At
Sonoma we have scheduled a hearing on Wed. Oct. 29. The panel of
notables so far includes Jim Leddy who is currently an aide to Senator
Wes Chesbro and is running for the 7th District Assembly seat where
Pat Wiggins is getting termed out, Linda Kelley, a member of the
Sebastopol City Council, Jason Spencer, student body president at
Sonoma to represent the students' interests, Elaine Leeder, the
Dean of Social Sciences to represent the administration, and Catherine
Nelson, the Chair of the Academic Senate here at Sonoma.
While
we have not ruled out getting some more notables, if the majority
of these people show up, it should be pretty good. We are only able
to get the room from noon to 1, but we can turn that to our advantage.
I realize that we could easily fill a much longer time span with
testimony from lecturers on our campus, but the notables are very
busy people, and it is easier to get them if the event does not
take an inordinate amount of time.
In addition to the hearing we are going to have a table on Monday
through Thursday, and we will have material to pass out. People
here have prepared some of the material. We are also going to have
the resolution from the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council,
and material that we have gotten from the cewaction.org website.
I have gotten onto the agenda for the Oct. 22 meeting of the North
Bay Labor Council to try to get a similar resolution which I will
send around if I can get it. We have plans for a bake sale on Tuesday
to raise money for our Community Solidarity Fund, a program which
we are pioneering on this campus where lecturers are raising money
to offer classes. Then, on Friday we are going to have a car pool
to the regional event at De Anza College in Cupertino. Jason figures
that if I can get 10 lecturers, he can get 40 students, and so we
are planning on sending 50 people to Cupertino on the 31st.
Contact:
Steve Wilson <steve.wilson@SONOMA.EDU>
REPORT
FROM SONOMA
We
had a table on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to distribute literature,
have people sign petitions and publicize our other two scheduled
events, the hearing on Wednesday, and the carpool to the regional
hearing in Cupertino. We got 439 signatures on the petition in support
of the Supplementary Report Language: 265 by the student intern,
and 174 by lecturers. The 174 by lecturers alone exceeded our goal
which I believe was at about 130. An interesting footnote to the
tabling was that I had been called to Los Angeles on Monday for
a bargaining session. The bargaining session wound up being canceled,
but I was still out of town, and the tabling went on anyway.
The hearing took place from noon to 1 on Wednesday. I had arranged
to get Jim Leddy, who is currently the District Coordinator for
Sen. Wes Chesbro and is a candidate for the 7th Assembly District,
Linda Kelley, a member of the Sebastopol City Council and an SSU
alum, Alex Mallonee, the Secretary-Treasurer of the North Bay Labor
Council which had passed a resolution similar to the one passed
by the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council in support
of Campus Equity Week, Jason Spencer, the Associated Student Body
President, Catherine Nelson, the Chair of the Academic Senate at
Sonoma State, and Elaine Leeder, the Dean of the School of Social
Sciences here. Our new Provost, Eduardo Ochoa had declined an invitation
to serve on the panel of notables but had promised to be in the
audience. The day before the hearing, Dean Leeder phoned in sick.
She did really sound sick on her voice mail, but she didn't serve
on the panel. Moreover, Provost Ochoa was also a no show, and in
fact we did not notice anyone from the administration there. However
in spite of that, we got a head count of over 130 people in the
hall, mostly lecturers' students. As a result, the event did a good
job of proving that the lecturers on this campus can organize students
if we are sufficiently motivated. The fact that we were motivated
to turn out that many students is a testament to the amount of unhappiness
we are experiencing as a result of the uncertainty about employment
which the administration is blaming on the budget. There was a good
number of tenure track faculty there and there were also some lecturers
besides the ones who were testifying. The room held about 150, so
there were some empty seats. However, the empty seats were so sparsely
sprinkled about the room that many late comers opted to stand around
the edge of the room rather than fight their way to find a seat.
As a result, it looked like we had the place packed.
Not only did the audience fill up the room quite nicely, but the
program timed out very well. In order to make sure that the lecturer
witnesses had enough time for their testimony, I had told the notables
that they would undoubtedly want to hear all the testimony before
making their remarks in order to better tailor the to the audience.
The last notable who wanted to speak finished her remarks at 12:55.
While these results were extremely encouraging, there were some
elements of the program which needed improvement. The first was
the lack of administrators. Administrators are an important audience
for us, and with exception of a few administrative coordinators
from several departments, they seem to have boycotted the event
in spite of numerous personal invitations that the staff sent out.
The fact that we had the kind of turnout we did in spite of the
fact that they weren't numbered among the audience, and the fact
that we made sure that they heard about it, I believe somewhat compensates
for the fact that they weren't there. The other area that needs
improvement is media coverage. We did have a reporter from the campus
paper there, who looked like she had had her eyes opened, and a
reporter from the local PBS station. Unfortunately, we did not see
or hear from anyone from the Press Democrat, the major corporate
newspaper in the area, and that was not good. I had talked to Mary
Fricker from the Press Democrat when she was covering the meeting
of the North Bay Labor Council when they passed their resolution
of support, and I had invited her to the event, but more work needs
to be done.
The most disappointing part of the week long program was that it
would be a gross understatement to say that we fell short of our
goal of people in the car pool to Cupertino for the
Regional Hearing on Friday. There were only two of us. However,
the program in Cupertino was definitely in a league above ours.
The following lecturers need to be mentioned in dispatches: