We, the Executive Committee of the Campus Faculty Association, representing faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, write to express strong support for our UPI colleagues at Eastern Illinois University in their quest for a contract that reflects the interests of faculty, staff, and students at Eastern. The budget priorities they propose reflect an investment in the people that will allow Eastern to fulfill its responsibilities to its own community and to the State of Illinois. There has been plenty of time to avoid this strike through good faith bargaining. Instead, it seems the university administration has chosen to threaten its own faculty in an effort to discourage them from engaging in their rights. We ask that you sit down with your faculty and devise a settlement that will serve the entire university community and the people of Charleston.