CFA Members Organize ‘Millie Antoinette’ Action at Board of Trustees

At the March 10 CSU Board of Trustees meeting, CFA members and our union siblings organized an action contrasting outrageous executive salaries with austerity measures.  

The board approved additional spending on executive compensation in their meetings, making our action even more timely.  

Elaine Bernal, CFA Associate Vice President of Lecturers, South, dressed up and acted as Millie Antoinette, comparing Chancellor Mildred García to Marie Antoinette, the former queen of France. Marie Antoinette was known for her courtly extravagance and rejection of reform during the French Revolution. In addition to approving increases to executive salaries while issuing layoff notices, García has amassed a pile of unfair practice charges since she became chancellor.  

The action included cupcakes, a reference to the “let them eat cake” line often attributed to Marie Antoinette in response to being told that the peasants had no bread. García makes an annual base salary of $795,000, not including her $96,000 annual housing stipend and deferred compensation. In comparison, the lowest-paid full-time lecturer makes just over $66,000 a year, but most lecturers are not full-time and make less than half that amount. 

Bernal said they had fun being Millie Antoinette, wearing a wig with flowers and a pink dress with lace trimmings. In a skit, they mockingly called for more public and private partnerships, as well as building toward the future of work and AI.  

“It was an engaging, SNL-esque way to share and educate others on the ostentatious salaries and austerity measures of the Chancellor’s Office,” Bernal said. “I promised my loyal legion that as long as the sun rises on Mildred’s empire, I shall continue to entertain my court and my subjects. Let them eat cake!” 

CFA members and staff also dressed up as members of Millie Antoinette’s royal court. Some held up “big heads” of board Chair Jack Clarke and Vice Chair Diego Arambula with wigs styled in the era of Marie Antoinette and posed next to their life-size cut outs. A life-size cutout of Millie Antoinette also made an appearance with “big heads” of her printed out and taped to large sticks.  

Teamsters Local 2010 and Academic Professionals of California (APC) members also joined our action, holding signs including “Cost of living is up! Our pay should be up, too!”  

During the meeting, union members also made direct appeals to the board during public comment. CFA members urged the trustees to prioritize funding for instruction, comply with Senate Bill 98, and to continue with the lawsuit against the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Margarita Berta-Ávila, CFA president and Sacramento State professor, also called out how the CSU administration didn’t allow union members to park at the CSU Chancellor’s Office parking lot and locked the portable toilets outside.  

“What this demonstrates is you see us as trash,” Berta-Ávila said. “As not worth being able to even use the restroom or even park in the parking lot.” 

Despite our action, the Board of Trustees approved additional spending on executive compensation. The board approved creating a new vice chancellor position, a vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management and student success. They appointed Dilcie Perez, who had been serving as the division’s deputy vice chancellor, to the position with an annual base salary of $403,500.  

The board also approved reassigning CSU Monterrey Bay campus president Vanya Quinñones to be the campus president of Cal Poly Pomona starting July 1. In her new position, she will get a $70,000 raise, going from an annual base salary of $421,800 to $492,500 a year.  

CFA members will keep fighting the board and administration’s mismanagement on every front, from fighting possible layoffs at CSU Bakerfield to advocating for our bargaining proposal for a salary minima that is no less than 10% of the chancellor’s base pay. We call on the CSU administration to fund the classroom, not the boardroom!