Daily Cal articles on budget cuts; new English petition

There are two opinion pieces in recent issues of the Daily Cal that weigh in on the effect of the budget cuts to East Asian languages and to the English department, which is losing massive amounts of funding for graduate student instruction of courses. The articles are:

• "Budget Cuts: Importance of East Asian Languages in Increasingly Global Business Realm" by Victoria Cheng
• "Budget Cuts: Balancing Need to Offer Mandatory R&C Courses and Heed to Lowered Funding" by Kea Anderson
  

The situation for English appears really dire: authors of an online petition point out that due to cuts to the Temporary Academic Staffing budget still in place after the governor's newly revised budget, the English Department is planning to cut 17 Reading & Composition classes, denying undergraduates access to classes and making it impossible for many graduate student instructors to fund their education. Commenting on the parallels to the situation in EALC and across campus, the authors write, "These cuts threaten to undermine the quality of both teaching and research at UC Berkeley, and diminish the value of a Berkeley degree."

Please go to the petition and sign on--let's help each other out and push for change in the Berkeley administration's policy of relegating quality education to 'temporary' status!