I wish to reiterate that from my view as Academic Senate President,

our district's massive pink-slipping of ca. 60 tenure-track faculty

amounts to holding them hostage to negotiations. This has inflicted

immeasurable damage on the ability of the college to deliver its

education programs.

How can we put this into perspective? In a previous memo I reported

that based on reports given at the recent Area B Academic Senate

meeting and other sources, no other college in our region is

addressing their budget situation this way.

I invite everyone to communicate as much as possible with your

faculty peers at other CC's in California to obtain your own

perspective, and to inform you academic senator with what you have

learned.

The reason that the State Academic Senate is paying so much attention

to our situation is that they would not want what has happened at WVC

to begin a trend in the future. Can you imagine what California

education would be like if each college began its budget process each

year by pink-slipping enough faculty to balance the budget using the

very worst possible case scenario, and then bargaining their

restoration back dollar by dollar? That is what our district is

attempting to do, and it should never happen again.

Linda King