What is happening? 

In 2024 CSU management hired high-priced consultants to put together a systemwide strategic plan. We know that CSU management continues their decades of budget mismanagement and misuse of funds while claiming a tuition increase is necessary for their financial sustainability. Repeatedly there’s never any money to fairly compensate faculty and staff for their tireless dedication to student success and always a made-up budget hole to justify unfair costs to students. 

In a move that will devastate student recruitment, retention, learning, and success, Sonoma State management announced early in January 2025 deep cuts to faculty, staff, and instructional and support programs. This is now a rippling effect across campuses in the Cal state system.  

The proposed cuts, department and program eliminations, and faculty job loss are not inevitable. Chancellor Garcia and the Board of Trustees can reverse these changes and demonstrate leadership that privileges students, instruction, academic and educational integrity. 

We will not stand by and watch entire campuses, and its academic and educational mission left unrecognizable. Faculty, students and staff are joining forces to fight back. Cutting courses and programs is a direct attack on student success by increasing class sizes, expanding faculty workload, and reducing support programs that help student achieve, particularly first-generation and immigrant students, and those from marginalized communities. Students are paying more and getting less. 

We live with the consequences of their poor decision-making, and now is the time to communicate truth to power. 

TAKE ACTION

Layoffs are being threatened at Sonoma State, Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, and Channel Islands. As campus administration across the CSUs continues to spew budget austerity, we need greater transparency and clearer communication. It’s crucial that we receive proper notice and updates, rather than being left in the dark or subjected to behind-the-scenes conversations.

A group of people at a intersection street with banners.
CFA members rally outside the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento, where Chancellor Garcia addressed CSU alumni.

Take Action to Stop Campus Layoffs

Tell the CSU Administration: Hands off Students!

On February 20, 2025, CSUSM students and community members staged a series of nonviolent direct actions to disrupt the Social Mobility Symposium, on our campus, as part of their campaign to declare CSUSM a sanctuary campus. Ironically, this symposium was organized to “advance social mobility and develop solutions that empower students.” Instead, our campus was hyper-militarized and super-surveilled through an increased police presence, with the calling in of officers from neighboring campuses and precincts, as well as private security forces.

One week later, on Friday, February 28, student leaders and organization presidents received individual and organizational referrals and summons to disciplinary hearings from the Dean of Students Office and the Student Leadership and Involvement Center, in direct reference to this day of action.

These disciplinary actions make CSUSM the first campus in the CSU system to take such aggressive action towards this many students and organizations at once. Furthermore, these actions go against CSUSM’s Diversity, Social Justice & Equity values which highlight the “strive for the realization of educational equity and the promoting of a fair and open environment for the respectful exchange of ideas.” Click here to Sign the petition.

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