We sent a data request letter on September 26 to President Harrison and Provost Li asking for data of how Section F requirement harms students. We asked because the Provost had offered to help us with data. The Provost replied to our data request by asking that Gina to work with EPC and EEC to obtain the data herself. Gina responded that we wanted evidence of harm that would justify this sweeping change in CSUN curriculum. On October 10, 2017, the provost responded with this email: From: Li, Yi Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 7:50 PM To: Masequesmay, Gina Cc: Gutierrez, Gabriel; Mendoza, Breny; White, Theresa R; Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Susan R; Carranza, Douglas G; Burkhart, Brian; Sorrells, Kathryn; Lopez-Garza, Marta C; Swenson, Adam R; Say, Elizabeth A; Malhotra, Sheena; Andrews, Scott D; Carrillo Rowe, Aimee M; Fleischer, Flavia S; Garrow, William G; Rivera Furumoto, Rosa L; Thomas, Nate; Montano, Theresa; Harrison, Dianne F; Adams, Elizabeth T; Li, Yi Subject: Re: Data Request   Thanks, Gina for reaching out to me, and THANK you for your raising concerns for the successes of our students. We are working on getting the data for guiding us in the implementation and in supporting our faculty. Currently, through the work of Student success team, my office has just published a FAQ on EO1100, and as promised here is the link https://www.csun.edu/eo1100/ and a message sent out today below.  IR team is also working on more data mining and we will share more as they are ready. Meanwhile, CSUN Counts website has a full array of dashboards from student retention data to student characteristic data for faculty and chairs to use, and our data team is ready to provide hands on seminar/workshop as well. Let me know if there is a large group for a workshop. I hope this helps, Yi ______________________ Needless to say, his statement of 5000 students needing to take extra units obfuscates the truth of how many students are actually negatively impacted by Section F. Transfer students who are not GE certified will have to take extra units. We also don't know if transfer students in high units major are taking 3 extra units in upper division because of Section F requirement or because of their major requirement or personal choice. The provost has yet to answer how many students GE Section F negatively affects. Based on our investigation with advisors, to their knowledge, no transfer students have been negatively impacted by Section F because we have always provided waivers. In short, it seems that our administration has confounded the problem of students' low graduation rate by blaming Section F. Students take longer to graduate mainly because many are working to pay for the ever-increasing tuition. Some students are in high units major like Engineering that will go over 120 units requirement for CSUN graduation and may take longer to graduate. Some students are in bottleneck courses and are just waiting around to take their required courses. Some students want to double major or minor and would go over 120 units, a situation that CSUN has discouraged because students want to stay an extra semester to finish a minor or double major requirement. Perhaps some have higher upper division GE requirement because they change major. It could be that upper division Section F is their major requirement (e.g., AAS major requirement has many courses that are also upper division GE). If the Chancellor's Office and CSUN administration actually care about graduation, they should fight for affordable tuition for students. Our administration should also fight against the requirement for students to take 3 units of upper division science GE because CSUN currently only has about 5 upper division Science GE courses. This will definitely slow down graduation rate that again supports how this executive order is not grounded in students’ reality and not considerate of faculty’s input. Lastly, it ignores the importance and relevance of interdisciplinarity that Section F offers over the more traditional disciplines. It goes against CSUN’s commitment to diversity when ethnic studies departments, gender & women’s studies department, and queer studies program are endangered, the same departments and programs that have empowered students who have been historically marginalized and have exposed all students with an intersectional sensibility to issues of oppression, domination and identity. Perhaps our administrators should take courses in Section F to better serve our diverse communities.