Members of the union representing faculty at the four regional universities of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system walked out of a special meeting of the state Board of Regents on Thursday, in protest of a report recommending cuts to the system.
“We don’t think it’s going to help the people of Connecticut, the progress of the state, if our system of public higher education is cut or shrunk,” said Louise Williams, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University and president of the Connecticut State Universities American Association of University Professors (CSU-AAUP), who led the walkout.
The union was responding to the presentation of a report by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, or NCHEMS, a consultancy hired by the governor’s Office of Policy and Management. Citing declining enrollment and longstanding fiscal woes, the report recommends, among other steps, the consideration of staff reductions.
“They think there are too many teachers,” Williams said. “We know, if you are a teacher in the system, that we are already overworked and stressed out.”
In a written response to the report, CSU-AAUP said the system needs more funding, not less.
John O’Connor, a CSU-AAUP member and associate professor of sociology at CCSU, called the report an “attack on students, attack on faculty members, and an attack on our institutions.”
“I think it is absolutely horrible what this means and what this says about, you know, the students that come to institutions like this, at Central, or at Southern, at Western and Eastern,” O’Connor said. “I think it’s actually sort of saying to us all that their educations really don’t matter, right? Their experiences do not matter. They’re not important.”
Chancellor Terrence Cheng told the regents that system leadership needs to consider both legitimate dissatisfaction in the status quo and serious recommendations to improve CSCU and its institutions.
“There are many wounds that need to heal for this system,” Cheng said. “If we don’t recognize the genuine pain that folks have experienced and endured at certain points during this journey, then we are doing a disservice to them.”
“At the same time, we must also focus on how to make things better now and into the future, so learning from the lessons of the past, trying to salve those wounds, and then becoming stronger and healthier every day to make progress,” Cheng said.
The recommendations in the report, which are non-binding, are addressed both to state policymakers and the CSCU system.
“We’re not going to agree every step of the way,” Cheng said. “We are going to continue to have some bumps in the road, but I have incredible faith in everybody.”
