Editor’s note: The DASB senate later renewed the $180,000 portion of the budget for classified staff after learning that the administration would not pick up the funds.

Dear Editor:

I was disheartened — actually, I was appalled — at the DASB Senate’s decision to defund classified staff (who provide a source of ongoing information and institutional memory for students who are sometimes here for only two years) and to take away the funds for Writing Center tutors.

To remove someone’s livelihood without thinking! To remove precious student jobs and to make it harder for hundreds of students to receive tutoring!

Are the DASB senators so privileged that they don’t know what it is to look for work, especially decent work, and not find it? Do they know how expensive private tutoring is? I can scarcely

imagine what would have more of an impact on De Anza than these tutoring jobs that require a mere $15,000. And what will they spend it on instead? Short-term perks for current DASB?

According to many experts, our future will include fewer and fewer jobs. My students have been reading Andrew Yang’s “Silicon Valley is Right…”  about the number of jobs that robots will remove. To willingly be a part of taking away people’s livelihood: that is not the De Anza spirit and principle that I recognize.

I hope the FHDA board will send the budget back and ask DASB to reconsider.

They could start by reading Andrew Yang’s eye-opening piece here: https://qz.com/895681/silicon-valley-is-right-our-jobs-are-already-disappearing-due-to-automation/

Lita Kurth,

English professor

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