I just signed the following petition addressed to: Dr. Machen.
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The plan put forward by UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to layoff office staff members provoked wide concern, disappointment, and anger among UF faculty, students, and alumni, as well as among other residents of Gainesville and the surrounding areas. The positions targeted for termination were mainly long-term, local workers earning in the neighborhood of $35,000/yr. Many have worked at UF for decades, with some only a few years from retirement.
The idea of trying to exact some small savings by targeting some of UF’s longest-serving, most vulnerable, and least well-compensated employees struck many in the community as both unethical and unwise. Such action would have a deleterious effect on the local economy and a disastrous effect on many individual lives. It is also contrary to the foundation of what makes the Gator Nation great.
Now, we are told that if staff aren’t fired, faculty will be. Whole departments will be eliminated, graduate assistants will find themselves unemployed, or term-contract teachers will have their appointments not renewed. Once again, we are dismayed. This tactic of pitting each against all is beneath the dignity of the University of Florida. It besmirches the reputation of the Gator Nation. And it will not work.
It will not work because we, the undersigned supporters, fans, friends, faculty, students, alumni, and concerned fellow citizens recognize that the heart and soul of this University is not in its facilities or its branding campaign, or even its cutting-edge technology; it’s in the people. It is in the meeting of minds between professor and student, the innovative solution suggested by a staff member, the brilliant new approach conceived by a researcher. The Gator Nation is great because its people are great, because we work together and support each other. And we can’t afford to lose a single one.
Please, as we work through this difficult economic time, try to pull us together instead of tearing us apart. Preserve the integrity and character of the University of Florida by taking actions that are responsible, not destructive and divisive.
No layoffs, no non-renewals, no GA cuts. Keep all the people that make UF great.
Go Gators!
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Sincerely,
