Meanwhile, on another campus, a wildflower rages about cellphones in the classroom

via Rate Your Students:

I’m sure others out there are experiencing my pain when it comes to professors and the obnoxious policies they implement regarding cell phone usage during lecture. In the past, I’ve tolerated their dictatorship like authority and snuck messages under the desk or behind my laptop, but that era is over. In my latest course, the professor thinks he has the right to automatically deduct 10% of a students final grade for any single use of cell phones: that means texting, tweeting, facebooking, and the like.

In most instances when it comes to colleges and universities, I find that they operate under a backwards business model. As a rule of thumb, customers come first. After all, satisfied customers means increased revenue and likeliness that references will be acquired. Nope. Not with education. Many academic institutions (from a financial standpoint, they are businesses) treat students with little respect. Yet, enrollment is ever growing. Why? Because “a degree is what you need to succeed” in today’s society. That means school officials operate under a do as I please system.

I find this absolutely atrocious and I’m taking action to eliminate the power for grade deduction per cell phone use school-wide; please note, I’m not talking about holding audible conversations during lecture. After a “go here” and “go there” run around, I finally made it to the Student Government Office, where to great pleasure, my ideas were wholeheartedly shared. Already underway, petitions are being drawn up and should make it to the student population in the coming weeks. I plan to submit an article to the school newspaper and gain maximum attention. No school has the right to bar me from texting during class. I pay their fees for a degree, in turn, respect my decision to text. I am not jumping on tables, screaming obscenities, blasting music, or audibly laughing. I am silently responding to friends. No harm done.

Just in case you were wondering what some students might be thinking about your classroom policies...

(Check out the original post here.)

Comments

Anonymous said...
My students simply ignore my policies about e-toy usage as if I am blind and deaf and can't see what they are doing.
9:17 AM, January 13, 2010

alannah said...
I don't do 10% for a single use, but I make it clear that the classroom is a learning environment and that doing anything to detract from that, including e-toys, walking in and out, etc., are as serious as stomping on another student's freedom of expression. They're rude and distracting, and they do deduct from the class participation grade. It's anti-participation, isn't it?
9:56 AM,

Anonymous said...
Where did these little shits get the idea that they are "customers" and "consumers" and that the college is sort of an academic McDonald's?
12:13 PM

Anonymous said...
So glad I may be deemed a "shit." Thanks.
12:42 PM

Anonymous said...
I go, I eat, I sit, I sleep, I twit, I text. So where's my degree?
1:11 PM

Anonymous said...
I've placed a policy in my policy statement where the focus is on the material, the discussion and the exchange of ideas which does not include folks on the other end of a text message who are not officially enrolled.

Consideration of courtesy is important in our "business" and in other businesses. If I were your employer, I doubt that activity would be tolerated while an important stragegy message is under consideration such as a 10% reduction in staffing.

Multi tasking has been fould bogus: you can't focus intently on work while you're doing something else. I doubt if students who are addicted to the e-toys (which are extremely useful in the appropriate settings) would appreciate a surgeon texting while cutting on one of us.

And what kind of message does that send to others around the texter? He or she can do so then why shouldn't I?

If this were a text messaging class, then it would be appropriate: mine isn't. If you are texting you are in the wrong class: it's not on my syllabus or in my policy statement as an approved activity for the 75 minutes we meet twice a week.

So to those who do this in my class, I'll ask you to leave, talk to me before returning, or you may be dropped under the Instructor drop policy.
1:18 PM

Anonymous said...
Well, 12:42, if you're texting while in class (and you're probably doing it while driving and at the movies also) then, yes, the term fits.
1:42 PM

Anonymous said...
"No harm done." Classic example of someone who just doesn't "get it". What a shame that this student's energies and initiative are not better used.
ES
2:28 PM

Anonymous said...
It is difficult to know what it is like to be an instructor unless you've been one. Instructors will tell you: many students observe the instructor as though he were a TV, just playing, insensible to anything occurring in the room. In fact, most instructors are very aware of what students are doing--their activities, their expressions, their apparent interest of lack thereof. We do this because we take seriously the project of getting them to think, and so, naturally, we study students' faces. So, first, the kind of behavior this students defends is simply rude, boorish--pretending to listening intently while in truth fingering some gizmo and contemplating something unrelated to the lecture. Second, as a rule, students who do not give their undivided attention to the instructor are not likely to learn from him/her. Surely it is not unreasonable to view a classroom as the product of a kind of agreement in which the instructor has committed to being prepared and presenting well and students are committed to being prepared and interacting with the instructor (listening, responding, etc.) well. And, again, it is not unreasonable to suppose that students who text or observe internet content, etc., are failing in their part of the bargain. To me, the only issue here is HOW an instructor should secure good classroom conditions for instruction/learning--i.e., how they should prevent texting, noodling, fiddling, diddling, sleeping, snoring, grab-assing, and all the rest. I would argue that the middle-aged instructor sends an unfortunate message that he/she is The Law of this Land and the Executer of that Law--when declaring the unacceptability of any manner of gizmophication. I think it's better to pleasantly indicate that the behavior is a problem as it comes up. But that's just me. Never liked being The King of the Room. It is my goal to run the room without declaring my sovereigny. --BvT
3:34 PM

Anonymous said...
Yep; 12:42 is most certainly a shit (others might use meaner names)--not for the initial boorishness of texting in class, but for his aggressive, misguided, in-your-face, and poorly reasoned defense of it. ES and BvT have nailed it, as so often happens in this forum.

For some reason, I've never had this problem in my classes--perhaps because I teach at a somewhat elite place (in terms of attracting students who can afford a private school and came for the personal interactions of a small place; they actually tend to be quite friendly and courteous--well-brought-up).... I don't think I'm simply oblivious to texting, because as BvT points out, like most instructors I am ACUTELY aware of every little facial expression or tapping of pen on the table. I wouldn't miss it.

It gets to me all too much even when they sit there looking bored. I always felt an obligation of courtesy/morality to look pleasant and interested, to nod (or shake my head "no") and hold eye contact--in short, to treat the professor as a person. As BvT notes, that attitude has been replaced for many with the "prof-as-TV" practice.

It is so very odd that many of a certain young generation haven't a clue about what respect entails. But many of them *do* get it, too--which makes me confident in chiming in about a certain poster being a sh-t.
MAH
7:21 PM

Remembering Bobby Salcedo

Rebel Girl returned from her otherwise idyllic holiday trip to Mexico to the news that El Monte school board member Bobby Salcedo had been killed during his Mexican holiday sojourn, one of the causalities in the growing Mexican drug war. The war has been raging for years, some two hundred miles south of us. In the last month, dozens of people have been killed, in Tijuana and its environs; most recently three high school students were gunned down last week.

Rebel Girl's friend, Michael Jaime-Becerra, MFA grad from UCI and currently professor of creative writing at UC Riverside, offers this remembrance of his childhood friend Bobby Salcedo. She wants to share it with you today.



from Zocalo:

On New Year’s Day my wife and I were driving to my parents’ home for our annual tradition of menudo breakfast when my sister called with the news of Bobby Salcedo’s death. She related the preliminary details — Bobby kidnapped at gunpoint from a restaurant, that he was in Gomez Palacio, Durango visiting his wife’s family for the holidays, that his body was found the following morning with those of the five other abducted men. I was shocked as I made the turns toward home and horrified as I drove past the Salcedo house. Their driveway was crowded with vehicles, and I recognized this as the first indicator that the tragic news was true.

The Salcedos live around the corner from my parents and a major portion of my childhood was spent with Bobby, his brothers, and their neighbor. We mostly played basketball in each others’ driveways. The Salcedo driveway was narrow and long, epic shots flung from the sidewalk, a low brick wall along the right sideline that tore up your knees if you weren’t careful. All sports at the Salcedos were typically rough. One brother would pound you like Charles Barkley until he scored, and another was nicknamed “Chueck,” a version of “chueco,” as “crooked” was the best way to describe his unorthodox moves driving the ball toward the basket. Their neighbor was quick and agile. I recall that he also played tennis. At this point, Bobby was old enough to get in the mix if he didn’t feel like sitting out with his younger brother. Bobby wasn’t particularly good, but he always seemed to have fun talking smack as we played. This was how a number of my summers passed. Eventually we all got older, and our paths diverged as the brothers found a passion for hockey and I traded out Oingo Boingo for the darker thrill of punk rock. Soon we graduated from different high schools. Then we went to college and our paths diverged some more.

But I never lost sight of Bobby or his family. His sister became a teacher at the elementary school where my mother was a clerk, and around this time I recall hearing that Bobby had started working as a cashier at the dairy on Durfee Avenue. I remember hearing from one of the brothers that he had been held up at night, but that he needed to continue working to put himself through school. Each Fourth of July my sister and I bought our fireworks from the stand where Bobby would be volunteering, following him from the 7-Eleven parking lot on one end of Durfee when he began teaching at South El Monte High School to the Big D’s parking lot at the other end of Durfee when he became Assistant Principal of Instruction at Mountain View High School. This past spring Bobby invited me to speak to an assembly of his students at Mountain View about my writing, which is set in the El Monte of our adolescence. I was happy to do so, honored really, for I knew that we were of a similar spirit when it came to our hometown. In fact, Bobby’s love for our city and the pride he had in its community were only surpassed by the optimism that he had for its young people.

Call me biased, but as I write about Bobby I find myself reluctant to call him “promising” as some news reports have. To call him “promising” suggests that he had yet to accomplish much, if anything, when in reality Bobby had long ago dedicated his life to the service of others. His record of toy drives and international fundraising and other seemingly endless charity work dating back nearly two decades is both inspiring and humbling. And the commitment to education — history teacher, assistant principal, elected school board member — is undeniable. At the outset of his thirties he was overseeing his former teachers and administering structural changes to improve the classroom experience for the students in their charge. Police helicopters don’t fly in a salutary formation for people who are only promising. Thousands of people don’t sit in vigil in a chilly football stadium for someone who is only promising. Bobby was tremendously accomplished and, more importantly, he used his accomplishments to make a difference in the lives of the people around him. It seems to me that he somehow fit a lifetime of achievement into the short span of time that he was here.

Despite the manner of Bobby’s death, I also refuse to associate him with the drug traffickers rampant in the region of Mexico where he was killed. In my opinion, Bobby and the Salcedo family represent the absolute best of El Monte. They also represent the best of the immigrant American experience. It is truly remarkable for any family to go, in the span of one generation, from parents with grade-school educations to all five children earning college degrees, some continuing on to master’s degrees. At the time of Bobby’s death, he was only a few courses away from a doctorate in educational leadership. When I visited him at Mountain View last May, his office was decorated with images of Cesar Chavez. His email signature quoted education reformer Horace Mann. Bobby struck me as someone possessed of a vision beyond the material. I continue to understand him as someone with the intelligence, work ethic, focus, and sheer will to achieve whatever goal he envisioned for himself.

While so many things made Bobby’s life spectacular, I am not forgetting those qualities about him that I see in so many other people. He loved the Dodgers, even in the leanest of years, and he loved the UCLA Bruins, even in the face of cross-town juggernaut USC. He was loving and supportive to his family, both here and in Mexico. He was a husband. A brother. A son. In these ways he was just like you or me, and his murder has left me with a profound sense of interconnectedness. The events of foreign drug wars and gangland executions no longer seem isolated to passing news clips. They are not fleeting glimpses at another world. I cannot shake the impression that Bobby’s death could have happened to anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I am steadfast in my belief that such violence is unacceptable. I will be writing my elected officials, informing them about Bobby and demanding that they do all in their power to bring closure to his family, and to the community grieving his loss. If you recognize yourself or your loved ones in the story of Bobby’s life, I encourage you to tell others about him as well.

—El Monte, California, January 5th, 2009

*

The town of Fairview

Everybody knows the intersection of Harbor and Adams in Costa Mesa, right?

According to an article in yesterday’s Daily Pilot (Railroad tracks, $12,000 hotel and proximity to Newport Beach helped town enjoy brief success), it was the location of one of OC’s late-19th Century boom towns—Fairview.

There were lots of boom (and bust) towns during the local boom era (1863-1888), all over the county.

The period between 1873-1896 is known as the “Long Depression” (companies born during downturns)—it was called the “Great Depression” at the time—and it comprised the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893.

I’m having a Panic right now just thinking about it.

OC (which broke away from LA County when Fairview was founded) had been ranching land,  but a series of natural disasters—especially a drought—changed all that, starting in the 1860s.

Fairview was, more specifically, a railroad boom town:

A group of businessmen known as the Fairview Development Co. purchased 3,000 acres of land between Santa Ana and Newport Bay in November 1887, with the intention of laying out a 100-foot-wide road and motor railway line that would end at the Pacific Ocean.



“Surveyors are now laying out the town of Fairview, through the center of which will run the 100-foot avenue and motor road,” the Los Angeles Times reported Nov. 2, 1887.

“The site for this new town is one of the most beautiful in California, being situated on a gently sloping mesa, giving a delightful view of the entire valley.”


According to one LA reporter at the time,

“Here on this level mesa, 80 acres have been laid out in a town site, with adjacent acreage in 5, 10 and 10-acre lots around it,” the correspondent wrote. “Carpenters were busy erecting the pioneer building of the town, the [Fairview Development Co.’s] office. It was designed to place the town lots on the market on the 14th instant, but so great was the local demand that all the business lots have been sold, and a large portion of the residence lots and acreage.”

Two railroads were in a fare war, and so travel was cheap. Fairview did quite well, according to reports:

“The town was laid out about the time the boom subsided, and has been steadily pushing forward, notwithstanding the general depression experienced through the country,” The Times reported in the January 1892 article. “It has a good hotel, which cost $12,000, a number of fine store buildings and numerous neat cottages and handsome residences which would do credit to a town of much larger size.”


It soon went into decline, and, by 1907, it was a ghost town. But a nearby town—Harper—located at 17th and Newport did better.

It changed its name to “Costa Mesa” in 1920.

Forgotten gems of districtular absurdity and infernal high jinks, aka "I read it in the paper!"

Well, dear reader, I’ve been working on an enormous document entitled, "Newspaper headlines tell the story."

I’m not finished with it—whole chapters remain unrepresented—but I think you’ll find that this super-duper chronological collection of headlines (and blurbs) paints quite a picture already.

Here’s a RANDOM SAMPLE of what you’ll find:


• College District Won’t Allow Offensive Views at Meetings
LA Times, February 13, 1998
Education: New measures, including more security, come after anti-Semitic comments.

Under criticism from Jewish organizations, the South Orange County Community College District is taking steps to curb offensive and derogatory remarks by speakers at public meetings. … “Some people have said some hurtful things, and it’s gotten kind of ugly,” said board President John S. Williams.

“If people are going to start making comments like ‘The Holocaust didn’t occur,’ I’m going to stop them. I’m certainly not trying to restrict free speech, but certainly people have to understand that there is decorum.”….


• “Newspaper vicious toward college board”
letter, Irvine World News, August 28, 1997 (Ray Chandos)

Why does the Irvine World News, which serves a large area, concentrate its vicious attacks on South Orange County Community College district trustees and the interim president Raghu Mathur at Irvine Valley College, ignoring other news, governing bodies and institutions?...

• “Why don't we raise hell about Steven Frogue?”
OC Jewish Heritage, August 29, 1997

My professor friend doesn't know what is wrong with the Orange County Jewish community: "Why don't you raise hell about Frogue and his gang?" he asks me, his tired voice weighed by years of accumulated frustration.

He has a point.

Why don't we do anything about Steven Frogue? Picket board meetings? Launch a recall election?

Good question….


• “Irvine Valley Spokeswoman quits”
OC Register, September 25, 1998

On the job a month, she says she was pressured to present a false view of the college….


• College District Opts for New Chancellor
LA Times, January 31, 2001

…[Chancellor] Sampson, who has been on sick leave for almost two months with anemia, said the move Monday night surprised him.

"I have to take some time to absorb this and find out from the board what the reasons for the action are," he said….

[Note: 21 months later, Sampson died of complications of leukemia.]


• “College district tosses aside procedure manual in choosing new Irvine Valley College president”
Irvine World News, August 14, 1997

Chancellor Robert A. Lombardi said Tuesday he has decided that community college trustees should choose the new president for Irvine Valley College directly from the pool of 20 to 30 candidates rather than letting a representative search committee eliminate candidates first.

He said he made the decision not to use the established hiring procedure after communicating with members of the board of trustees.

He said the South Orange County Community College District trustees will choose the new president based on their own interviews and the written comments on each candidate from each member of the 12-member search committee.
…
Under the established method of hiring administrators, a search committee of representatives from all segments of the college reviews applications for basic qualifications, interviews qualified applicants and ranks them in order of who they think is the best person for the job. The top three to five then go to the chancellor who makes a recommendation to the board for their approval. This hiring procedure was adopted by the board in 1988 and is similar to hiring procedures at other community colleges.
…
Lombardi acknowledged Tuesday afternoon that this [new] method is not the one specified in the district's Employment Procedures Manual. "It wouldn't be my choice, if another model would get the support of the board majority," he commented.

He stressed that he is trying to "be realistic" with this board and chose this method of selecting a president so that someone will be chosen to fill the position.
…
When asked if this is a way to make sure that Interim President Raghu Mathur is included as a finalist for the permanent position, Lombardi replied: "let's put it this way—this is to make sure he is not eliminated unfairly. That's what the board would say."….


• “Saddleback College cans newspaper adviser”
Saddleback College Lariat(?), June 5, 1997

Kathleen Dorantes received word May 20, without warning that she would no longer be the adviser to the Saddleback Valley College newspaper, The Lariat.
…
Some sources at the Mission Viejo college, governed by the same board as Irvine Valley College, say the move was politically motivated. The student paper has been critical of the majority of the college district's board of trustees since the election in the fall.

The faculty member appointed to take Dorantes' place as adviser, Lee Walker, is an outspoken supporter of the board majority. … Walker could not be reached for comment.
…
When asked about reasons for the change or reasons that the college president, rather than an immediate supervisor, would make a decision about a faculty teaching assignment, Doffoney said, "I think this conversation has gone about as far as it can," and indicated he did not want to comment further.


• “Fortune named in flier flap"
Saddleback College Lariat, April 24, 1997

Librarian steps forward to identify trustee who tore down club's fliers

The unnamed trustee who was publicly accused of tearing down fliers posted by a student club is Dorothy Fortune, according to librarian Ana Maria Cobos. Rick Travis, president of Associated Student Government, made the accusation during the March 31 meeting of the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees. He did not name the trustee, however….
…
According to Jaime Placek, an ASG senator and member of Student Alliance for Awareness, there has been an ongoing problem with the club's posters being removed.
…
Some of [the fliers or posters] promote attendance at the April 28 board meeting. Others target certain trustees, with statements such as: "Hey Fortune, Frogue and Williams: Do you represent the students or the Faculty Association?"

Another flier reads: "Board members or any of your associates: Stop tearing down our fliers, we refuse to go away or keep quiet!....


• College Proposes Soaring Venture
LA Times, June 15, 2002

Building: Irvine Valley seeks investors in office, theater plan thought to be unprecedented in state.

Irvine Valley College officials are quietly trying to find investors for a private hotel, entertainment and office complex on campus that could cost as much as $800 million, officials confirmed this week.

As described in recent meetings among campus officials, the project would include a hotel, a multistory parking structure, two 2,000-seat theaters, office buildings, a sound stage and a lake, replacing orange groves and an athletic field at the southern end of campus.
…
The cost would be enough to build two community colleges, said Kirsten McIntyre, spokeswoman for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, which was unaware of the proposal.
…
The plan is being developed by Howard Gensler, Irvine Valley's dean of humanities and library sciences, who declined to comment. Raghu P. Mather, chancellor of the South Orange County Community College District, said he had discussed the idea with the president of the board of trustees, but would offer no details about the project or how much revenue it would generate for the campus….

[Once we tipped off the press about the existence of this absurd project, the entire thing just collapsed. Its planning had involved the participation of Raghu Mathur and some trustees.]


• Vast Arts Complex at College Ruled Out
LA Times, June 25, 2002

… The proposal … called for construction on 25 to 35 acres of what are now orange groves and athletic fields at Jeffrey Road and Barranca Parkway. It would include a 2,000-seat theater; a 2,000-seat concert hall; a seven-story art gallery/planetarium; a four-story, 2,000-car garage; a seven-story hotel; a seven-story building of offices, shops and restaurants; a 13-acre movie production complex; a 5,000-seat baseball stadium; a 10,000-seat soccer and track stadium; a lake and botanical gardens.

The ambitious project would make the campus "one of the most important cultural centers in Southern California," Howard Gensler, IVC's dean of humanities and library sciences, wrote in a May 23 report to the college district chancellor, Raghu Mathur.

Faculty members said the project didn't appear to benefit instruction in any way.

What they really needed was a much smaller theater appropriate for college productions, they said. The college has plans for a 400-seat performing arts center, to be completed in 2006.

The complex was to be built by the Newport Financial Group of Newport Beach. One company figure is Charles Ross, 91, of Laguna Woods, who proposed a similar project at UC Riverside, without success, [trustee Dorothy] Fortune said….

[Gensler was another Mathur hire. A cursory examination of his employment history might suggest to more discerning individuals that Gensler was a flat stupid hire.]


• College District Ends Suit by Hiring Former Trustee: Teddi J. Lorch is given the South County job she sought before filing an age-discrimination case in 1999,
LA Times, March 09, 2001

The district's trustees discussed the matter in closed session Tuesday and agreed to the settlement by a 4-3 vote, with David B. Lang, Marcia Milchiker and Donald P. Wagner voting against it.

The district's news release announcing Lorch's appointment to the $72,171-a-year position, effective Monday, did not mention that it was part of a deal to settle the complaint she filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Lorch, 53, filed the complaint in 1999, saying she was denied the position of human resources director and other district jobs because of her age. Lorch was one of three finalists for the human resources job.

[When Lorch resigned from the board, we reported that, according to many, she had done so in hopes of securing the district’s chief HR job.]

Happy Birthday Elvis!

I'll see your Young Elvis and raise you one Younger Still Elvis! —BvT

Google book digitization debated

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Is Google Good for History?

At a discussion of "Is Google Good for History?" here Thursday, there weren't really any firm "No" answers. Even the harshest critic here of Google's historic book digitization project confessed to using it for his research and making valuable finds with the tool.
…
Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media, at George Mason University, kicked off the discussion with a strong defense of Google's book digitization efforts.

"Is Google good for history? Of course it is," he said. "We historians are searchers and sifters of evidence. Google is probably the most powerful tool in human history for doing just that. It has constructed a deceptively simple way to scan billions of documents instantaneously, and it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of its own money to allow us to read millions of books in our pajamas. Good? How about great?"….

Letter with white powder burns woman (OC Register)

Surging Enrollments Put Community Colleges in a Good Credit Position (Chronicle of Higher Ed)

Governator squawkage, full of sound and fury, signifying anything?

Potential Boon for California Higher Ed (Inside Higher Ed)

…In a State of the State speech that elevated education, and higher education in particular, above some competing state priorities, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed amending the state's Constitution to ensure that the state's two major public university systems receive no less than 10 percent of the state's operating funds each year. The additional funds would come by cutting spiraling state spending on prisons, the governor said.
…
The plan faces enormous hurdles, though, in that it would require at least two-thirds of state voters to back a ballot measure and because Schwarzenegger proposes deriving the funds by privatizing the state's prison system, an idea that California's powerful union of prison guards, among others, will vigorously oppose. And the governor is a lame duck, so hardly at the peak of his political powers.
…
"Wisdom and common sense remind us that tipping the scales back in favor of fully funding education means that fewer Californians will land in a prison cell and we will reduce costs associated with larger prison populations,” said Jack Scott, chancellor of the California Community Colleges. In an interview, Scott said that while the governor's proposal would not promise any increase directly for community colleges, he hoped that as the initiative took shape, some of the additional funds for Cal State and UC might be set aside to ensure additional enrollment slots at those institutions for students transferring from two-year institutions.

"That would certainly be fair, and would certainly increase community college support for the proposal. I would expect a receptive ear from both of those leaders," he said of [Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California] and [Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the Cal State system]….

Yesterday, in a letter to his Chief Executive Officers, Scott wrote:

I was very encouraged that in his speech the Governor pledged to make no further cuts to education in his proposed 2010-11 budget. I will report on the latest details of this proposed budget for the community colleges once he releases it on Friday. Of course, the Governor’s budget is only the first round in a protracted budget process, but certainly, his proposed budget is important as a starting point.

In addition, the Governor showed great leadership by making it very clear that California is headed in the wrong direction in spending more money on prisons than on higher education. He is therefore proposing an initiative that would, over a three-year period, reduce prison spending to 7% of state general fund expenditures and increase higher education funding to at least 10% of state general fund expenditures. Much of the impact of this initiative would help the California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC). But I have begun conversations to make sure that the initiative would guarantee that a significant portion of that additional funding would be used to increase slots for community college transfers to CSU and UC.