CFA Members Prepare for 2025 at Spring Kickoff

“2025 will be memorable for all the great things we are doing and will be doing to combat the ugliness that’s coming from D.C. and the Chancellor’s Office,” CFA President and San Diego State Professor Charles Toombs said, welcoming CFA members to our virtual 2025 Spring Kickoff.

Kickoff is an opportunity to focus on our work for the term. Our theme is Liberate the CSU, centering on the idea that major changes are needed at the CSU for all of us to be successful. Toombs reminded attendees that we have been responding to the escalating budget and manufactured austerity crises. We are working in coalition with union siblings to ramp up pressure on CSU campuses and at the March Board of Trustees meeting. Expect to see CFA members giving testimony at budget hearings and having legislative visits. Look out for regional and unionwide town halls.

“Professors who have dedicated their lives to education are treated as expendable, while those in power funnel resources into police expansion, Wall Street investments, and the military-industrial complex,”

– Saba Houshangi, CSU Long Beach intern

During our Spring Kickoff, CFA Stanislaus Lecturer Representative Barbara Olave introduced our student speakers, Students for Quality Education (SQE) San Diego State intern Faith Chinnapong and CSU Long Beach intern Saba Houshangi.

Olave encouraged guests to see themselves – rather than administrators – as the university. “Look at yourself and say, ‘I am the CSU.’ ”

“There really isn’t a finish line. Yes, we have wins, those are important,” said Olave, reflecting on her organizing work. “I have come to understand it’s the fight. It’s the work that we do that, in the broader sense, is most important or at least the most lasting.”

“We see our education stripped away, sacrificed at the altar of financial greed and militarization,” Houshangi observed. “This is a systemic crisis demanding a collective response.”

“Professors who have dedicated their lives to education are treated as expendable, while those in power funnel resources into police expansion, Wall Street investments, and the military-industrial complex,” said Houshangi. “This is austerity at work. A deliberate tactic to weaken our voices and strip away the heart of the CSU. But we refuse to be silent.”

“This is a movement, not a moment,” implored Houshangi. “The CSU system was never built for us, but we have made it our own.”

Tuition is going up, campuses across the state are facing layoffs, and students are losing opportunities for their education and programs, but management says we don’t have money.

“We need to stop letting them run the CSU like a business. They are busy investing in campus police, the military-industrial complex, and Wall Street. They are taking away our education, my education! I am currently studying to get my master’s degree in Feminist Studies, but what am I going to do when my program also gets cut, when I have gotten into debt to get a degree in a program that could disappear tomorrow? Where is our money going!? We need financial transparency!” said Chinnapong.  

“Now more than ever we need to bridge this gap between students and faculty, to fight for a better CSU,” commented Chinnapong. “This institution was never built for people like me, but together as students, staff, and faculty we can create a better CSU for all of us. A CSU that is dedicated to education and opportunities and not financial gains.”

At Kickoff, a pre-released copy of our equity paper, “Shortchanging Students: How the CSU is Failing Our Future,” was distributed to participants.

CFA members broke up into small groups to strategize and analyze how the information is relevant to campus campaigns against austerity at the CSU.

Equity Interrupted argued that as the number of students became darker, CSU funding became lighter. Our new equity paper reveals that funding has actually increased, though less of it is going to instruction. In the report, we argue that we are facing irresponsible leadership from administrators and the Board of Trustees. The report also details how education has become a debt sentence as students are pushed out by increasing costs and challenges completing their degrees. A full release of the paper is set for the coming weeks.

Many challenges lie ahead; however, together, we can do much. Members were reminded that our contract expires in June. Having just completed our bargaining school, member leaders are ready to demand rights, respect, and justice at the negotiating table.

We will continue fighting for the CSU we all deserve.