‘Millie Antoinette’ Rejoins CFA Action at Board of Trustees May Meeting

CFA members mobilized at the May 4-6 CSU Board of Trustee meetings, showing executives we will fight for our bargaining proposals and against austerity measures.  

Elaine Bernal, CFA Associate Vice President of Lecturers, South, reprised their role as Millie Antoinette, comparing Chancellor Mildred García to Marie Antoinette, the former queen of France. Marie Antoinette was known for her courtly extravagance and obliviousness of poverty and duress caused by her political misspending during the French Revolution—an apt metaphor for faculty anger about current CSU budget issues. 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.    

Millie Antoinette sat in the board chambers to observe the meeting, startling the trustees with their rococo-style pink dress and tall wig. After the meeting, they gave a report out of the board’s actions.  

During the board meeting, trustees approved compensation for the new Interim Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Dave Grant. Effective retroactively to April 17, Grant makes $378,000 annually and a car allowance of $12,000 per year. The former Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Frank Hurtarte made $374,400 annually with $61,244 in deferred compensation.  

In public comments, CFA members spoke up about issues including mismanagement, bargaining proposals, and the targeting of Black students at CSU Northridge. 

“You come here every few months and talk about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new executive or millions on a new building,” CFA president and Sacramento State professor Margarita Berta-Ávila. “You pat yourselves on the back for raising tuition and making so-called hard choices, honestly perpetuating the narrative that at the core is mismanagement of funds and manufactured debt. But do you know that you are currently sanctioning the blatant targeting of Black and Brown students at Northridge by CSU Northridge Police?”  

Campus police have arrested six students this academic year. Three of those arrested are Black students, and the non-Black students’ arrests stemmed from their activism on campus. Along with the Hands Off Students campaign at CSU Northridge, CFA members have been calling on the university administration to align its practices with its values and to meet the coalition’s demands to eliminate anti-Black and anti-student policing. 

Molly Talcott, CFA representation committee chair and CSU Los Angeles professor, spoke on bargaining proposals in her public comment.  

“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions,” Talcott said. “The CSU continues to disinvest in both and this harms our students. CFA’s bargaining proposals address this harm. We propose that bosses cannot increase class size by fiat as they did at LA where they said, ‘assign less and assess students more efficiently.’ But we refuse to cheat our students of an education.”