CFA Members and the Academic Senate Continues Opposition to Cal-GETC

Opposition to Cal-GETC has been fomenting since the plan was first announced earlier this year. Last week, we filed an unfair labor practice charge, and this week the Academic Senate of the CSU passed a no-confidence vote against CSU Trustees and Chancellor Garcia in response to Cal-GETC implementation.

“We applaud the opposition to Cal-GETC from the Academic Senate,” said CFA President Charles Toombs.t “If CSU management and trustees are serious about recruiting and retaining Native and Indigenous students or Black students, they need to reverse Cal-GETC and fund skills courses, mentoring, tutoring, resource centers, and mental health counseling.”

CFA members are very concerned that this decision will decrease jobs and increase workload. This additional work will range from additional meetings, focus groups, surveys, curricular modifications, summer work, and the creation of new courses.

Cal-GETC implementation would remove one Arts and Humanities class and the Lifelong Learning and Self-Development course from General Education requirements. Doing so would discourage students from enrolling in important classes designed to help them succeed. For example, skills courses help recruit and retain students from diverse and rural communities where many K-12 schools have experienced decades of disinvestment and under-resourcing due to systems of racism, colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental injustice.

The Academic Senate of the CSU has opposed the application of Cal-GETC on all students, noting the impact on the quality of education and on students of color.

In a resolution passed earlier this week, the Academic Senate of the CSU further clarified its position to Cal-GETC implementation. In no uncertain terms, the resolution states that “the Academic Senate of the California State University (ASCSU) has lost confidence in the CSU Board of Trustees and CSU Chancellor’s Office and Administrators’ commitment to the robust consultation and systemwide faculty feedback required for internal changes to CSU General Education.”

“The issue is one of process: HOW we got to this decision. The process we followed to approve Cal-GETC as the new transfer pathway in 2022-2023 modeled shared governance at its best,” said ACSCU Senator and CSU LA professor Kristine Bezdecny. “Rather than following a similar process in 2023-2024, the decision to change CSU GE was decided top-down and didn’t follow the process already outlined from the previous year.”

In another rebuke to the CSU administration the resolution “Socially Responsible Investment Strategies” firmly urges “the Chancellor to reconsider the April

30, 2024, statement that ‘the California State University does not intend to alter

existing investment policies related to Israel or the Israel-Hamas conflict” and instead engages with the campus community on investment strategies that profit ethnic cleansing, genocide, and human rights violations. The resolution further argues that “evidence-based critiques of policies and military strategies enacted by the government of Israel must not be construed as a priori Anti-Semitism.”

CFA members filed an Unfair Practice Charge with California’s Public Employer Employee Relations Board over the CSU Board of Trustees’ approval of amendments to Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations. This sweeping change to impose Cal-GETC requirements on all CSU students, not just transfer students was done over objections made by CFA leadership, faculty, and students. Despite well founded concerns, trustees voted unanimously in favor of the changes.

The decision to apply Cal-GETC to all students was made without giving notice to us or giving our members an opportunity to meet and confer. CSU management has also failed to supply the requested information about job loss, workload, and resource allocation for this systemwide change. The Unfair Labor Practice charge was filed to enforce our right to bargain impacts before faculty are affected by this decision and our right to information necessary for the representation of our members.

CSU management’s rushed decision and implementation of Cal-GETC has failed to take into consideration the long-lasting impacts to both faculty and students. We have taken the first steps to ensure that the CSU meets its obligation to bargain and provide the required information.

Faculty who are directed to perform additional work related to this change or other circumstances should review the workload protection in our contract:

“20.3 a. Members of the bargaining unit shall not be required to teach an excessive number of contact hours, assume an excessive student load, or be assigned an unreasonable workload or schedule.”