They do chicken right

It was big news last April when 77 percent of the CSUS faculty cast a vote of “no confidence” in President Alexander Gonzalez. After all, how can he possibly lead effectively when so few want to follow?

But a recent petition circulated among CSUS students didn’t have such overwhelming response. While students may have just as much reason to lack confidence in Gonzalez’s leadership, they didn’t respond in the overwhelming numbers that accompanied the faculty’s no-confidence vote.

According to organizer James Banyai, a graduate student in history, 415 students signed the petition. There are roughly 28,000 students at CSUS.

Maybe the problem was that the petition circulated near the end of the year, when students are struggling to finish coursework, meet deadlines, take exams and pack to go home. Or perhaps CSUS students are so overwhelmed with working to pay for school and studying to stay in school that petitions are the last thing on the agenda.

Or maybe it’s that the first item on the list of grievances was “clandestinely removing the chickens from our campus over the first summer of his Presidency.”

Asked about the decision to highlight the chicken removal on the no-confidence petition, Banyai told SN&R that the grievances were listed in “chronological order, and getting rid of the chickens was the first thing President Gonzalez did.” He also pointed out that the removal of the chickens was a grievance that “struck a particular emotional chord with people. They’d say, ‘Yeah, I remember the chickens,’ and then they’d sign.”

Just remember: students, administrators and chickens come and go, but faculty—at least the tenured kind—are forever.