[ Golden Gater Online - October 2, 1997 ]
Editor:
Re: President Corrigan's pay raise: Your editor/reporter called me at 10 p.m. last Thursday and broke the news that just that day the California State University Board of Trustees had implemented their previously-floated plan to raise the campus presidents' salaries by 10 percent (the first phase of a 30 percent increase). I was quite dismayed at the speed with which they acted.
I spoke to the reporter at length about the faculty's ratification of the last contract which provides a 2.21 percent increase to the faculty -- bringing out average salary increase over the last seven years to 1.43 percent, a period during which the administrators received four times that amount, 4.5 percent.
I was disappointed that the article as published did not mention the substantive points I made and only included words of my angry and immediate reaction. I have a right to be angry at the trustees and so does the faculty; after all, why should the trustees reward the campus executives for limiting resources and expenditures at the expense of those who work at the university and those who attempt to become educated there?
Our students have a right to know why their instructors are so demoralized -- and so overworked: They are not being fairly compensated for the work they do. And increases in class size, low numbers of additional sections, small numbers of additional instructors appointed and little additional money being spent on instructional needs are making the work of the faculty harder and more frustrating. The money for executive salaries has to come from somewhere and all those cutbacks and restrictions seem to provide the profits that make it possible to give executives 30 percent increased compensation over the next three years.
President Corrigan is not responsible for the cuts in expenditures that usually support the faculty and students; that is CSU policy, which is devised by the trustees and the legislature.
We don't begrudge President Corrigan's great good fortune. We only ask that he actively support fairness and equity for the faculty and healthy resource allocation for the students he manages.
Margo Kasdan,
SF State Chapter President, California Faculty Association
[ Golden Gater - October 02, 1997 ]