Day 3

Holy bananas, my letter to President Yudoff worked! Well, let's be honest here: it is highly unlikely that my letter to the president did squat, or that he or anyone else even read it. Nevertheless, this morning Berkeley's fearless leader, Chancellor Birgeneau, sent a call-to-action email to the entire UC Berkeley community asking us to write to the legislature advocating for the UC system and letting them know the harm that a weakened UC system could do to the future of California. The president's office set up a website, www.UCforCalifornia.org, to encourage members of the UC community to speak out against the state's cuts to UC. The sample letter they provide includes a blurb about the major "brain drain" we are already starting to experience and which will only get worse (losing faculty, staff, and students to wealthier, more stable institutions who will give people raises instead of cutting their pay). Yudoff and the administration want us to ask the governor and legislators to remember UC in their budget for next year and for us to tell them, "I hope you'll choose to invest in the students and professors who represent our state's economic future." Birgeneau called it "Cal Advocacy," which is the catchphrase used in the Berkeley section of the website. Hooray for grass roots! Amusing post script in the email? Birgeneau reminds us to do this on our own time, to write as individuals rather than representatives of the university, and not to use university resources like university letterhead or email. Hah!

I wrote to the faculty walkout group mostly just to send my kudos and suggest they group together with other constituencies on campus to help boost the effectiveness of their efforts. An anonymous email-answerer wrote back saying Thanks! and asked for my name and campus affiliation. Gulp. It felt a bit like that moment when you are about to sign some petition or other in your neighborhood, and you wonder if you are signing onto a modern-day communist club and that some friendly senator is going to go all McCarthy on you. But then I decided that this is a free country, and it's just my job and my reputation at stake, so what the heck.

While testing whether one could find this blog by googling it (which one cannot), I found a blog that seems to have been around since this whole fiscal crisis began. It is written by an English professor at UC Santa Barbara, and he seems to be keeping track of most every news release and article on the topic. While I am in no way endorsing his commentary, you might find it to be an interesting archive of what happened leading up to Day 1 of the furlough: http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/

It's that odd time of year in the San Francisco Bay Area when our summer begins. Everywhere else, it's starting to cool down for autumn, but this is when we experience our 80 and 90 degree weather. In order to help cool down the office, we keep most of the lights turned off. But do you think we get any kick-back from the university for our energy cost-saving efforts? Noooooo! I think I'll write a letter to my legislators asking them to give tax credits to departments that contribute to lower energy costs. Put your monitors to sleep while you're at the water cooler, people!