On the Road
with Christine Maitland

Over 15,000 faculty, students, staff, and community members attended California Faculty Association sponsored teach-ins on the 22 California State University campuses last month.

The teach-ins—TEACH CSU—aimed to educate the campus and the community about problems facing the CSU. These problems stem from chronic underfunding of the university system and range from overcrowded classrooms to underpaid faculty, from an over-reliance on part-time faculty to misplaced administrative priorities.

I had the opportunity to attend the teach-ins on the San Francisco and Humboldt campuses, where large numbers of students, faculty, and community supporters turned out for the events.

At San Francisco State, Dan Fendel, chair of the event, told supporters that from March 1995 to March 2000 the number of CSU students increased by 35,000, while the number of tenure-track faculty increased by one.

At the Humboldt campus, more than 600 CSU supporters heard campus chapter chair John Travis report that the CSU continues to spend a disproportionate amount of money on administrators' salaries at the expense of faculty.

The CSU administration committed more than 53 percent of the CSU budget to instruction in 1990-91, Travis told listeners, "But instruction accounted for only 41 percent in 2000-01."

He reminded students that "faculty working conditions are student learning conditions," and urged them to support faculty's efforts to secure more money for instruction.

—Christine Maitland, a former higher ed coordinator, now works in the NEA Western Regional Office.