Option 4 Press Release

UC COMMUNITY COALITION FOR OPTION 4
Santa Barbara campus
www.option4.org
“The mind and intellect of man is the very essence of the soul.”
--St. Thomas Aquinas

July 24, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Please distribute widely
CONTACT:
Aranye Fradenburg
805-895-1847
lfraden@english.ucsb.edu
Robert Williams
robertw@arthistory.ucsb.edu
Jonathan Forbes
jforbes@umail.ucsb.edu
805-276-5440
Sonya Baker
sonyabaker@gmail.com
805-451-1573
UC Community Coalition for Option 4
Press Conference
Wednesday, July 29
12:00 Noon
Courtyard - Student Affairs/Administration Building, near the Visitor Center (1102 SAAB)


The UC Community Coalition for Option 4 (UCCC4O4) will hold a Press Conference Wednesday July 29th, 12:00 Noon, at the Courtyard of the Student Affairs Administration Building, near the Visitors Center (1102 SAAB) on the UCSB campus. University of California faculty, staff, and students are mobilizing in response to recent decisions made by the UC Regents and UC President Mark Yudof. We span the 10 campuses of the UC system, with affiliates throughout the CSU, Community College and K-12 systems. We support top-quality public education for our state. We urge Californians to take back their schools and end the incompetent stewardship of the UC Office of the President (UCOP), the UC Board of Regents, and the Schwarzenegger administration, before it is too late.

• The UCSB CC4O4 rejects the Regents’ decisions (1) to ratify Yudof’s requests for emergency powers, and (2) to cut faculty and staff salaries and essential programs and services. We also repudiate the justifications for these decisions and the process leading up to them. Prior to the Regents’ meeting, Yudof asked for the UC community’s responses to only three options: salary cuts, furloughs, or both. The University can overcome the challenges it faces in other ways. We demand Option 4: no salary cuts, no furloughs, and the pursuit of alternative budgetary avenues.

• We demand transparency and democratic participation in financial planning and the budget process at all individual campuses and at UCOP. We call upon Chancellor Henry Yang to permit the full participation of the entire UCSB community in all determinations of our campus’s response to the Regents’ vote.

• The only vision of the University’s future acceptable to our coalition gives first priority to the needs of all of our students. We ask that Yudof redesign the Commission on the Future of UC to represent a real variety of viewpoints and student concerns. We ask that the Commission’s first actions be directed toward immediate redress of recent budget cuts, and general reform of education funding and the state budget process.