There is nothing like a good protest to start off the new semester. The California Faculty Association is protesting on campus about the lack of pay increases for CSU faculty.

The faculty has been out of contract for about 20 months and their salaries are 18 percent below comparable institutions, said Cecil Canton, CFA chapter president. To compound the problem, I was surprised to find out that numerous CSU executive employees, such as former vice chancellors and presidents, receive six-figure “transition” salaries and early retirement benefits.

In layman’s terms, executive employees get paid for unused vacation time, “special projects” and research for the CSU chancellor. These people remain on the CSU payroll while not actually working for any campus and with no obligation to return to their posts. They can take advantage of early retirement benefits by leaving their school, receive transition pay for doing nothing and then take an executive position at another campus for a six-figure salary.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tomas A. Arciniega, a former CSU Bakersfield president (1983-2004), is being paid $540,744 for a three-year period to do a “special” project for the chancellor with no results from the project required.

These people are nothing more than prostitutes in a business suit (prostisuits). They roam from campus to campus sucking up money, but they won’t even get you off. They take the money and run.

The CSU system has become a top-heavy corporation headed by useless zombies only concerned with lining their own pockets.

Recently, former Chairman and Chief Executive of Home Depot Robert Nardelli received $210 million in severance pay. The “distrustees” are taking a page out of corporate America’s “Get Rich or Die Lying” book.

What the hell do these CSU executives do? How do they make us better students? How do they contribute to the learning environment? How can they justify their salaries?

Our classes are being cancelled, quality professors are leaving and quality professors don’t want to come to Sac State. But President Alexander Gonzalez spends $268,000 to remodel his office according to the CSU website.

This week, the CSU “distrustees” are expected to provide their top 27 executives a 4 percent pay increase, retroactive to July 2006. These same executives received a 19 percent pay hike just four months ago. Gonzalez hires managerial positions (including his own son) at six figures to oversee the paper-folding department and the office of shoe looking-at. WHY!!??

How about “severance pay” for the 6,000 students who graduate from Sac State each year and enter a bleak job market? Why not give them a few thousand dollars to buy ketchup and mustard packets, stamp collections or 1,000 copies of Paris Hilton’s record? Anything has to be better than paying executives to get paid.

The CSU trustees, administrators, executives and presidents have a raging case of the gimme gimmes. We just want a quality education, not bureaucracy, not cancelled classes and not irate professors! End this corporate greed!

Scott Allen can be reached at [email protected]