Community Studies department being cut from UCSC?

The meeting will be on Tuesday at 5:00pm (Not at 5:45) in conjunction w/ CMMU 102 in Kresge 321.

Dean of Social Sciences, Sheldon Kamieniecki, has decided Community Studies is to be cut as a undergraduate major.

This information is to help students network and create a COLLECTIVE effort to stop the department from being eliminated.

We have reason to believe Feminist Studies and American Studies are also threatened.

Community Studies students are activists and organizers... time to get to work.

Let's stay calm, work fast, and save our department.

Here is what we know:
- Tenured professors will be dispersed into other departments
- Faculty will be fired
- Only students who have declared with the CMMU department will be able to graduate as Community Studies majors

It is important to note that this is NOT just about money, there are social science programs at UCSC that are hiring new faculty and receiving extra resources.

WE know the value of Community Studies, it is up to us to defend it.

Our program is "interdisciplinary in nature, integrating scholarship and community engagement in both research and teaching. Since its founding in 1969, and across radically changing political landscapes, the department has maintained a focus on identifying, analyzing, and helping to construct sites for social change and cultural transformation. To this end, we address principles of social justice and the dynamics of racial and class inequity as we explore constructions of community and their implications."
– CMMU website.

Address of the dean if you think that makes a difference:

sk1 [at] ucsc.edu
Office Phone: (831) 459-3212
Office Fax: (831) 459-3661

There is some misinformation in this story. Faculty are not being fired and the program is not scheduled for elimination. The drastic budget cuts required by the State of California leave the Division of Social Sciences with a host of unpleasant choices that impact each and every department in the division.

I just talked with a housemate about that meeting that happened
tonight. (He left early however).

About 45 people showed up, it was student initiated but a few
other cmmu staff showed up to answer questions.

The Dean of Social Sciences, Sheldon Kamieniecki, got an order from campus provost David
Kliger to cut out $1.3 million from the budget. The Dean held a meeting
with faculty expressing that he's going to fire the staff, and un-tenured
professors & lecturers, tenured professors will be transferred into other
departments to teach there. The Community Studies department will still
exist if students want to finish their major, but undergraduate classes
will be cut. Field study internships will be cut. A lot of peripheral
programs linked to community studies, like KZSC, calpirg, e-squared, and
other student orgs and groups are based in community studies and are therefore at risk.

From what it sounds like, Blumenthal likes the social studies programs (but if he liked it wouldn't he step in?),
The vice-chancellor(s) don't give a shit about the programs.

Also one of the ex-officio UC Regents (placed as regents in connection with
their political position) was a community studies major (or a community
organizer?) and likely isn't aware that the program will be cut. This
regent has some sort of authority to pull strings and cancel any action
set forth by the Dean (or maybe has blocking power in regents meetings?).

The plan is proposed and will be finalized and take effect no later than
July 2009.
---

It was stressed that publicity is important since the school uses shady negotiating to ruin movements and maintain authority.

A suggestion was also made that communications are made not only with
alumni and parents, but with organizations & non profits involved in the
community studies program, people who fund the school (though that's hard
since we know that only 17% of the school is funded by students and the
rest through corporate contributions by--you guessed it, military,
weaponry, engineering, technology firms etc), and any politicians who might
have any stake in this.

Apparently brand-new $500,000 bonus, $900,000/yr salaried UC President Mark Yudof, fresh from Texas, has initiated a plan or proposal to reorganize the UC structure similar to the one in Texas, where there will be a main university and shitty satelite campuses all around it. Following that model, UC Berkeley UCLA will be the main campuses of the UC system and everything else will get shit funding and will be basically watered down satellite versions of the schools.

Then there's always new school U occupations to analyze and reproduce or
expand upon ;)
-d

note: This is all second-hand information and should be double-checked
and/or added to.