teachers we have who are willing to do these things and not get the wages they should receive, and not have the hours they should receive, then we would have had to close,” Lusk said. “We’re not at the tipping point, but we’re getting close.”

As the June 15 budget deadline approaches, WAWC and other concerned state residents will continue to write letters, collect signatures for petitions and call state legislators to repeal the cuts.

Data released by UCOP on April 17 reported that an unprecedented 160,939 students applied for the fall 2012 quarter UC-system wide, with 80,289 admitted. Out of those students admitted, 10,309 were from out of state.

UC Santa Cruz admissions adviser Robert Szemeredi said in a brief interview that UC admissions officers “don’t really care whether students are from California or not … we offer admission based on whether or not [students] meet and exceed UC requirements.”

UC Santa Cruz received 40,622 total applicants. Out of the 19,936 freshman undergraduates who were admitted, 1,082 were out-of state-students and 589 were international students. UCSC admitted 514 more non-California resident students than last year. Non-resident students currently pay $23,000 more than California residents in annual student tuition fees.

The website for the University of California budget shows that the 2011-2012 budget was the first time in UC history that student fees and tuition contributed more to “core operating funds” than did the California state general funds.

California state spending on education has decreased by $6 billion over the last year, according to a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University.

Campus provost Alison Galloway said in an on-campus budget forum Feb. 27 that the UC faces a potential $200 million budget reduction. This loss in state funding would create holes in the budget that would need to be accounted for.

Galloway said under “optimistic” conditions, the cuts in the overall UC budget could “trigger” up to a $4.5 million funding reduction for 2012-13.

While admission of out-of-state students has increased, numbers show that California residents aren’t necessarily being pushed out of the system. Admissions have been cut back on the whole due to a lack of resources. At UCSC, 18,265 California high school seniors were admitted for the fall 2012 quarter, up from 17,917 last year. However, admission offers to UCSC for all applicants have decreased from 68.1 percent in 2011 to 60.5 percent in 2012, indicating increased competition among UC admissions.

Szemeredi said non-resident students make up less than 2 percent of the student body, a fact that is “dissuasive” to potential applicants who feel that UC Santa Cruz is dominated by Californians.

“We’re really desiring diversity,” Szemeredi said.

Professor Gliessman. Illustration by Leigh Douglas

For the past 30 years, UC Santa Cruz has offered resources for students interested in contributing to campus sustainability through programs like the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) and the Program in Community and Agroecology (PICA).

Within the UC system, these programs, which offer educational opportunities to students interested in everything from organic farming to social justice, are unique to UCSC — but that doesn’t mean they can’t fall victim to financial woes.

“The fact [these programs] exist on our campus shows you how much effort the students and the campus put into creating a better sustainable agroecological network for ourselves and our future communities,” said Kirsten Williams, fourth-year sociology major and development and events coordinator at the campus sustainability office.

The agroecology program at UCSC is a holistic and interdisciplinary program, drawing students from programs like environmental studies, community studies and the biological sciences for a common goal of contributing to campus sustainability.

The program was founded in 1982 by current agroecology professor Steve Gliessman, who also serves as the Alfred E. Heller Endow chair, a position that appropriates funds for university-affiliated programs like PICA.

However, the UC-wide budget crisis, in addition to Gliessman’s impending retirement from the university at the year’s end, has put the future funding of
undergraduate resource programs like CAN and PICA at risk.

“We aren’t free from larger budget problems,” said Andrew Holstedt, fourth-year environmental studies major and PICA intern. “A big issue is staff. For PICA, we’ve had to substantially decrease hours.”
As Gliessman plans to retire, future funding decisions for programs like CAN and PICA will be left to the incoming chair. Program funds collected from private donors are appropriated as the chair sees fit.

“I’ve used those funds for [agroecology programs] … I could have used [the funds] for research,” Gliessman said.

Both CAN and PICA offer classes that may be taken for credit, like “Environmental Education and Sustainability.” Additionally, the programs offer student-led seminars teaching sustainable living skills, and also host community meals, serving student-cultivated food organically grown on campus. Gliessman said programs like CAN and PICA have introduced students to a new approach called “action education.”
“You’re learning something in order to do something — to bring about change that is needed in society,” Gliessman said. “You’re not just learning facts. You’re learning skills that you can take out in the community and create change where it needs to happen.”

Alongside environmental concerns, social justice remains a significant issue within both programs. In addition to incorporating organic gardening practices on campus, the programs advocate the development of direct farmer-to-consumer relationships with food producers, such as coffee growers in Central America.
“We try to create as many opportunities as we can for undergraduates to get their hands on these things and engage in food systems issues directly, especially the social justice side of that,” Gliessman said.
Many students have found the resources offered by these programs as important to the future of not only the UCSC community but for communities on a larger local, regional and global scale.

“Programs like CAN and PICA offer students and our community members the ability to learn about the organic food systems and sustainable living to help promote a healthier society as a whole,” Williams said.
Until the future funding of such programs is decided, Bee Vadakan, director of education at the Sustainable Living Center, said she “encourages students to voice their support.”

“The [university’s] cutting of innovative programs that focus on student-led teaching lower the quality of education that is available to students,” Vadakan said. “I think [the university] needs to hear what’s meaningful and important to students.”

Free weekly dinners hosted by Friends of CAN (FOCAN) are also held on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. in Building A of the Sustainable Living Center, located next to the Farm.
For additional information on campus sustainability efforts, visit www.canunite.org and ucscpica.org in addition to casfs.ucsc.edu/, http://sustainability.ucsc.edu/. and http://sec.enviroslug.org

Illustration by Christine Hipp

When 52-year-old Karen Jones* walked into the Walnut Avenue Women’s Center (WAWC) nine months ago, it was an act of desperation.

“I had left Arizona from a situation of domestic violence and I was really looking forward to my new life in California. I was going to be home free,” Jones said. “I got here and it took about nine months before I had collapsed into myself and had thoughts of suicide at a time when I should have been starting a new life. It was in that moment when I reached out to the Walnut Avenue Women’s Center.”

Jones told the receptionist she had hit her “complete bottom,” and within 30 minutes they provided her with an advocate, who comforted her and assured her it was going to be OK.

When she left, the center provided Jones with a small gift bag of toiletries — “such a special little thing of personal care,” Jones said.

She started her path of healing.

But since Jones first came to the WAWC, funding has been cut, the resource has been threatened, and even fundraising has been unable to provide significant help.

In an effort to remedy an estimated $25.4 billion deficit, Gov. Jerry Brown slashed through state funding for state social service programs in January 2011. The new budget takes steps toward “dismantling much of California’s once vaulted social safety net,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

A sleepy wooden building at the end of a stretch of colorful gabled houses and arches of mature tree cover, the WAWC commands no attention from the rest of the avenue. The antiquated Young Women’s Christian Organization (YWCA) sign that hangs from the side of the building is the only hint pointing to what goes on behind those doors.

Aside from Defensa de Mujeres, a Santa Cruz domestic violence service center for women and their families in Santa Cruz, WAWC is one of the city’s only resources designed to help those who have been in an abusive relationship or struggled with poverty.
Over $200,000 in grant money has been eliminated by the state for domestic violence services, family literacy services and youth development services. Seven workers at WAWC have been laid off so far, and the remaining 27 have been furloughed.

“My advocate is no longer here on Friday,” said Sarah Walker*, domestic violence survivor and friend of Jones. “You are used to [being able to] fall apart [any time], but now I have to watch my days when I need help.”

Since 1933, when the center was first created under the name Young Women’s Christian Association, the programs provided have grown beyond women’s issues to support the development of the entire family.

The center’s mission statement pledges to “encourage women and their families through personal action and leadership” and aspires to reach this objective through their three umbrella programs: Family Literacy Services, Domestic Violence Services and Youth Development Services. Unlike other centers in Santa Cruz County, the services are designed to “serve the whole lifespan” of their members.

“Our teen moms who have babies, we get them as early as two weeks [for childcare],” said Jennifer O’Brien-Rojo, director of WAWC. “As soon as [the babies go] to school, they come into our [youth development] program. Then, all the way through the end of life, [we have] our breast cancer programs. So it really is the whole spectrum.”

O’Brien-Rojo started at the WAWC as a volunteer when she was 15 in 1985. After college, she came back to become a board member for the center before eventually becoming the director. Now 42 years old, 27 years later, O’Brien-Rojo sat on the edge of her chair as she spoke about the WAWC in its prime.

“In ’99, when I went on staff we just went crazy writing grants for all the things we wanted to do,” O’Brien-Rojo said. “We just saw so much need in our community.”

From 1996 to 2001, the budget of the WAWC exploded from $300,000 to $1.5 million thanks to funding from state grants. The center was able to develop their three main programs during this time.

Two of the three large programs, Family Literacy Services and Youth Development Services, had their state funding eliminated this year. Yet the WAWC has been able to keep the programs afloat by cutting staff to the bare minimum, requiring staff to take alternating furlough days to ensure the center is always open, and cutting what O’Brien-Rojo calls “the gravy” of the Youth Development and Family Literacy services, leaving only the necessities.

It costs $200 per day to fund the Family Literacy program, and the same amount to fund the Youth Development programs.

The Youth Development Services program, which is funded 90 percent by a state grant, started out small but over time created one-on-one mentoring services, youth support groups, a comprehensive sex education program and youth empowerment programs.

The Mom and Kids Club, a 10-week program that supports families who have survived domestic violence, helped facilitate the expansion of the Youth Development program.

“We got to the end [of the program] and we had this group of teen girls that said, ‘That’s great that you finished your program, but we’ll be back here next week,’” said O’Brien-Rojo, chuckling. “They owned the center now. It was their space.”

The kids kept showing up and WAWC staff kept coming up with more programs to provide for them.

Eunie Del Rosario — or “Ms. Eunie,” as her eighth-grade science class calls her — was so affected by the “family life” class the WAWC provided for the local Shoreline Middle School as part of their Youth Development Services that she joined the board of directors at WAWC.

“I call [the program] ‘family life’ versus ‘sex ed,’” Del Rosario said. “When I hear about [sex ed], it sounds like [it’s only about] an act and the relationship is not even considered. [We] give them the opportunity to look at what the facts are and they make the choices from within.”

The program was popular with the eighth graders, who on the first day were allowed to “get their giggles out” by saying out loud every sexual slang word they could recall. UC Santa Cruz-trained volunteers from the WAWC helped to teach the program. Del Rosario said the eighth graders responded well to the volunteers.

“These young [volunteers] are so passionate and [it’s] contagious to have that energy in my classroom,” Del Rosario said. “They’re a gift to come into my room with all the up-to-date information and give these kids tools to make good choices.”

Originally, WAWC provided additional programs for sixth and seventh grade classes that taught students how to have healthy relationships and friendships with their peers; however, those services were cut due to lack of funding.
Since the cuts, the WAWC have had to replace their full-time director of Youth Development Services with a half-time staff position.

Recently, the Youth Development director was eliminated completely. Volunteers, primarily from UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College, have picked up the slack — but their time is hindered by their school schedules, which include breaks.

In 2006, the center received an award for the highest teen mom graduation rate in California, and in 2008, the center received a second award for highest rate of teen moms continuing on to higher education.

“When we started, Santa Cruz was a hot spot for teen pregnancy, and in our 10-plus years of having the funding and doing the work, it is no longer a hot spot,” O’Brien-Rojo said. “But we really need to continue that work, because if we stop, then it’s going to climb right back up again.”

Two years later, $70,000 was cut due to a state decision to allow school districts to use California School Age Families Education Program (Cal-SAFE) money that was intended to support programs for pregnant and parenting teens on general expenses.

A state Community Challenge Grant, which finances teen pregnancy prevention organizations, had helped finance the program. However, in 2011, the state ruled to eliminate the grant funding.

Due to the budget crisis, WAWC is now unable to provide childcare for the teen moms, or home visits, which the center provided to make sure the parents attended school.

The Even Start Family Literacy Program, which provides resources for the preschool-aged children at WAWC to begin a steady academic career despite instances of abuse in their past, was unable to survive the elimination of its $140,000 grant.

The program worked with many English as a Second Language (ESL) children and was so successful that many of the children tested out of ESL classes — and some students were even recruited by local private schools.

“If we weren’t here, the worst-case scenario [is that] people die,” O’Brien-Rojo said. “On the other end of the spectrum — but to me, just as grave — is people never reach their potential. They never get to be who they were put on this planet to be.”

Rhonda Rhodes, a current employee with Human Resources at UCSC, was a domestic violence survivor and a member of the WAWC in the early 1990s. After completing her own healing process, she stayed at the center and supported other women by facilitating the same support groups she joined when she first came to the center.

“It’s kind of like we always know there’s a home to go to,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes has two adult sons who were part of the WAWC childcare programs, and now has a 10-year-old daughter. Rhodes said it was “unfortunate” that the Youth Development Services and Family Literacy Services funding was cut, especially since she plans on sending her daughter to GirlZpace, a WAWC youth empowerment program.

“I always knew that the [WAWC] would be a place [my children and I] could go to for support,” Rhodes said. “It’s really sad that there’s no funding for that youth program. Sometimes you need [a] resource other than your school.”

Fundraising for the WAWC has been a difficult process. O’Brien Rojo said the center is currently trying to generate more money from the community so they will not be as vulnerable to the “whims” of the state in the future.

However, throughout the turmoil, WAWC still succeeds in keeping the meat of their programs alive by using innovative methods to fill the financial gaps left by the state.

“You’re either going to sink, float or evolve,” Del Rosario said. “[WAWC] has evolved with their ingenious ways of making ends meet.”

On March 3, WAWC hosted their third annual unique tequila tasting fundraiser, called Agave Agape, at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz. The event has grown from 45 guests at the first event to 150 guests this year.

Former member of the WAWC Laiaa Johnson* attended the event with her son, now a UCSC student. Johnson had used the free childcare services the center provided while working as a family law attorney in Santa Cruz County.

“[Working with the WAWC] was the best experience of my life,” she said. “It is totally a group worth supporting, because they do so much for families in our community. We are so lucky to have them.”

Members of the WAWC and domestic violence survivors from other organizations attended the event.

Nine months after she sought help, Jones sits with her friend after a support group for domestic violence survivors as they reminisce on the WAWC’s effect on their lives.

It took two years for Jones’ friend, Sarah Walker*, to admit that she needed help healing from her past of domestic abuse.

“You are so isolated that you can’t believe [it — you wonder,] ‘How did I get into this situation?’” Walker said. “And then you come here and it’s just … big hugs.”

“My life turned around for me,” Jones said, wiping tears from her eyes. “[The WAWC] started a path of healing, recovery, education, information and support in a place where I didn’t think I would be able to make it, honestly.”

The two women hugged outside the center before parting ways.

“I’m a possibilities broker,” O’Brien Rojo said. “Being the bridge, as the executive director, I give people that opportunity to be part of someone else’s possibilities by being donors. By financially supporting us, you get to be part of that person thriving. The returns on that investment are never-ending. There is never going to be a recession on human potential.”

*Names have been changed

On March 1, students and supporters of the Occupy Education movement gathered at universities across the nation to protest tuition hikes and call for state reform. On March 5, thousands of student protestors from higher education institutions in California gathered in Sacramento with a similar message.

Jeb Purucker, a UC Santa Cruz literature graduate student, emphasized the global nature of the movement.

“Protesters were gathering in London and people were getting tear-gassed in Quebec while we were out in the rain on Thursday,” Purucker said.

On March 1, the UCSC campus was shut down at 4:00 a.m. as close to 250 students gathered to listen to speakers and take part in a “Tent University” staffed by activists and faculty. A wide variety of issues were discussed and opinions expressed, but most protesters agreed on the basics.

“I’m here because the state of our education is currently in a crisis and I believe the people in power are not fit to address it,” said Chris Cuadrado, a fourth year Latin American and Latino studies major and emcee of the tarp-covered truck that served as a stage for student and faculty speakers. “I believe it is essential for us to come together and decide what our response is to that crisis.”

Protesters gathered peacefully for the majority of the day. At 8:30 a.m. a Ford Mustang attempted to breach the blockade at the base of campus, knocking over students. No one was seriously injured.

A larger protest occured in Sacramento on March 5. Four busloads of UCSC students took part. Activists, union representatives and students marched to the State Capitol, carrying signs and banners bearing slogans condemning recent budget cuts and actions of the UC regents.

Thousands of people gathered on the steps of the Capitol to listen to speakers including Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and civil rights activist Van Jones, as well as several student representatives. The speakers advocated new taxes and in favor of further budget cuts.

“We’re here today because the California dream is in danger. We’re here today because we have more than tripled the cost of higher education in this state in the last decade and more than doubled it in the last five years. We’re here today to say enough is enough,” said Newsom. “We built the envy of higher education for the world 50-plus years ago … It’s time to reconcile our proud past.”

After speakers left protesters entered the Capitol. Around 2 p.m., a general assembly was organized by several hundred protesters, as they discussed the changes they’d like to see. These were later formalized in a list of demands.

Most filtered slowly out of the building as the night went on, but 68 were arrested for refusing to leave after a dispersal order was issued. They were released later that night and slept in a Sacramento Church until morning, when buses from their respective cities and universities took them home.

John Kenny, a UC Berkeley environmental engineering grad student, was impressed with the turnout.

“I came to this General Assembly because I like how this is some kind of democratic process where we can come up with what we want to do,” said Kenny. “I was impressed by the number of people [who] were here earlier.”

Others like Mike Rotkin, UCSC Community Studies field study coordinator, said celebration was premature.

“All of your lives for the next few decades are going to be determined by a raging crisis at the world level in the economy,” said Rotkin as he stood in the rain and addressed the crowd from the truck on March 1. “There aren’t gonna be any rising wages and rising benefits for you. Your lives are gonna be about fighting for the scraps you have and trying to figure out a way to build some power in this country, so your children have a future.”

Global Cities, a sociology class taught by Miriam Greenberg, is held at the base of campus during the March 1st protests that shut down campus.

For video coverage of this event, check out City on a Hill Press’ section on the website: www.sctv28.com. 

Despite the rain drenching the gathered crowd of between 100-200, spirits were high. Occupy Education strikers gathered at the entrances of UC Santa Cruz since 4:00 a.m. Student and faculty protesters congregated on March 1 for the state-wide Day of Action, hiding from the rain between tents and a truck bearing blaring speakers.

“It is our expectation that the participants will remain respectful of the needs of the broader campus community and that the day will unfold in a safe and positive manner,” according to the announcement.

At 8:30 a.m., a Ford Mustang attempted to break through a student barricade. Some students were knocked over by the car, but were rescued by other protesters.

“We were just standing there, trying to keep warm,” said Abby Edwards. “Next thing I knew I was on top of the hood and then on the ground. We weren’t even on the front line.”

UC Santa Cruz police chief Nader Oweis said that this incident was of concern to the UCSC police. They are still interviewing witnesses, and charges have yet to be pressed.

Students brave the cold and rain, blocking off the Glenn Coolridge Dr. UCSC entrance as part of the March 1st protest which shut down campus. Photos by Toby Silverman.

“Having that car attack, it worried us. Our goal is to keep everybody safe. We just don’t want any altercations,” Oweis said.

Oweis said that the top priority of the UCSC police department was safety.

“At 5:00 p.m., there are going to be a lot of families trying to get off campus with their kids,” Oweis said. “I’m worried about when it gets dark. We just want to make sure nobody gets hurt.”

Graduate student Omid Mohamadi had a similar appraisal of the situation.

“The guy who hit the protesters was angry from the beginning. We kept the line and stayed peaceful,” Mohamadi said. “I think there is a silent agreement between us and the police to keep things peaceful.”

Besides this and other incidents, the protest otherwise remained relatively calm. But some students were disappointed by the relatively low turnout.

“What has it come to?” asked an unnamed female protester. “More people show up for 4/20. Things shut down completely for 4/20. I expected a lot more.”

Mohamadi thought that the turnout was acceptable, given the weather.

“Despite the rain, people are still out here,” he said.

Speakers blaring Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” obscured the voices of some protesters and it was difficult to spot clear leaders, but protesters made their opinions heard nonetheless.

Students surround the "University of California Santa Cruz" sign at the front entrance of campus on High Street during the March 1st protest that shut down campus.

“I’m here because I don’t think there’s any other way for students to be heard,” said another protester. “I think we relate to certain services in the wrong way–health care, public education. These are for the public good, and should be treated as such. My little sister wants to come to [the] UC, and my family isn’t going to be able to send her.”

Some UC workers empathized with the protesters’ grievances. Union worker George McCombie of AFSCME 3299 (the UC worker’s union) wasn’t able to work on campus due to the blocked entrances, but took the opportunity to attend the protest.

“I’m out here to support the students. When I started working here ten years ago, tuition was just over $3000; it’s doubled twice since then,” McCombie said. “I have a nine-year-old son– at this rate, by the time he’s university age, it’ll be over $50,000. It’s not sustainable.”

McCombie said the UC needs to take budget cuts in administrative departments.

“Faculty is the brains, unions are the brawn, and administrators are the fat. That’s where we should cut–administrator salaries, UCOP,” McCombie said. “We should spare faculty and keep class sizes down.”

The protest is slated to run until roughly 8:00 pm–at time of publication, the protest is still ongoing. The protest is scheduled to move to Sacramento on March 5th.

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

A thinktank of students at UC Riverside have taken on the perennial problem of tuition hikes with a revolutionary funding model.

Released to the public on Jan. 10, FixUC’s Student Investment Proposal outlines a tuition plan under which students would no longer pay up-front tuition costs. Rather, upon entering a career, graduates would instead pay 5 percent of their annual salary to the university for a total of 20 years.

According to the FixUC website, this will generate “nearly three times” the revenue of the current tuition system, and “allow the University of California to reduce its dependency on unreliable state funding.”

Drafting began last April, when editorial board members of UCR’s student-run newspaper The Highlander decided they had had enough of the consequences of California’s budget crisis.

“Every week, we published an editorial [about the state cutting from UC ] … we called on the regents and the student body to change their response strategy,” said FixUC president Chris LoCascio. “Ultimately, it got to a point where we ended up meeting one to two times a week to brainstorm and come up with a plan ourselves.”

The proposal was initially kept under wraps to prevent premature criticism.

“Once we had the core ideas, we essentially poked holes in it, and kept thinking about how it wouldn’t work,” LoCascio said. “We spent a lot of time coming [up] with solutions for [the complexities].”

Although the group initially didn’t present the plan to the general UC Riverside student body, the group approached several administrators and professors for input, and pursued research of their own.

Alex Abelson, a FixUC Data analyst and fourth-year economics major, obtained statistics from UC, IRS and U.S. Department of Labor records, and used some of his own field data.

“I took the core idea of [a fixed-percentage graduate contribution] and found the numbers,” Abelson said. “I went through what the university was making, and what would be a reliable amount of contribution that would sustain the university.”

Erik Green, UCSC’s Graduate Student Association president, said he supports students looking for solutions.

“’I’m really encouraged to see a truly radical funding model,” Green said. “Rather than the system we have now, which is based on the assumption that students will graduate and get jobs … It moves towards actual statistics and data.”

Repeatedly referencing a “worst-case scenario,” the proposal assumes a mere 60 percent employment rate at $50,000 annual salary for the first 10 years of employment.

“If you look closely at our figures, you will see we were very conservative,” LoCascio said.

Stephen Lee, Riverside’s Associate Student Body president, teamed up with FixUC in the fall to help with outreach. He arranged a meeting with Chancellor Timothy P. White, and has contacted the student leadership of other campuses. All, he said, have been very encouraging and have urged them to “keep going.”

“I can’t say I support every detail in the proposal,” said UC student regent Jonathan Stein in an email. “But it’s awesome that students have begun to think outside the box about budget solutions at the UC, and have stopped waiting for the administration to come up with all the answers for them.”

The proposal has already met scrutiny and skepticism, but its authors stress the importance of open dialogue and honest compromise.

“I think this is really the highest level of student that UC was created for,” Lee said, “to not only be very educated … but to really understand all of that knowledge, and stand up for it and fight.”

With state revenues falling more than $2.2 billion short of projections, Brown enacted the June state budget’s planned trigger cuts to both education and social services.

The cuts to UC would not be passed on to individual campuses, according to UC spokesperson Steve Montiel, and would instead by absorbed by the UC Office of the President.

“These cuts, they’re not good,” Brown said in a press conference. “This is not the way we’d like to run California, but we have to live within our means.”

In more recent news, the cut to the UC budget (permanent or not) could see some relief to the tune of $90 million in state funding if Brown’s budget proposal, released last week, is enacted.

This increase would rely on Californians voting yes on a tax measure that would enact an income tax surcharge on the state’s highest earners and a half-cent sales tax boost, generating about $7 billion in extra revenue for the state’s education and public safety programs, according to the governor’s office.

If voters vote down this proposal, the $100 million in cuts could become permanent, and the UC will face an additional $200 million in trigger cuts.

The proposal faces a few obstacles before voters can even vote on it. After last year’s failed push for a tax extension, this new measure would need more than 500,000 signatures to be placed on the ballot in November. If the signatures are collected voters could pass the revenue hike proposal by a simple majority.

Student regent Alfredo Mireles is cautiously optimistic about the governor’s budget proposal and tax hike initiative.

“It’s much better than it could have been,” Mireles said to UCLA’s Daily Bruin on Jan. 9. “What [the UC Board of Regents] can do is show our gratitude by supporting the governor’s tax measures, continue to make the case to the governor and the legislature on why we need the money.”

In his budget cover letter the governor offered words in line with Mireles’ cautious optimism.

“This ballot measure will not solve all of our fiscal problems, but it will stop further cuts to education and public safety and halt the trend of double-digit tuition increases.”

“It’s hard,” senior librarian Ginny Steel said. “I’m concerned about the future, and what will happen if we receive any more budget reductions.”

The project of reconstructing McHenry Library has been in progress since before money was the paramount concern for the university.
“The original plan for this project started in the early ’90s,” Steel said. “The library then was operating on restricted materials, few electronic resources, and not enough space for stacks. The other big concern was that the library rated poor in terms of the seismic capacity of the building, a serious safety concern the university had to address.”

But with the reconstruction finally finished, the question of whether or not the university will be able to operate at full capacity is a concern librarians are facing.

Elizabeth Cowell, an associate campus librarian, stressed the importance of libraries’ availability for education.

“We are here for the students and staff, committed to maintaining the current levels of accessibility and resources,” Cowell said. “But under current [budget] restrictions we can’t staff the university like we used to.”

Rather than wait for university funding improvements, library administration has been proactive in working toward generating external funding.

“We’ve raised a lot of money for the new furniture and equipment that you see in McHenry now,” Steel said. “The way it works on campus, is there are development officers assigned to each program division, such as the library. Their payroll, however, is split between university relations, who provide the officers, and the library 51 percent of salary paid by University Relations and 49 percent paid by the library.”

Private donations from mostly alumni and former faculty, according to Steel, have allowed libraries to sustain current levels of accessibility. Measure 42, which passed in the 2009-2010 school year, also has allowed some partial hiring and hour extensions.

But it might not be enough. Steel said there have been shortfalls over the past four years.

“I don’t have the exact number, but we’ve lost approximately 30 positions just for library staffing, which puts more stress on us because we run both libraries seven days a week, many hours a day, with less staff,” Steel said.

In the 2012-13 school year, the Measure 42 legislation will be re-voted upon, but there is potential for its expiration.
Though some are hopeful that the libraries will receive additional funding in years to come, many senior staff prepare for worst-case scenarios.

Ken Lyons, a longtime member of the library staff and Union Representative for the UC American Federation of Teachers, believes the state of the libraries couldn’t get much worse than it had become without jeopardizing the value of the libraries to the students.

“Staff in both collective planning and reference branches of the library is already stretched as thin as possible,” Lyons said. “A big issue we’re trying to get attention to right now is that UC librarians are compensated as much as 20 percent lower than our California State University sister schools.”

This same issue occurred during the funding crisis in 1992, but with the more recent budget restrictions, the flexibility of the department to adapt has already been removed due to the large remodeling.

“In response to the budget tightening, we’re trying to do strategic planning to assess which sources get used the most and which aren’t commonly accessed.” Lyons said. “The issue that we’re running across is that a lot of the resources we have aren’t common sources for most students, such as research materials. We have 200 audible databases, for example. I don’t think most students are even aware of their existence.”

In 2009, the university issued the 34 percent cut to the UCSC library — as seen in most other departments as well — to be carried out over the next four years. Now as the cuts come into place, databases like this may seem less valuable to the staff looking for places to cut. In addition, reconfigured positions have become a new trend for library positions.

“We have a lot more people contacting us with questions on how to begin research, but a lot of these questions are through email and chat, not necessary people coming to the reference desk, which has commonly been the resource for answering these questions,” Steel said. “In response, we’ve cut back on hours that we staff the reference desk, and changed the model for how we answer questions.”

Lyons actively manages the reference desk and has seen this shift in student research habits as well.

“We have seen less students coming to the reference desk for help. Students seem often overwhelmed by the expansiveness of the library itself,” Lyons said. “Although we have more online resources like the redesigned website to direct students, resources like reference desk librarians are invaluable to the accessibility of the library.”

Though no direct layoffs have occurred in the 11 years Lyons has been with library services, the number of full-time employees has decreased dramatically and attrition (the cancellation of retirees’ positions) has continued steadily since budget restrictions were approved.

Though the remodeling of the McHenry Library has been a valid project and offers students an expansive, almost luxurious interior, the future outlook of library staffing and hours of availability could certainly be in trouble.

Steel hopes the libraries can continue their current levels of availability for students, even with the future budget looking increasingly slim.
“We want this space to meet the needs of students and faculty,” Steel said. “We think of this as a community space and a space for collaboration, so if students have ideas of things they want to see, we’re interested to hear those ideas. That’s why we’re here.”

Forrest Robinson, a humanities professor at UCSC, said American studies “was dumped by its faculty.” Photo by Toby Silverman.

Michael Cowan sits with the American studies founding documents in McHenry Library. Photo by Toby Silverman.

“American studies was dead in the water before anybody knew it.”

UC Santa Cruz humanities professor Forrest Robinson made this assertion, his voice heightening in pitch as he reached the end of the sentence. He was recalling what it was like when the American studies faculty’s decision to dissolve their own department and suspend admission into the major was made public last September.

“For several years, we have sustained our major with fewer permanent faculty than is desirable,” department chair Eric Porter wrote in an email sent to all American studies majors and proposed majors around that time. “It has become clear to us that we cannot permanently sustain a high-quality major on current faculty resources. We have therefore concluded that the best way to support the teaching and research in our scholarly areas and to ensure our own professional development as faculty is to seek homes in other campus departments.”

Porter and others involved in the decision stressed the point that everyone who was already declared or proposed as an American studies major, as well as many first-years who could get in under the wire, would be able to carry out their education as planned. But no new majors after the class of 2014 would be admitted, and the future after that point remained decidedly unclear.

In public meetings held in the weeks after the email was sent, and in the rest of the academic year, it remained uncertain what the department’s status was, whether it would ever come back and why exactly the faculty voted to end their own department. Monica Deebs, a UCSC alumna who was in her final year as an American studies major at the time, remembers confused students “attacking” Eric Porter with questions.

“This meeting [after the announcement of suspension] was packed,” Deebs said. “Everyone showed up — American studies majors, non-American studies majors, faculty. The tone was very much like, ‘What’s happening? Why is this happening?’”

American studies’ confusing end came in the wake of community studies being cut a year earlier, yet the student and faculty responses differed greatly between the two cuts. Both Robinson and Deebs believe the reason there was no public protesting from American studies students was because they took the faculty’s lead in accepting the department’s end as a foregone conclusion, an inevitability.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of students who are very confused,” Robinson said. “There’s a feeling of bafflement, of ‘How can this happen? Why wasn’t more being done to protect the program? Why didn’t I know about this? Why weren’t there meetings [before the decision was made]?’ And the answers were not forthcoming. It was pretty much stated as a fact. So maybe people were baffled into a kind of acquiescence.”

The American studies faculty’s vote to dissolve the major begs a few questions.

Is the department’s end really all about the budget? If not, what else played a role? Does the major stand a chance of resurrection, and if so, what would that look like? What does this mean for the future of interdisciplinary education at UC Santa Cruz? What can the rest of the campus stand to learn from the story of American studies? And what role does the possibility of a critical race and ethnic studies program play in all this?

These questions were brought to various past and present faculty members involved in some way with the department. Although there was some overlap in their answers, the faculty had varying viewpoints.

For Robinson, losing the major on campus is particularly troubling, given the wide range of opportunities and creativity it allows students.

“There is nothing at all like American studies now that American studies is gone,” Robinson said. “You design your own programs. It is the study of the United States in any way that you can make coherent. In a way, you get to shape your own education.”

Or as Michael Cowan, UCSC’s American studies department founder and professor emeritus, put it, the major allows students to “pursue a whole range of interests, and at the same time, focus on things they are particularly interested in.”

For Cowan, 2005 marked the “beginning of the end” for American studies at UCSC.

Cowan founded the major, which was officially proposed in 1977 and approved in 1979, although students had been pursuing independent majors called “American studies” for years already by that time.

He described starting the independent major out of Merrill College in 1970 and watching it grow, of spending the 1975-76 school year at Yale to learn more and eventually develop a core course for the major, and of the exciting early days with a limited faculty.

“It was a rather ambitious project, and when you have only a few faculty you can’t do everything,” Cowan said. “So we agreed that some of the most critical things were to see if we could agree on some of the big questions we wanted to ask.”

Cowan said he sought to tackle issues of citizenry and society in a way political science and sociology could not. For him, the American studies major was to serve as a nexus, linking a cascade of social, historical and political issues in fashions otherwise ignored by their respective departments.

“That was our goal,” Cowan said, “and we felt that the faculty had to remain dedicated to talking to each other, not just go off and teach their own courses, but also modeling civil discourse, often with sensitive materials, because that’s what we hoped the students would be doing.”

For a long time, that was how the department worked, graduating around 2000 majors to date. There has always been a small amount of faculty within the department, but because American studies is interdisciplinary, the department could rely on outside faculty to both teach American studies courses and make classes in their own departments available to American studies students.

“What always struck me,” Cowan said, “was how successful the major was with such a small number of courses that we ourselves could control.”

After the undergraduate department was established, Cowan and the rest of the faculty set their sights on a graduate program. There was some support and interest from the humanities division, and in 2003, prominent American studies scholars George Lipsitz and Tricia Rose came to UCSC, adding fuel to that fire.

“We were this close,” said Cowan, holding his index finger and thumb less than an inch apart.

For department chair Eric Porter, obtaining a graduate program and holding onto faculty members was a matter of life or death for the major. The small faculty model had been successful up to a point, but a growing campus with limited resources posed danger to smaller departments.

“The previous dean of humanities had basically sent this message that the division can’t really support as many departments as it has, and certainly can’t rebuild them to the state that they wanted to be at,” Porter said. “We had this sense that if we had 10 faculty, and were moving towards a graduate program, then we’d be in pretty good shape.”

But an issue with spousal hiring — the school refused to hire new professors’ spouses despite their qualifications and chose to continue the usual faculty search  — prompted the new additions to quickly leave in 2005, and, as Porter remembers it, “then it became clear that the support was not going to be forthcoming.”

Porter calls the lack of a graduate program a catch-22 for the department. He acknowledges it made American studies less influential and valued, but also that there was some resistance from other departments who depended on TAships with American studies to fund their own graduate students. The departures of Tricia Rose and George Lipsitz fit into a “pattern of inconsistent support” within the humanities.

As current humanities dean William Ladusaw sees it, the desire within American studies for a graduate program came more out of necessity than over-ambition. The University of California requires its professors to engage in both graduate and undergraduate education, and for American studies professors, that can be difficult. The decision to disband the department came after the realization that, as Ladusaw put it, “The only way they were going to be fully integrated into graduate education was to move to other departments.”

The failure to start a graduate program was both a symptom and a cause of American studies’ decline at UCSC. Michael Cowan and other professors within the department soon retired or transferred to other departments, making it difficult to sustain the major. Adding to the difficulty were financial limits that made crossover teaching and courseloads less feasible.

“On campus, we have a lot of people who do American studies, and who are active in the American studies organizations, some of whom are really well-known,” said professor Kim Lau, who recently moved from American studies to the literature department. “But they have so many things going on in their own department that they can’t just come teach for us in the way that they need, and the budget exacerbates that problem because departments can’t just loan one of their professors out to teach one of our courses, or to even teach an elective that’s cross-listed. It’s not because they don’t want to, but because of administrative structure and budget constraints.”

Dean of humanities William Ladusaw made the point that this lack of availability was not fair to the students, and cited as proof a survey conducted by SUA last year to determine how difficult it was for students to get into the classes they need. It turned out majoring in something that requires interdisciplinarity can leave students somewhat lost when enrolling for classes.

“If you don’t organize it well, then the people who are not part of the major that is the same name of the department can feel like stepchildren,” he said. “What the class survey showed is that the two majors in humanities that were having the most trouble getting the courses that they needed were feminist studies and American studies, and those are the two majors who use very frequently courses in social sciences, where the courses are very impacted.”

The dean added that general growing pains for the university didn’t help matters.

“Right now, with the number of faculty we had in the mid-nineties, we’re trying to teach twice as many undergraduate students and five times as many graduate students,” he said. “I’ve been here since 1984, and we never really did feel lavish, but the faculty is shrinking in size, and therefore there are lots of things people do want to do, but they have to make choices, and that’s forced on it by the budget.”

The American studies department’s budgetary problems and absence of extra-departmental support has disconcerting resemblance to several other UCSC departments. Community studies was the first to go in 2009, and there are other departments both within humanities and elsewhere facing similar problems. History of consciousness faculty have a mirror image crisis right now — because it is only a graduate program, they are having trouble finding ways to involve themselves in undergraduate education, according to both Eric Porter and Ladusaw. Environmental toxicology, a department within the sciences division that draws on chemistry, biology, and environmental studies, is suffering from a limited faculty. And critical race and ethnic studies — the much buzzed-about potential major — will inevitably need to be interdisciplinary in order to give its area of study justice. But how, when American studies failed, will these programs flourish?

For some UCSC faculty, it all comes down to a matter of semantics.

American studies didn’t start out as a department — it started out as an inter-disciplinary program. The difference between an interdisciplinary academic program and a department is a department houses faculty who must teach that department’s courses, while a program is an academic pathway students can take that involves classes from various departments. Classical studies is an example of one such program — there are no courses or professors designated under classical studies, but students can major in it by taking courses from the literature, history and language departments.

For humanities dean Ladusaw, this is an absolutely crucial distinction.

“A department doesn’t have as much to do with what the program is as it does with the mechanics of building a faculty and making money flow through the system,” he said. “If you’re a department, then you have all of the responsibility of running academic programs, and also a lot of other activities having to do with both faculty assessment and budgetary distribution.”

From Ladusaw’s perspective, it was being a department that killed American studies, and that could pose danger to other fields.

“We’ve got interdisciplinarity all over the place, but creating new little departments is not a smart thing to do,” he said. “That’s one of the things American studies showed. When I first came here, there was no American studies program, but they, from their departments, formed an interdisciplinary program. Later, they got the bright idea of creating a department instead of just having a program. If we knew then what we know now,” he concluded with a chuckle.

Ladusaw says he could see American studies and other departments being brought back to life as academic programs, though proper planning would be important to ensure students could still get into the classes they needed.

“In getting rid of the department, we don’t have to get rid of the program,” he said. “Part of the trouble is that when faculty were moving into these other departments, they felt that they were unable to promise, in perpetuity, that they would be able to teach the courses that they needed to teach in order to keep the American studies major going.”

But department chair Eric Porter doesn’t quite see the feasibility of existing that way, though he said he’s considered it.

“There was actually a quite long conversation that went on [before the decision was made to dissolve the department]” he said. “What were our options? Should American studies become a program in another department? Or we could merge with another department. Then there was also this idea of reconstituting as an interdepartmental program, and there’s some versions of that in the division, like Jewish studies and classical studies, but we’re significantly bigger than them, so it’s still unclear how that would happen.”

Literature professor Susan Gillman sees blurring the lines between departments and even between divisions (such as humanities and engineering) as a possible bright future for UCSC.

“Santa Cruz, for all its interdisciplinarity, has a very fixed set of divisional structures which make it harder to talk across them,” said Gillman, who is also a faculty member affiliated with American studies. “There is this horrible cliché, ‘let no budget crisis go to waste.’ That’s the idea — you can think the unthinkable much more easily.”

This is how Gillman envisions critical race and ethnic studies working, which brings up a whole new issue. One of the biggest arguments thrown around for keeping American studies has always been that it offers a path for students to pursue ethnic studies. If American studies is eventually brought back, it’s unclear how the two would coexist.

What role ethnic studies plays in American studies has long been a point of contention both on campus and on a national level.

Today, humanities professor Robinson teaches classes that he says are intended for American studies students, but his business card identifies him as a “humanities professor.” He made this switch a few years ago, after realizing that the American studies department at UCSC was going in a direction — towards more ethnic studies — that he didn’t agree with.

“I always thought of American studies as the study of the United States in all its dimensions,” Robinson said, “with attention to race, class and gender, but certainly not exclusively. I never thought of American studies as an ethnic studies program. I see them as entirely different.”

Michael Cowan, too, pointed out that American studies is not solely about the issue of race, but rather that race plays a role in American studies. He also speculated that Executive Vice Chancellor Alison Galloway’s motivation for supporting an ethnic studies major as a replacement for American studies, rather than building on American studies’ own long-standing successful focus on cultural diversity, might be in part that she believed it would “solve some political problems.” But Gillman pointed out American studies’ approach to race at UCSC was not always fulfilling to all professors on campus.

“We wanted to be more global, and it was difficult to do that in the way the program was set up,” she said. “One of the courses was called ‘The African-American Experience.’ Experience was singular, as though it were all homogeneous. That model of ethnicity came to be questioned. American studies had long had an uneasy relationship with ethnic studies.”

If American studies makes a comeback and ethnic studies is born on this campus, then what roles would they play with each other? UC Berkeley has both an American studies program and an ethnic studies program, while the University of Southern California combines the two into one.

It remains unclear what could happen at UCSC. Despite Ladusaw’s insistence the American studies major will return in one way or another, others are unconvinced. Professor Robinson expressed doubt, and Porter said American studies coming back might be “an impossibility at this point,” though he said he is optimistic for critical race and ethnic studies.

But for the next three years, American studies remains, though it is being phased out. After the class of 2014 graduates, an entire area of study will, at least for a while, be leaving with them. A lot of reasons have been given as to why, but still some questions remains. One from Cowan, the man who made this major possible, feels particularly relevant.

“Once the horses were out of the barn, once the faculty had left, it was virtually impossible to pull them back together,” he said. “To switch metaphors, my sense is they wanted to avoid remaining on what they saw as a sinking ship. The question is whether, at some key moments, if there had been the right leadership at several campus levels or more conversations, especially with students … that might have changed.”

Illustration by Christine Hipp

UC Santa Cruz’s Student Union Assembly (SUA) has made strides in representing students on campus in the University of California Student Association and the United States Student Association. While City on a Hill Press applauds the efforts of SUA members, many of whom struggle in their positions with problems inherited from those who previously held their positions, it is important to pay attention to the actions of the representatives and ensure student money is being used responsibly and effectively.

Third-year Justin Riordan serves as Kresge parliamentarian, and on Oct. 31 submitted a report on the operations of the SUA. Riordan has found areas that seem like appropriate places for budget cuts.

In a letter to City on a Hill Press, Riordan said he presented an alternative budget to the SUA that had no cuts from conferences, save the Grassroots Legislative Conference (LegCon) in DC, and instead made up the cuts in Officer Programing.

“I did and do advocate for cutting from LegCon because of the expense per student required of this particular conference. Which was correctly identified as about $1000 per student,” he said. “These conferences are one of the direct and tangible things the SUA does for the Student Body and I encourage all student to apply to them, as they are open to all students and not just members of the SUA, [and] as they are amazing opportunities.”

Another aspect of the budget that has received much attention from the campus community has been the $5,000 used to purchase “B” parking permits for officers. Sources note there has been considerable opposition to ending the purchasing of the permits for officers, which are not guaranteed as compensation in the SUA’s documentation.

Without explanation, this kind of spending can be interpreted as a sign the representatives hold themselves above the students they represent. When the majority of UCSC students utilize campus and Metro buses to get around campus, such a large sum being spent on these permits seems unnecessary.

However, whether or not students agree with these decisions, it is important to stay informed — students should ask questions about where their money is being spent, and know the reasons purchases are made. It is important to note that the campus community must charge themselves with closely monitoring SUA representatives’ spending, and take action against projects they do not feel are in the best interest of the student body. In the current uncertain climate of the UC, it is more important now than ever that all students are communicating and working together to protect their right to their education.

Photo by Sal Ingram.

Erik Green, a second-year graduate student in the education department, once heard an “urban legend” that the department had teaching assistant (TA) positions to spare five years ago. The current reality is that some graduate students are lucky to be granted one TAship a year.

Drastic budget cuts affect not only non-academic staff employment and faculty positions at UC Santa Cruz, but also graduate students. Green is just one of the many graduate students experiencing the ramifications of the elimination of over 100 teaching assistant positions.

“There are people in the department who want to teach, [but they] have not been able to,” Green said.

Like many graduate programs at UC Santa Cruz, a TAship is one of the degree requirements for the education department. Green tried to get a TAship for all three quarters of this academic year, but so far has only secured one.

In addition to fulfilling the education degree requirement, Green also needs the TAship for two other reasons: experience and funding.

“I want to become a university professor and it [is] vital to have teaching experience,” Green said.

Ideally, Green wants to TA for the education courses that he hopes to be teaching in the future.

Green, like other UCSC graduate students, depends on TAships as a source of funding. A fellowship supported Green’s first year at UCSC, but since it ended he is scrounging for funding opportunities, taking out student loans and trying to work in the department as a graduate student researcher.

“I’ve got bills to pay and having something secured on campus would be better than something off-campus that may or may not fit with schoolwork,” Green said.

If Green is unable to secure TAships for the rest of the academic year, he will apply for loans and look for opportunities teaching and tutoring off-campus.

In addition to the elimination of TA positions, Green said the lack of both research opportunities and funding for senior students contribute to the limited amount of TAships.

“People who have advanced to candidacy are still TAs,” Green said.

Green offered a few ideal scenarios for the future of TAships. If the money is there, Green would like to see funding go back to restoring TAships and providing TAships for all those who need them.

“Public education is a public good [we should] reinvest in,” he said. “Unfortunately, education is the first on the cutting board.”

More realistically, Green would like to see the university and the department work with students to help develop a comprehensive plan financing their careers.

Illustration by Christine Hipp

After years of painstaking cuts to numerous departments on campus, the university has perhaps finally listened to what students have been chanting, and has “chop from the top.”

At the beginning of August, Executive Vice Chancellor Alison Galloway announced that the administration would be implementing a plan to would reorganize divisional leadership, and in effect eliminate the position of vice chancellor of student affairs. Felicia McGinty had held the position since 2007.

In an email dispersed to the campus community on Aug. 4, Galloway delineated the reasoning for the decision — in part to increase efficiency of the administrative process — and addressed the difficulties that comes with such a decision.

“Chancellor Blumenthal and I sincerely appreciate the service that Vice Chancellor Felicia McGinty has provided the campus since 2007,” Galloway said in the email. “During multiple years of challenging budget cuts, Felicia contributed an abundance of energy and ideas to our senior administrative team — and we are very grateful for her many contributions.”

It is a bittersweet decision that reflects the tragedy of the time we live in, when we are backed into a place of celebrating something that is, in actuality, a tragedy: causing someone to be jobless.

And further, as is the case with any and all budget decisions of this magnitude, there is, was, and always will be an irreparable drawbacks — in this case, one being that McGinty was one of the few administrators of color.

But this inescapably unfortunate situation will no longer have the roughly $200,000 a year expense of McGinty’s salary. A figure that, when put into the context of art department funding, which received a $635,700 cut for 2011–2012, is actually a significant number.

“In an era of diminished resources, these changes — in tandem with the Enrollment Management realignment — will streamline the delivery of services to students,” Galloway said in the email.

And to be frank, in these tough times the tangibility that comes with professors, teaching assistants and smaller class sizes is infinitely more valuable (even if only in the mind) than some cerebral and ambiguous administrative position.

Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. While it could be a minute drop in the bucket in terms of the $1.5 billion deficit that the UC is currently — quite impossibly — grappling with, the administration’s decision in and of itself bodes well.

This decision to save $200,000 in this particular way reflects one or both of two possibilities. One is that the administrative body now respects what the students have been demanding — even if we may have been off the mark and, contrary to our belief, every position in administration is infinitely valuable. The other possibility is that the administrative positions really are, to a certain extent, disposable.

Either outcome signifies a positive thing for us, and as such we should take this decision for what it is — an abrupt change in what has been a consistent tide of Chinese water torture against anything non-administrative — and appreciate that the administration may finally be listening to us. Or if they are not, at least they are owning and admitting that they may not be the most valuable aspect of a student’s education.

McGinty was a big person on this campus, and this was a big decision. It is hopefully a sign of decisions to come, and regardless of sentiments being negative or positive on the matter, it deserves pause.

Click to expand.

Executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway released the projected budget cut dispersals for the upcoming year in an email on Tuesday.

The email detailed expected allocation of reductions to operating costs for various divisions at UCSC, making clear that “there is little good news to share.” The cuts that UCSC is to face starting July 1 reach up to $34 million, and Galloway’s estimated budget decisions cover Academic Units, Academic Support Units and Institutional Support Units.

“Meeting this challenge is requiring staff layoffs, elimination of unfilled faculty positions, and further reductions in instructional support, such as teaching assistants,” said Galloway in the email. “I want to acknowledge the human toll of these cuts as we say good-bye to valued colleagues and friends. And clearly, the impact of these cuts will be felt by remaining employees, who will face the dual challenge of getting the work done with fewer resources — and deciding what will no longer be done at all.”

The largest amount of the projected $34 million is slated to be absorbed by Institutional Support Units, including Chancellor’s Office, Academic Senate and Information Technology Services — with their estimated permanent reduction cuts totaling $7,897,100. The cuts will be a 13.8 percent reduction of their current total operating budgets.

The operating budget for Academic Units takes the next largest hit, with permanent reductions totaling $5,511,400 distributed among the Arts, Humanities, Physical and Biological Sciences, Social Sciences and Engineering divisions. The cuts will be a 5.9 percent reduction of their current total operating budgets.

Academic Support Units will absorb the smallest portion of the $34 million, a $2,732,600 cut, which represents a 14.6 percent reduction of their current total operating budgets.

In preparation of the cuts, Galloway offers “principles guiding the campus approach to implementing State budget cuts.” They say the cuts should not be directed at the courses students “need” in order to graduate. In course preservation, the principles warn, student interests may not be met.

Additional reporting by Laurel Fujii.

Illustration by Muriel Gordon

Thirty years ago this Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported for the first time the case of five gay men in Los Angeles who contracted what was then interpreted as a rare form of pneumonia.

Little did anyone know that this “pneumonia” would turn into a global pandemic that would kill nearly 30 million people since its initial discovery.

We have made significant global progress since 1981 in our steps to acknowledge the existence of AIDS both culturally and medically. But today these advances are being threatened. Due to the economic recession, many states have cut funding from AIDS-related programs or tightened eligibility requirements for them, making it more difficult for AIDS patients to receive financial assistance for medication.

A record number of U.S. citizens — more than 8,300 in 13 states — are on waiting lists for antiretrovirals and other drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS, their side effects, and resulting mental health conditions.

In addition, Illinois has made it harder for its residents to qualify for a program that helps HIV patients pay for their medications. On July 1, the income limit for eligibility will go from $54,450 per person to $32,670, which could limit the accessibility of treatment for more than 100 people per year who would no longer qualify for assistance. Florida is also considering similar measures, as officials there may soon decide to cut the eligibility threshold in half to $21,780 or less in income. And Georgia has already cut $100,000 from its AIDS drug assistance program (ADAP), which serves 4,300 people.

These measures are devastating for people who have AIDS, as more and more people today are turning to ADAPs to help them pay for life-prolonging medications after the economic recession put millions of people out of work and cut their health insurance coverage. The cruel irony, however, is that because of this financial downturn, states are cutting funds from these programs, thereby significantly curtailing access to government aid.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the number of people living with HIV is actually on the rise. While part of the reason for this is that more people are able to live longer with AIDS, the fact is that for every person who starts treatment, two others become infected. In San Francisco alone, a city of roughly 800,000 residents, there are two new HIV infections every day. More than one million people live with AIDS in the United States, and that number is 33 million worldwide as of the end of 2009.

It would be morally unjust and arguably discriminatory to continue making drastic cuts to programs that benefit AIDS patients, considering that more than 60 percent of American males living with AIDS became infected with HIV through male-to-male sexual contact and over 40 percent of those living with an AIDS diagnosis are African American, according to figures from 2008.

There are also long-term financial repercussions that could only get worse if people with AIDS don’t have access to medical resources. Yes, some states are saving money by making cuts to social welfare programs like these, but at what cost? According to a recent United Nations report, global AIDS costs could reach $35 billion by 2031, an astounding figure that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “wholly unsustainable.”

How much worse will that figure be if programs that help people with AIDS get psychological and physical treatment continue to get decreased funding or are axed altogether? This will only lead to more people dying because they cannot afford paying for life-prolonging medications out-of-pocket.

Yes, our economy is in a rut — that fact is inescapable, as we are privy to it any time we open a newspaper or tune into CNN. But slashing funds for AIDS patients to get already-existing medications that can help them live with the disease is like a twisted version of dangling a carrot in front of a horse’s nose. Although states’ fiscal situations may be dire, these cuts to AIDS patients could literally be a matter of life or death.

Herbie Lee, vice provost for Academic Affairs, (top) and American studies department chair Eric Porter (bottom) discuss the suspension of the major. The Committee on Educational Policy has postponed suspension to allow faculty to restructure and current students to graduate. Photos by Prescott Watson and Kyan Mahzouf.

It’s an unusual disagreement.

Earlier this year, American studies faculty voted to suspend admission to the major beginning July 2011, citing decreased resources that greatly reduce the capacity of the program to provide a quality educational experience for students.

However, the Academic Affairs Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) has postponed the final decision on the suspension of American studies until February 2012.

Provost for Academic Affairs Herbie Lee said that according to the CEP, there are still alternative measures the American studies department can take to save the major. Lee said among the suggestions given by the committee, the CEP would like to see the major restructured to operate within available resources rather than be suspended.

Department chair Eric Porter said the delay does nothing to improve the quality of the program.

“The status is the same,” Porter said. “The faculty voted to suspend the major because we don’t have the adequate resources or faculty to sustain the major, and we are not getting any additional support.”

In 2004, the major had 10 faculty members. By the beginning of this year, that number had dropped to five. A decreasing faculty and highly impacted classes are driving forces behind the deterioration of American studies at UC Santa Cruz.

The proposal sent to the CEP by American studies faculty allowed for the major to be reinstated, should additional resources become available.

Lee said disagreements between the CEP and American studies faculty about how to best serve students contributed to the CEP’s decision not to take a firm stance on whether the major will be suspended or not.

In order to serve declared American studies majors, the CEP is implementing a teach-out plan. This will keep the major for at least two more years to ensure current students are able to graduate.

Lee said the CEP is hopeful this will give American studies faculty time to attempt alternative measures to preserve the major.

Fourth-year American studies major Falyn Davis stated although she acknowledges the lack of resources and the high amount of impacted classes, it’s frustrating that faculty members voted to suspend the major rather than find an alternative.

“The professors seem so caring and knowledgeable,” Davis said. “I don’t understand why they would just let the major go without putting up a fight.”

CEP has proposed running American studies as an interdepartmental major. This would allow faculty from other humanities departments to teach in American studies without becoming permanent staff. American studies faculty are currently working to transfer professors from other departments into American studies.

CEP has asked faculty to provide an update on the status of the major in December 2011. The committee will then reach a final decision as to whether the major will be permanently suspended by February 2012, Lee said.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we will be able to keep the major. There are great sources and ways that we can use to move forward with this.”

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Updated 5/19/2011 at 1:25am

Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his latest budget proposal on Monday. Lawmakers have until June 15 to approve a budget.

Brown’s May revision includes a $500 million cut to the UC ­— the same amount that was slated in his January budget.

“There is value to come out of predictability,” said UC Santa Cruz executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway in a budget conversation with students held on Wednesday on Brown’s effort to balance the state budget. “If this change brings some predictability, that would be an immense load off our minds.”

Brown proposed a budget of $88.8 billion. In addition, a surprise $6.6 billion in revenue is expected to come in over the next year. Increased revenue and already-enacted spending cuts have also reduced the projected size of the state deficit to $9.6 billion.

His new plan still calls for an extension of taxes — projected to raise $9.3 billion — which are set to expire in July, and couples this extension with a $2.6 billion cut in spending. The taxes themselves are sales taxes and vehicle license taxes that would get a five-year extension. Additionally, a four-year extension on personal income taxes would go into effect in 2012 if Brown’s proposal goes through.

For the tax extensions to pass, they must first be approved by the state legislature, and then passed by state voters.

An all-cuts budget may still occur, which Brown warns, will hit public education especially hard — his plan asserts cuts in state funding to the UC in this case would be doubled to $1 billion.

Based on the governor’s May revise, UCSC is planning to cope with the $500 million cut. Vice chancellor of planning and budget Peggy Delaney said during the conversation with Galloway and students that absorbing this magnitude will be “deep and devastating to every aspect of this institution.”

Galloway said coping with a $1 billion cut would be unsustainable for the university.

UC president Mark Yudof’s statement released Monday in response to Brown’s plan echoed this sentiment. He said an all-cuts budget would be “unconscionable — to the university, its students and families, and to the state that it has served for nearly a century and a half.”

Yudof and Galloway have acknowledged that reductions in state funding from an all-cuts budget would likely result in further tuition hikes.

Contrary to what some expected, Brown’s proposed budget is a mix of extended taxes and some cuts — not nearly as draconian as some feared. The current proposed budget adds $3 billion to what Brown originally proposed spending on education, though this is still $4 billion below 2007–2008 levels.

In an April Q&A, Chancellor George Blumenthal and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway commented on what they feel certain cuts would do to the UC system, and UCSC in particular.

“I really don’t believe that the campus can responsibly take cuts of that magnitude and still maintain the kind of student experience that you’ve come to expect. I think that the responses will have to be systemic — there will have to be a major effort to bring additional money into the system, and that’ll have to be done on a systemwide basis,” said Blumenthal of the possibility of the UC system suffering a $1 billion hit.

Galloway also made it clear that the administration was taking the possibility of massive cuts seriously.

“Just right now, we have policies in all the principal offices with what they think they’re going to cut,” Galloway said, “and what we’re doing right now is cross-reading those, so that no unit finds that a service upon which it depended is gone, or that they have been landed with expenses that they didn’t anticipate.”

A statement made by Brown on April 5 of this year, that “the university is an engine of wealth creation,” mirrors Blumenthal’s opinion of the role of the UC system, but Blumenthal has his doubts about the foresight of California legislators.

“I believe it’s true that for every dollar invested in UC, in the long run [it] repays that investment many times over,” he said. “It’s a great investment for the state of California. The reason they don’t do it is because they need the money now, and they’re not so worried about the future. I think it’s shortsighted.”

Governor Brown’s revised proposal can be read in its entirety at http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/

For UC President Mark Yudof’s full statement on the proposed budget, go to http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/25564

Phone calls, emails and protests were the name of the game.

This was the reaction locally and nationwide when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed shutting down all 14 state parks in Santa Cruz County and upwards of 220 of the 278 existing state parks in California. Locals of Santa Cruz and those affected across the state mounted a massive campaign to save state parks and won. Instead of following through with his proposed plan, however, the former governor cut hours and maintenance at state parks to appease his public.

Fast-forward to 2011, where the victory of two years ago is overshadowed by the ever-growing deficit in California. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget, released in January of this year, reflects his need to spend less in order to shore up the entire state of California’s economy. What this means for the California State Park System is a cut of $22 million over the next two years — an 18 percent cutback of the overall general fund for state parks. The system expects closures of some parks at least, a huge loss for the advocates of 2009.

This funding crisis was not made any easier when last year, Proposition 21, which would have attached an $18 fee to all license registrations to be used to balance the budget for California’s state parks, failed to pass in the November 2010 elections. That money would have replaced the entire state’s budget allocated to the state park system, which could have been used elsewhere in the governor’s proposed budget, according to Roy Stearns, deputy director of communications for California state parks.

With the proposed cut taken into account, the state park system will have lost a total of 37 percent of its general fund since the 2007–2008 fiscal year budget. This has amounted to a staggering loss for the single largest destination in California — the state park system — which has a total of 75 million visitors yearly, almost outdoing Disneyland’s location in California 5-1.

Natural Bridges State Beach is just one of the 278 state parks in California at risk of future budget cuts. To prepare, many state parks are looking for other sources of funding to keep them open. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

Despite the advocacy efforts of organizations like Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks and the Santa Cruz State Park Foundation, gaps in funding have left the California and Santa Cruz State Park Systems with the difficult task of choosing what parks to keep open, cut availability to, or close completely. The California State Park System is not currently disclosing their estimates for how many state parks would close under the governor’s budget, but closures of any state parks, which are expected, will take a toll on local economies and preservation efforts.

Local non-profit Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks was at the forefront of the fight against Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2009 budget proposal. Executive director Bonny Hawley said now her organization tries to help fund local parks the state can no longer pay for.

“We’ve had to really try to fill in where we can,” Hawley said.

Even with help from Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, which, according to their website, has provided $10 million in funding to Santa Cruz educational programs, visitors centers and exhibits over the past 30 years, some Santa Cruz state parks still have trouble staying open. Hawley’s office is located next door to the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park, which only remains open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. They used to be open full-time.

Restrooms have also been partially closed in most of the local state parks and seasonal campgrounds remain closed for months longer than usual. Public accessibility has been cut dramatically, according to Hawley.

“The park used to be open a lot more to the public,” Hawley said.

Stearns said, Proposition 21 “would have fixed everything.”

Mision State Historic Park and Natural Bridges State Beach are two local examples of the many California state parks that are in danger of facing budget cuts. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

In Santa Cruz County, the proposition passed overwhelmingly by a 68.4 percent to 31.6 percent vote, but it failed across the state by a 57.3 percent to 42.7 percent vote.

“My personal opinion … is that people didn’t want to pass a vehicle license fee,” Stearns said. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t like parks, it means they didn’t like a vehicle license fee.”

But according to Hawley, there was a deeper issue that affected the vote.

“I think it had a lot more to do with trust in government,” Hawley said. “I think there were people who really didn’t believe that the money would go to state parks, that somehow the governor or the legislature would find a way to put the money into the general fund for other purposes, even though it was very well drafted and that wouldn’t have happened. I think people were suspicious, and the tough economy didn’t help.”

With the looming threat of closures, UC Santa Cruz environmental studies lecturer Brian Dowd-Uribe said his class, Environmental Interpretation, would be critically affected. Almost half of his students currently intern at state parks.

“Without these internships it would be hard for my class to succeed,” Dowd-Uribe said in an email. “The internship allows students to immediately put into practice concepts explored in the class. There just wouldn’t be enough internships elsewhere to make up this gap.”

To decide which state parks are going to close due to the governor’s budget, a team of the California State Park System’s experienced supervisors and managers have put together a comprehensive plan that is currently being reviewed by

Gov. Brown.

According to Stearns, deputy director of communications for California state parks, this team of supervisors and managers traveled to Sacramento earlier this year and spent weeks refining the methodology behind the proposed budget cuts.

“You have to balance so that what you leave open still serves the greatest number in the public,” Stearns said. “Not an easy choice.”

Stearns said that “a significant number” of parks would close if the proposed budget is not adjusted, which he is skeptical about since tax extensions did not make it onto this June’s ballot.

The team of supervisors and managers looked at the cost savings they had to make, and ran the numbers on how much a park makes in revenue, or how much the system saves by closing it. Other factors the team considered were specific state parks’ significance, visitation, existing partnerships and infrastructure. The information regarding which parks will close cannot be disclosed until the plan is released to the public in mid-May.

Dave Keck, landscape architect and project manager for the Big Basin General Plan, a long-term plan that is currently being drafted for Big Basin State Park, said that with the budget cuts and the wounded state of the park system, his team is trying to look at how they can obtain other funding through partnerships. He said he wanted “methods that we can achieve objectives for keeping parks open and still accommodating visitors.”

On March 26, Keck helped facilitate a meeting in which members of the public were open to comment on several different plan proposals.

“[Funding] is always the first question,” Keck said. “When you throw out ideas and want people’s feedback, the first question is always, ‘Well, where is the state going to get the money to do all this?’”

Instead of looking to the state for funding, Keck said that a lot of the funding Big Basin receives comes from bonds, which have funded improvements and updates for the park, its headquarters and its visitor’s center. Hopefully, Keck said, future bond partnerships will help implement the current General Plan. Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and Sempervirens Fund are two of the park’s current bond partners, which helped secure the territory of Little Basin acquired early this year.

What this means for Big Basin is their facilities have not been hit as hard as those that have difficulty securing funding through private bonds. Campers and rangers at Big Basin see little difference in the way the park has been run in the past.

Securing funding is exactly what the Big Basin General Plan does in effect, Keck said.

“[The Big Basin General Plan] is used as a tool to solicit funds, if anything, by others who have an interest in making the park better,” Keck said.

Natural Bridges State Beach is just one of the 278 state parks in California at risk of future budget cuts. To prepare, many state parks are looking for other sources of funding to keep them open. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

Realistically, Keck said, funding from either the state or private bonds and partnerships may not ever be available, but “when and if” it is, the General Plan also provides a framework for where to apply that money.

“I’ve worked on plans 30 years ago that still have things in them that have never been implemented,” Keck said. “This is not a master plan for development. Think of it more as a 20-year plan. It projects that far ahead.”

Keck expects that the draft of the General Plan will be finished by the end of the year, and open for public comment. By this time next year, Keck projects the plan will go to the State Park Commission for approval.

The Big Basin General Plan’s current alternative combines infrastructure development with preservation in order to keep revenue coming into Big Basin State Park, but also preserve the old-growth forest, Keck said.

“We’re trying to make improvements where we can, and reinforce the protection and preservation of the more significant natural and cultural resources, and things like the wilderness experience,” Keck said.

But Keck said this doesn’t come without anxiety from the public, who are concerned about the impact generating more activity will have on certain state park areas.

Mammoth Redwoods fill the Santa Cruz mountains and are an integral part of many state parks. Among these are the Henry Cowell, Wilder Ranch, and Big Basin State Parks. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

Development is a major threat to state parks in their current fund-deprived state, according to Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis).

It is the main reason why Sen.Wolk drafted SB580, a bill currently making its way through the Senate that would protect state parks from unwanted development.

Sen. Wolk said there is no clear, existing policy regarding development in and of California State Parks. SB580 is the “commonsense protection” that state parks need, according to the SB580 Fact Sheet, authored by Sen. Wolk and Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego).

Some of the major development threats in California include a proposed toll-road through San Onofre State Beach, a power-line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and the building of a mega-dairy in Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park.

A similar Senate bill was passed in 2009 called SB679, also authored by Wolk, but was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger when it reached his desk. Supervisor Mark Stone of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors said he hopes the reformed bill will pass this time.

The Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors, at the urging of supervisor Neal Coonerty, endorsed SB580 on April 5. Supervisor Stone of the fifth district, which includes Ben Lomond, Scotts Valley and parts of Boulder Creek, said endorsing the bill was a “no-brainer” for the board, and that the proposal moved straight to a vote with no discussion.

In a press release, supervisor Coonerty said, “SB580 ensures that our parks have a high bar for their protection … and these places belong to every resident of the state.”

SB580 is also sponsored by the California State Parks Foundation, and supported by organizations including the California League of Park Associations and the Central Coast Natural History Association.

Supervisor Stone said the concern is developers will prey on parks that have closed due to the budget cuts, and that generating revenue might become more important than preservation if the budget crisis gets worse.

Redwood at Big Basin State Park. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

“What we’re concerned about is that notion may come up and there might be pressure to just sell [the parks] to get some revenue, or allow developers to get in there and do things that we would later regret,” Stone said. “It’s to avoid temptation. If we can’t come back to them when times are better, that will be a real tragedy.”

Stone said he thinks the bill will hold on to the “status-quo” of park and that “developing state parks, which are meant to be natural” would be something the state park system would regret, and expressly the type of thing the bill would safeguard against.

Andy Schiffrin, analyst for supervisor Coonerty, said in an email, “As California continues to develop, preserving some of our natural assets both for their environmental values as well as for the enjoyment of our citizens, is of critical importance.”

But for Schiffrin, funding of the state parks and whether some will remain open or be closed is not the reason that SB580 is important.

“Certainly money is an important issue,” Schiffrin said. “However, some projects would be proposed in state parks irrespective of the financial realities.”

Hawley of Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks said that SB580 would be advanced regardless of the budget.

“[Regarding funding], I think [the bill] would still be important because as populations increase and development pressures increase, it’s important that there is that kind of protection in place for state parks,” Hawley said.

Dowd-Uribe said he also hopes state parks are protected because of the learning opportunities that state parks provide to students.

“Literally hundreds of K–12 classes visit state parks over the course of the year in Santa Cruz County alone,” Dowd-Uribe said. “These visits are often … the only chance students get to directly learn about the environment. State parks play a key role in the environmental education of our youth. Park closures would end these critically important programs.”

Sunset at Natural Bridges State Park. Photo by Kyan Mazouf.

“It’s so mundane,” he said. “You walk past it and don’t even think about it.”

Professor Richard Hughey explains the new robotics major’s function within the university’s engineering majors. Photo by Nick Paris.

Elkaim is a leading professor in UC Santa Cruz’s new robotics engineering major, which stems from the current computer sciences, computer engineering and electrical engineering programs. Students will be able to declare the robotics engineering major starting in fall 2011.

“Computer engineering has always been about designing things that do things,” said Richard Hughey, a computer engineering professor. “We’ve been expanding to computer networks. It was a very natural fit.”

Working within the robotics and control concentration or its predecessor, autonomous systems, are 43 of 129 computer engineering students, Hughey said. The new robotics engineering major will give these students a chance to earn a degree in this field rather than just a concentration.

“It very rapidly became our most popular concentration,” he said. “We thought, ‘Hey, we should do something for these students.’”

The formation of the robotics engineering major is at least eight years in the making.

“I was hired [in 2003] because they wanted a bigger robot emphasis,” said Elkaim, who teaches Introduction to Mechatronics, a class in which students build a robot in a 10-week quarter.

Hughey was computer engineering chair at the time and helped build the robotics engineering program. He said the biggest investment was hiring three core faculty members: Elkaim and computer engineering instructors William Dunbar and Jacob Rosen.

Elkaim holds “The Slugs Autopilot,” a device that controls unmanned automotive vehicles, or UAVs. Photo by Toby Silverman.

Hughey cited UCSC’s role as a research institution as a source of major strength behind the new major.

“Of course, the reason for going to a research university is because of the way research winds up in the classroom, putting courses on the forefront of — in this case — robotics technology,” Hughey said, “and because of the opportunities that faculty research produces for undergraduate and graduate lab work.”

Computer engineering professor Dunbar is teaching the only class that was added to the department’s course list with the new major: Introduction to Strength of Materials, CE-115. In Dunbar’s class, students learn about the balance of forces in the materials used to build robots. Using courses already offered by the computer engineering department allows the program to keep additional costs down, but Dunbar says that CE-115 was added to the course list because it teaches students crucial information.

“There’s no class like it here because there’s no mechanical engineering major,” Dunbar said.

Despite the creation of the new major, the engineering department is not unaffected by the budget cuts. Over the past three years, engineering faced $1.5 million in budget cuts and is looking at an additional $800,000 in cuts this year.

“The primary effect of this so far on the curriculum, and the robotics major specifically, has been the canceling of planned hires in robotics (starting about three years ago),” Hughey said in an email.

With few faculty members, students have few opportunities to participate in research and labs.

Computer engineering is making changes to afford the creation of a new major.

“We have been reducing the number of graduate seminars we can offer, as well as dropping the two-unit ‘Intro to CE’ course we used to do,” Hughey said in an email.

The department is also hiring for fewer, if any, positions in the next few years to adjust to the diminishing budget.

After giving it some thought, Elkaim is “unconcerned” for the students when he considers the intensity of the curriculum.

“We were a little worried at first,” he said. “We only have four years to teach this. It’s become one of the harder majors, and we were afraid that’d scare students away. But it had the opposite effect.”

Photo by Prescott Watson.

Lexi Stephenson’s mother likes to say, “No one can take your education.” But after Stephenson switched from community studies after it was cut last winter, only to see the suspension of her current major, American studies, it seems like someone is trying very hard to do so.

Stephenson fell in love with community studies as a second-year when she took an introductory course taught by Sean Burns. Although a self-proclaimed science and math student by nature, she said she felt inspired by that class to make a difference.

“Walking out of the classroom, I felt like change really could happen and that I could be a part of it,” Stephenson said. “That was one of the greatest feelings I have ever felt in my entire life.”

Stephenson decided that she wanted to provide educational opportunities for immigrants and the children of immigrants. So after declaring the community studies major, Stephenson focused her courses in education.

Studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain during her third year, Stephenson met a fellow community studies major from UCSC in a dive bar. Learning of her peer’s field study orchestrating a needle exchange program for sex workers, Stephenson became increasingly excited about her own field study. However, when she returned to UCSC for winter quarter last year, she found her major had been cut and the courses she intended to take were no longer offered.

“It was just sad,” Stephenson said. “When you believe in something and [the university] decides it isn’t valuable, it’s very disheartening.”

She scrambled to redefine her interests to fit course offerings, but eventually decided she was unwilling to compromise her education to remain in the major.

“I was trying to change what I wanted to do just to get into classes,” Stephenson said. “That defeated the purpose for me. Community studies is supposed to be about finding a passion and then figuring out a way to use it to make a difference.”

After debating her options, Stephenson declared the American studies major. In January, faculty in the American studies department voted to suspend admission to the major starting July 1. They cited as the primary reason for suspension the dwindling resources that significantly reduced the capability of the program to provide a quality educational experience for students.

Stephenson said programs like American studies are the reason many students come to UCSC, and eliminating these options degrades the value of the university.

“Santa Cruz attracts a certain type of student,” Stephenson said. “A lot of us come here to get the alternative education offered at UCSC. Unfortunately [budget cuts] are changing that.”

Stephenson said she and fellow American studies majors are angry about what is happening, but are unsure of how to act. For a while Stephenson had been considering utilizing public art to make her frustrations heard, but decided that might not accomplish anything.

“I wanted to make signs that say, ‘Fuck UC’ really big and put them all over campus. But that is not very mature,” Stephenson said. “If you do that, no one is going to listen.”

Stephenson says American studies majors should not be left to fight for social sciences and humanities programs.

“I think it is the responsibility of students and teachers to do something about this,” Stephenson said. “A lot of students come here with the false notion that they will be able to take these classes.”

Despite her frustrations, Stephenson feels lucky to have been a part of the program before it was suspended.

“I think the [American studies] major is the best education I could have gotten at this school,” she said.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Double tuition.”

This looming threat, though a speculative comment made by Gov. Jerry Brown in a speech last week, becomes more and more of a potential reality for UC students and Californians with each day that passes and an all-cuts budget remains the likely option for Brown to sign off on.

Brown just traveled to Riverside to rally Californians into pressuring four state legislature Republicans to allow tax extensions to be on a June ballot, and thus allow Californians to vote on the matter. If the extensions do not make it on the ballot, or if Californians do not vote for them, the extensions will expire and the UC will likely face a $1 billion cut to its operating budget.

Such a cut, Brown speculated, would mean that students in the UC may see a twofold rise in their tuition. Brown also mentioned campus closures as a potential way of coping, if the tax extensions are not enacted.

The behavior of the Republicans in the legislature is abhorrent. They are not doing their job, which is to let the people of California vote.

The fact that doubled tuition is even a possibility for the UC system is absurd. Such a move would have devastating impacts. It is understandable that cuts need to be made to every facet of the state — and as hard as it is to face, even to the UC system — but to make this kind of cut would be detrimental and extremely shortsighted. Cutting $1 billion from the UC would not be just a cut. It would be the elimination of the public institution.

For students in the UC system and families supporting their children in the system, this would not be an issue of needing to save more, work more or taking out more loans — it would force many students to drop out. If enacted, students in the UC system would be trapped into paying private school tuition, despite the fact that they enrolled at a public institution.

Brown’s statement that closing some campuses would be another possible solution is also shortsighted, for a number of reasons. Closing down any UC campus would make entrance into the UC system that much more difficult, flooding more students into state universities and community colleges — schools that are also receiving immense cuts. This would not be a solution to anything.­­­ It would be deflection, moving the problem to another part of the state’s budget.

Furthermore, any closure of a UC campus would mean thousands of employees without jobs. A closure to universities of that size would overwhelm the state with more unemployment.

Either move — closure of some UC campuses or doubling tuition — violates the objectives that this beautiful system was founded on: affordability, accessibility and the advancement of knowledge. While each of these facets of the UC have been jeopardized in the past few years as dramatic raises in student fees and tuition, increases in class sizes, and the reduction in number of teaching assistants have been implemented, these two moves would be a complete affront to the more than century-old system.

There has been a disillusionment with placing blame for the absurd climbs in student fees, for the forced furloughs, for the laying off of numerous employees, for the increased class sizes and the decreased accessibility, but blaming will not be a means for saving the UC. We all need to rally the state into providing more funding for higher education and to push the Republicans to let Californians vote. After all, it is our system.

We cannot keep blaming just Yudof, UCOP and the chancellors and looking within the UC for a solution — the fact remains that the state has all but stopped investing in higher education. The solution cannot be found in parading to chancellors’ and vice chancellors’ homes and blaming just the higher-ups in the UC system. The solution must be found in all of us: in our parents, our neighbors, our family friends, in Californians. The disillusionment must end. Everyone contributes to this system, and if we want to save it, we all must take part in that. We must join forces rather than splinter.

If this system is going to be saved, all Californians need to rekindle their sense of ownership and pride for the system that once had international prestige — the UC is all of ours, and Californians need to remember that.

Like one editor’s grandmother said to her husband when she first saw the library at UCSC, “This is ours, we support this, and can you believe that?”

That is the attitude that will save the UC.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

After several weeks of deliberation, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors finalized a list of projects to be completed in unincorporated areas like Live Oak and Soquel under the county’s redevelopment agency.

Redevelopment agencies do a range of work, from taking on building projects to creating affordable housing to handling basic infrastructure work. Board member John Leopold of the First District said that 55 percent of the population in Santa Cruz County live in unincorporated areas.

In 2009 the county held a hearing to discuss the community projects they wanted to see completed in the area. The result was a five-year plan that consisted of a list of projects tallying $600 million. Now that Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget will result in the closure of redevelopment agencies, the county has been forced to reduce its budget to $75 million.

Due to the closure of redevelopment agencies throughout the state, the county can only finish the projects it has agreed to start. These projects are likely to be the last to break ground under the organization.

Betsy Lynberg, director of the County Redevelopment Agency, said many beneficial projects will be halted.

“I think there’s a lot of other important, worthwhile projects and programs that the agency is engaged in that have a lot of interest and support in the community that will not move forward,” Lynberg said, “which includes a community center in Soquel and a park associated with the community center.”

The required supermajority, which meant four out of the five board members needed to agree in order to pass a motion, complicated the vote on the final approved projects.

Despite difficulties the board members faced when slimming down the prospective projects, individuals like Ellen Pirie, a board member representing the Second District of Santa Cruz County, expressed satisfaction with the final list.

“While it wouldn’t have been the list I drew up, frankly, it wasn’t the list anyone drew up,” Pirie said. “It was a series of compromises.”

One project in particular took a large portion of the redevelopment funds — the new mid-county Sheriff’s Office, which was allocated $44 million out of the total $75 million. Pirie said design consultants originally estimated the Sheriff’s Office would cost $55 million.

Despite agreement that the Sheriff’s Office needs to be constructed in Live Oak to tackle the high volume of calls from the area, Leopold said the price tag was too much. He also said the money he anticipated would be allocated to the economic development project was instead directed toward the Sheriff’s Office.

“It was completely regrettable that we had to sacrifice that for a project … which could clearly be built for significantly less money as we see from other places across the state,” Leopold said.

Because the board attempted to find middle ground and approve projects prioritized by the community, many projects went to the chopping block.

One casualty was the economic development project. The economic development project, like all the projects under consideration, was part of a long-term plan constructed from the concerns and wants of the community.

“I am deeply disappointed that we had to give up the economic redevelopment program,” Leopold said. “This is a program I fought to create here after many discussions with the community. There was a lot of potential for it. I thought we had carved out a million dollars to keep up that work.”

The economic development project would have been a multifaceted venture intended to expand upon existing businesses, assist businesses in marketing, seek out new industries to introduce to the county, and provide overall support through networking.

As the county struggles with double-digit unemployment, the economic development project would have provided businesses and individuals with resources. Such a project is “woefully missing in the tools we have” available, Leopold said.

Lynberg named the economic development program as only one of many projects the county could no longer proceed with because of depleted funds.

Other projects that did not cross the finish line included the establishment of several parks. One of them is Farm Park, which was intended to go hand-in-hand with an affordable housing project.

Board member Pirie said that she would have liked to see the Farm Park proceed as well as the economic development project but reiterated that the decisions boiled down to “compromises” on everyone’s part.

While the finalized list of projects and the immediate issues at hand are resolved, there remains the task of closing redevelopment agencies. The concern now is what that means for local government. When redevelopment agencies no longer possessed the purse or a clearly defined future, such long-term plans — and many projects tacked onto them — became obsolete.

Addressing the reality that lies ahead of redevelopment agencies, Lynberg described their shutdown as sudden and “chaotic,” leaving the county “scrambling.”

“It’s going to be much more difficult for the county to secure funding on its own for even basic infrastructure.”

Illustration by Bela Messex.

Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel) spoke and initiated an open discussion in the UC Santa Cruz Namaste Lounge last Thursday. Monning addressed how the state, the UC and students are all affected by the state budget crisis.

“I hope we can use this afternoon not just as a Q&A, but as a brainstorming session on how we might best continue to mobilize and work with students and the community, and not just in Santa Cruz, but in the state of California,” Monning said to the group at the beginning of the discussion.

Students, faculty, community members and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway engaged in a lengthy discussion after the Q&A session.

Although she felt Monning answered some questions indirectly, “like a politician,” Tiffany Loftin, chair of the Student Union Assembly (SUA), said the meeting was informative and a beneficial venue for addressing budgetary concerns. Loftin also serves as the national people of color student coalition chair of the United States Student Association.

“All the questions we wanted to ask we got to ask, and it increases shared governance when assembly members come to us,” Loftin said. “When we come to them we have 15 minutes, when he comes to us we have two hours.”

Questions from the audience ranged from the possible but unlikely advantage of Democrats voting for an all-cuts budget to the social and economic benefits of criminal sentence reform.

The topic most frequently brought up was a need to secure the four assembly votes that would make an overall two-thirds vote, and the governor’s signature, which would pass the proposed budget.

The extent of the state budget’s implementation of cuts to higher education hinges on the passing of tax extensions at the state level. Without the tax extensions in the proposed budget, the UC system faces an all-cuts budget that could lead to a $1 billion cut instead of the proposed $500 million.

Monning chided the actions of Republicans who will not vote to pass the budget nor present a budget of their own.

“The main problem is not the legislation or the regents,” said Jeremy Wolff, immediate past president of the College Democrats at UCSC. “It’s the system itself, and as long as the officials we elect face roadblocks like the two-thirds vote, we will continue seeing the degradation of the UC system.”

President of the SUA Amanda Buchanan played an integral role in organizing the talk. Buchanan prefaced Monning’s talk with a speech.

“Students in this room are here to work,” she said to the group. “We are here to collaborate with faculty, staff, unions, community members and administration to produce an outcome that meets the educational, social and cultural goals of the UC. Give us something to fight for. Give us the issue that makes our power come to life.”

Buchanan said students have already begun to feel the cuts in larger class sizes, longer wait lists, and discontinued majors, and the impacts will only go deeper. Wolff addressed this trend, saying that long-term lack of revenue could take the form of lowered student admission, increased fees, cut classes, online classes and a physical deterioration of the campus that will become apparent in about five years.

“As long as we continue to lose funding because the system doesn’t allow [us] to get new revenue sources we will see the UC system get weaker and more privatized, and less accessible to the majority of California,” Wolff said.

Monning spoke of the importance of student activists teaming up with community members and more disenfranchised populations to get the proposed budget, which includes the $500 million cut rather than an all-cut budget, passed.

“I think our secret weapon is the activism on the campuses, from community colleges to California State Universities to UC all around the state,” Monning said.

Loftin said that Monning’s presence at UCSC was empowering to student activists who often feel unheard by elected officials.

“He came to us and said ‘I see what you’re doing and it’s important,’” Loftin said. “I feel like there were a lot of students there and I felt very empowered by that, because it’s not every day that an assembly member comes to UCSC.”

Though Loftin observed a large student presence, she said there was a lack of students of color in attendance.

Students present at the talk voiced their desire for action. College Nine SUA representative Sasha Muce said it is time to demand that elected officials “step up.”

April 11–15 is a week of action for Higher Education, which some UCSC student organizations will be observing. A rally will be held on April 14 in front of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Los Angeles office. UCSC’s SUA will be organizing buses to transport students who wish to attend.

The Farm, nestled away in the fields below campus, is an organization that teaches students about sustainable and organic farming. The Farm runs the produce stand at the base of campus, promoting community supported agriculture. Photos by Nick Paris.

In anticipation of budget cuts, students and faculty are taking preemptive action to protect the programs they deem important.

As talk of extensive cuts to the UCSC farm and the CASFS circulate, members of the community take precautions to protect the campus resource

An email petition is being circulated by Christopher Krohn, an environmental studies internship program coordinator, and second-year graduate student in environmental studies Michelle Glowa, urging Chancellor Blumenthal and dean of social sciences Sheldon Kamieniecki to consider the ramifications of issuing extensive cuts to the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Farm Systems (CASFS).

Kamieniecki, however, said in an email that no final decision has been made regarding any cuts in the division of social sciences, including CASFS.

The petition states that CASFS is set to lose $1.4 million out of its $2.3 million operating budget — roughly 60 percent of its funding.

Faculty, staff and students are still uneasy about the impact these potential cuts could have on the program’s effectiveness.

“CASFS is an integral part of the environmental studies department’s commitment to experiential learning,” said professor Karen Holl, chair of the environmental studies program, in a email regarding the potential cuts to the program. “Assuming CASFS continues to function, it will have a substantially reduced ability to support both coursework and research. Depending on how deep the cuts go, it is questionable how long CASFS will continue to be able to exist.”

The CASFS, which started off as the Student Garden Project in 1967 and officially became the Farm in 1974, supports a number of programs on its 25-acre property located on the UCSC campus, including apprenticeship programs, the Farm Stand, and various undergraduate classes. The six-month apprenticeship program at CASFS is a hallmark of the center, and boasts over 1,400 graduates since 1967. Upon completion, graduates of the program receive a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture.

“The environmental studies department realizes that difficult choices must be made in response to severe cuts in state funding for higher education in California,” said environmental studies professor Deborah Letourneau in an email. “The faculty is nevertheless extremely concerned about the lasting damage that these budget cuts to CASFS will cause to a central feature of the UCSC campus that has attracted excellence and has more than paid for itself in indirect funds from federal research grants and worldwide prestige for over 30 years.”

Upper division courses in environmental studies — such as Ecophysiology, Integrated Pest Management, Soils and Entomology — depend on the CASFS for the field portion of the course curriculum. The ability of the CASFS to adequately provide for the student body has also been called into question by environmental studies faculty.

“Undergraduate education in environmental studies relies heavily on the CASFS in a number of ways,” Letourneau said. “Two core courses in the agroecology emphasis — ENVS 130A/L Introduction to Agroecology, and ENVS 133B Agroecology Practicum — rely entirely on the farm for field laboratories and hands-on experiences.”

Ian Wilson, a second-year apprentice for the CASFS who takes part in the day-to-day routine of the farm and mentors new apprentices, emphasized the farm’s relevance to the larger Santa Cruz community.

“The farm and all of the programs related to the farm are important for the people on the farm and also for the community at large,” Wilson said. “We provide academic internships for students who are coming onto the farm and learning the fundamentals of organic farming and gardening. It seems really clear to me that it’s a place that is vital to the community and the university.”

Members of the Santa Cruz community are concerned about the potential impact of such cuts as well.

“It’s a jewel in the community,” said Gail Harlamoff, executive director of the Life Lab Science Program, an agricultural non-profit program that seeks to educate school-age children about sustainable agricultural practices and works with the CASFS. “I think these cuts will have a ripple effect,” she said. “It’s one of the few organic research and training farms in the country.”

According to their mission statement, the CASFS’s autonomy of research capability would also be in question. As university funding for the program decreases, its dependence on external sources of revenue increases, which may lead to its research focus being determined by the agendas of those external sources of funding.

“It’s sad,” Harlamoff said in reference to the university. “If they aren’t able to fund these programs, someone else will have to, or it won’t get done.”

The Farm’s value for Wilson is reflected in both the consistent participants in the program, and in infrequent visitors as well.

“We get regulars on a daily basis,” he said, “but we also get people who just wander in and are enchanted by the space and beauty of all the work that we’re doing here.”

Ilustration by Bela Messex

The teaching assistants at UC Santa Cruz usually grade your essays and finals, lead discussion sections, provide a connection to the professor, and help establish the curriculum and teaching style of the class.  Let’s take a moment to realize just how important TAs are to the University of California, though they deserve much more than just a moment.

Granted, there is some overlap in workload with the professors, but they need TAs just as much as we, the students, do.  How else would a class of 200 students receive their essays or tests back in a timely fashion?

However, the TA is a dying breed, due greatly to constant budget issues that have plagued our university system for years. And now, we face the possibility of losing an additional 120 TAs.

We need our TAs now more than ever, and making cuts to that sector of our university would be doing a huge disservice to the students who essentially fund every aspect of our university at this point.

It’s our money, so we should be able to say what we want to keep — and what we want to keep is our TAs.

Hang with us here, because as crazy as this may sound, the TAs are integral to our learning environment.  If we take them out of the system, we’re going to be the ones facing the repercussions.

Let’s build up some of this nightmare.

Cutting TAs would mean: less student-instructor interaction in larger classes, more difficulty enrolling in smaller courses (since the number of TAs usually dictates the class size), and even fewer places to engage in open discussion and refine our perspectives.

And that’s just what we’re able to perceive. Who knows what else would follow in the aftermath of more cuts? It’s probably safe to say there would be more protests, and deservedly so.

Our university is hemorrhaging.  It’s an issue that California is dealing with, from state jobs to the housing market and even NBA basketball teams (farewell, Sacramento Kings). The issue is universal.

We just want to know that the university is truly looking into all aspects of their spending, and that they aren’t just figuring that these graduate students — who give up their time, blood, sweat and tears — are not just a dime a dozen. Individual TAs can’t be easily replaced, especially while they’re getting screwed over as a whole.

City on a Hill Press has always suggested looking at cutting from the top, because top UC administrators’ salaries could easily pay for many TAs.

Another possible solution is offering class credit to TAs instead of paying them. This is something that is already done in some departments, such as psychology and economics, and college core courses.

These are hard times for everyone in California, especially within the UC system — with an additional $500 million in cuts on the way, and the possibility of even more.  However, making cuts to the TAs, the very people who arguably have the largest connection with students and the way that they learn, is not the right move for the UC system.

Chancellors from three campuses present the difficulties of absorbing past cuts. Chancellor Blumenthal of UCSC presented grave expectations for our campus’ future. “We will not be able to make these cuts strategically … These reductions will cut right to the heart of our instruction and research missions,” Blumenthal said. Photo by Prescott Watson.

The UC Board of Regents convened on March 16 in San Francisco to discuss how the University of California will address a $500 million drop in state funding from Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget. On March 24 Gov. Brown signed the bill that would slash this funding, and on Tuesday he announced that negotiations to extend taxes through a special June election ballot have failed.

UC vice president for budget Patrick Lenz said campuses could face more severe reductions if Gov. Brown’s proposed tax extensions aren’t enacted. If the proposed tax extensions fail, the state will need to find other areas to reduce spending. UC officials expect that the UC system will see a $1 billion cut to state funding.

Three UC campus chancellors from Berkeley, Irvine and Santa Cruz spoke at the meeting and addressed how additional cuts would have drastic impacts on their campuses.

“We have no model to accommodate that $1 billion,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. “It would devastate our staff and faculty.”

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal presented direct effects from previous cuts. Like Birgeneau, Blumenthal said he does not have a plan to accommodate further cuts.

“I’m not sure what we’ll have to do if the tax extensions don’t go through,” Blumenthal said. “It’s going to be a much more noticeable change.”

Blumenthal said the cuts made UCSC vulnerable in many ways, and the campus “can’t even exempt public safety operations — fire, police, and environmental health and safety.”

Regarding future budgetary concerns, Blumenthal asked the regents to consider changing how the reduced budget is spent on individual campuses. Currently, all campuses generate funds and send them to UCOP to redistribute, which results in some campuses receiving more than they generated, and vice versa. UCSC had historically received less than 100 percent of the funding generated by its own campus community. A restructuring of the funding structure proposed by Yudof would change all of this.

“We’ve never had a coherent philosophy and we need one,” UC president Mark Yudof said regarding funding distribution across the UC campuses.

The proposal would ensure that each campus keeps the funding it generates, with UCOP assessing a tax and thus leaving the president with much less influence in funding matters.

Not all campuses are enthusiastic about this restructuring. Large campuses with medical facilities will receive less money than usual under the new plan, as they will then be limited by what their campus communities can generate.

“The smaller campuses will benefit from this,” said Nathan Brostrom, executive vice president for business operations for the UC. “The major opposition to this was from medical centers, [which] may be taxed more than they have been. [The proposal] is designed to be revenue neutral, not biased towards or against any campus.”

Brostrom said this restructured funding model would allow administrators to reduce UCOP’s budget by $50 million.

Protesters outside the meeting held signs calling for the resignation of UC student regent Jesse Cheng. Cheng was not present at the meeting, and was quoted saying he would not attend in hopes of preventing such protests. The UCI undergraduate was found guilty of sexual battery against an ex-girlfriend by the UC Irvine Office of Student Conduct.

Additional reporting by Arianna Puopolo