Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great winter break and is enjoying their 3.5% salary increase you should have seen in your Dec 1, 2018 paycheck!

In other good news, our new Governor has increased funding for the CSU at an unprecedented level in his initial budget proposal for 2019-20.

• Gov. Newsom’s proposal includes an additional $562 million dollars for our university system.
• $300 million is in new ongoing general fund monies
• $262 is one-time funding for deferred maintenance and various programs including programs that will help to address food and housing insecurity for our students.

Locally, your CFA officers have been making plans for various workshops and events for our campus. We will be hosting monthly faculty luncheons again this semester. The first luncheon is scheduled for February 19 in the Vintage Room, 11-1.

We are planning several useful workshops for faculty including a benefits workshop, lecturer rights workshop, and a workshop focused on reducing student loan debt for our faculty.

We are also making plans to bring Professor Dana Cloud to campus for a lecture. Professor Cloud, has the distinction of being one of the first professors targeted by Turning Point USA and placed on the Professor Watchlist. She has written an interesting article on the rhetoric of civility and its possible dangers to academic freedom. I think she offers an important counterpoint to dominant discourses that call for civility without consideration of ongoing structural inequalities and power dynamics. We are sponsoring her visit in the hopes of keeping the conversation going.

In Solidarity,

Diane Blair
CFA Chapter President, Fresno State