Monday, May 12, 2008

Rally Photos

Here are the long-promised rally photos. As you can see, we gathered quite a crowd, raised quite a bit of consciousness. Click on the images to view them in full size.

Two flickr streams of rally photos have already been uploaded. You can check them out here and here.

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-Mission Statement-

This group was established to communicate the impact of the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) budget cuts on the UC Berkeley community at large. Not only do these cuts threaten the academic opportunities of each student, they are poised to decimate both the Korean Studies Program and language classes for East Asian heritage students. We urge all UC Berkeley students--regardless of academic focus or ethnic heritage--to show solidarity in the face of these campus-wide budget cuts. We also urge all students to join the related group "Save Korean Studies at UC Berkeley".

The breakdown of the impact on EALC as of Fall 2008:

3200 students took Korean, Chinese and Japanese at UCB in the 2007 school year. In the 2008 school year, this number will be restricted to 1500. At least 1500 students will be denied the opportunity to study Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

During the next academic year, students outside of the school of Letters and Science will not be able to take Korean, Chinese or Japanese. Most of EALC’s language teaching is not for its own students but is a service to the university at large. Under these conditions, EALC can no longer provide this service to the university. Current EALC language students outside of L&S will be unable to proceed with their studies next year. If the cuts remain into the near future EALC will likely have to limit enrollment to EALC students. Students in departments like Economics, Political Science, and History will not be able to enroll. Students in those departments will not be able to take the necessary languages. Undergraduate students will not be able to fulfill requirements, and graduate students will no longer be able to complete MA/PhD work in a number of areas.

➢ Percentage of classes to be cut from each language in EALC
o Japanese 40%
o Chinese 54%
o Korean 66%
➢ Numbers of students to be cut from next year's classes
o Chinese: 550
o Japanese: 496
o Korean: 484

In view of this situation, we urge the following:
  • Increased transparency in the budget allocation process at every level of university administration.
  • Establishment of permanency in lecturer positions and the creation of language education chairs.
  • The disbursement of discretionary funds to EALC from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost to mitigate the current crisis.

We also encourage you to mention these demands in any protest letter you may direct to UCB administration.

Contact us at saveEALC@gmail.com.