CMU relies on Union of Teaching Faculty (UTF) lecturers to fulfill its core educational mission to our students, yet proposes unnecessary budget cuts and College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) department mergers that will eliminate teaching staff and drastically cut humanities programs. This move will harm UTF jobs,  students’ academic goals, and the university’s mission to promote inclusion and diversity—so much of which is rooted in CLASS programs.

We stand united to protect students and jobs against the threat of needless budget cuts. CMU has the money, and the labor of UTF lecturers during COVID has kept the university strong. We reject any effort to balance the budget on the backs of low-paid UTF lecturers, whose salaries have declined 13% since 2015, while administration’s salaries have increased 20% in the same period.

We demand that administration:

Make budget prioritizations which retain UTF faculty
Where department mergers are called for, merge without cutting jobs