Take Action! View the video and e-mail the governor

United University Professions is using the latest technology to launch a cybercampaign to ensure SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital in Syracuse remains a public entity.

Borrowing a page from the playbook of online video portal YouTube, a runaway Internet success, UUP has launched its own online video hoping to convince the governor that merging UMU with the private Crouse Hospital is bad policy. That recommendation was made at the end of last year by the Berger Commission, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer has indicated he supports the idea.

UUP, led by William Scheuerman, represents State University of New York faculty and other professional staff.

UUP has launched www.saveupstate.com, a Web site that offers a digital video featuring UMU staff and patients whose lives were saved by critical UMU services. If UMU is merged with Crouse and removed from SUNY, UMU could cease to function as a public entity, which would jeopardize health care for the indigent and services such as UMU's burn unit.

As a SUNY institution, UMU also is a teaching hospital and helps instruct physicians on the latest medical techniques. One patient in the video discusses how his life was saved by a UMU surgeon using a new technique that many doctors at non-teaching hospitals would not have known.

UUP is launching an e-mail campaign to draw visitors to www.saveupstate.com. E-mails will be sent to UUP members and general NYSUT members, who, in turn, will be encouraged to invite their friends and family to visit the site and join the fight to save UMU.

Visitors to the site can watch the digital video and send an e-mail to Gov. Spitzer encouraging him to keep UMU part of SUNY.

Take Action! View the video and e-mail the governor