Strife, Budget Cuts Reshaping SDSU

The faculty and president of California State University’s oldest and most prestigious campus are struggling with two troubling questions that threaten the school’s very identity:

How can they slice $10 million and still preserve San Diego State’s unique status as a CSU campus with an extensive graduate and research program?

And can they, while figuring out the answer, also rebuild a working if not cordial relationship between president and professors that seemed irreparably torn a few weeks ago?

Spectators watched in confusion last summer as San Diego State University convulsed in faculty revolt over President Thomas Day’s proposed cuts.

Professors staged massive protests, held bitter and biting faculty meetings, and voted in August to make the unprecedented demand that the CSU board fire Day.

The other 19 CSU campuses faced the same painful budget hardships with a relative minimum of fuss.

What had happened at the state’s flagship CSU campus?

In late May, Day issued a sweeping plan detailing the harshest cuts among all campuses. Nine academic departments would have to go completely, he said--including anthropology, Russian and German, religious studies, health sciences--along with nearly 150 tenured and tenure-track faculty.

The Draconian edict has since been withdrawn, after a cooling-off compromise arranged by CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz.

Day is putting out the word that he is willing to consider alternatives to his original plans, which he now says were issued with frightening speed because of time constraints that later proved unnecessary.

“I would be the first person to be delighted if we don’t have to lay off any tenured or tenure-track faculty,” Day said this month. “I hope the faculty and the colleges can now address that.”

But that wasn’t Day’s tone in late spring, when the president left no room for compromise on his $10-million jolt, even as rumblings of dissent among 1,200 professors quickly grew into a roar of anger--especially over Day’s major swipe at tenure, long considered sacrosanct to academic life. He was the only CSU president to propose major cuts in tenured staff.

Few if any professors fault his goal of preserving SDSU as the system’s flagship campus. They agree that the San Diego campus holds unique status somewhere between a typical CSU college that focuses on teaching, and a University of California-style institution with extensive graduate programs tied to faculty research.

Rather, the faculty attacks what they say is Day’s high-handed style and reluctance to take advice with good grace--advice that they insist could show how to make necessary savings without eviscerating graduate programs or tenured careers.

“Tom screwed it up,” said Ernst Griffin, an SDSU geography professor for 20 years.

Griffin spoke against the call for Day’s firing at the Aug. 27 faculty meeting, saying that “Day may be an S.O.B., but at least he’s our S.O.B.”

“He has a straightforward logic,” Griffin said recently, “which is to lay out the maximum amount of pain, let everyone know who is in harm’s way, and then go back and remediate, if possible.

“Most people work from the opposite direction, by first figuring out the maximum range of pain and also how much remediation can be done, and then telling people what may then happen.”

The fray reached such a pitch that last month CSU Chancellor Munitz stepped in with emergency money to calm the academic waters by ordering all termination notices withdrawn for the academic year. In the meantime, he said, Day and his faculty should go back to the drawing board together and deliver a consensus plan.

In the process, both sides agree to keep the elements that made SDSU unusual among its sister schools: more stringent tenure requirements, nine joint doctoral programs, and $60 million in non-state research grants awarded to professors--almost as much money as professors garner at other CSU campuses combined.

Munitz said that the question is whether the magnitude of looming cuts now require the SDSU faculty to choose between tenured layoffs, or research and graduate programs.

Day has argued that without going narrow and deep to eliminate a few departments, a large number of graduate program dollars will have to go, along with some of the youngest and brightest campus scholars.

“We can’t keep everything; we must not again cut and disable colleges almost randomly” as had been done the year before, Day told the faculty when it met to demand his resignation. “We must protect as much as possible of that which is unique at SDSU . . . we must try to keep our reactions narrow so that most people do not feel directly threatened.”

But Day now says he is not wedded “to the particular nine departments” that he earlier identified for elimination “or even to three or four if we can do something else but still protect what is unique about San Diego State.”

In part, the greater willingness to compromise results from pressure by Munitz.

While trying to straddle both sides, Munitz has chided Day for the campus president’s lack of diplomatic skills. In his 14 years as SDSU president, Day has engendered a reputation for both intelligence and acerbity.

“There has to be a middle ground here,” Munitz said. “One thing that simply can’t continue is the tearing apart of San Diego State’s academic and social fabric . . you can’t have changes at an academic institution without the faculty having a feeling of participation.”

But at this point, the faculty’s faith in Day may be broken beyond repair, even if everyone finds less harmful ways to slash $10 million.

Individual college deans are already drawing up what are to them more palatable options to spend less.

The College of Arts and Letters has set up several committees to recommend ways to cut back as much as $2.6 million, using retirements, consolidations of academic programs and other methods to minimize tenured layoffs.

College of Sciences Dean Don Short, whose faculty have garnered almost $18 million in government and private research grants, said that he can “avoid having to get rid of professors or ending graduate support by doing several things in my budget.”

“There is a middle road which has not been well explored, both for my college and the university. I don’t think we will have to see these massive layoffs,” he said.

Short’s college was ordered to cut $2 million, including 37 tenure or tenured-track positions.

Short said that if Day had sat down with all seven colleges and solicited advice, he could have kept his original proposal for layoffs to about 40. With expectations that retirements and other personnel actions could reduce that number further, “Tom then could have gotten his plans through much, much easier.”

“The faculty understand that we have a tremendous graduate program which makes our undergraduate efforts stronger, and they do not want to see it hurt . . . but with all that has happened, a critical core of faculty has turned against Tom.”

The experience of Prof. Karen Senn illustrates the faculty distrust.

Senn has won almost $300,000 in non-state grants to support her graduate-level research in health sciences--a major example of SDSU scholarship--but in May she nevertheless was ticketed for dismissal and her health sciences department targeted for elimination.

Senn went to Day with a plan for reducing her department from 12 professors to 3.6 professors, severely crimping its offerings but still maintaining core undergraduate courses and some graduate work.

But Day asked where the money would come from to pay the remaining 3.6 positions, rather than agreeing to use Senn’s plan as a basis for discussions.

“It’s not very useful if I have proposed deep and narrow cuts (to eliminate) some departments and the (counter)-proposal is only to reduce by some percentage,” Day later said in recounting his reaction.

In Senn’s view, “It shows how isolated Day is. Because he’s never been a president who goes out and about among faculty and students, he doesn’t get appropriate feedback and ends up convinced there’s only one way to do things.”

Senn reflected the view of many faculty in saying that Day should consider additional cuts among his administrators and his athletics program, beyond the minor reductions made so far.

Munitz expressed surprise at the extent of SDSU faculty efforts to cut budgets yet maintain SDSU’s scholarship mission.

“It’s a critical discovery for me to learn that the faculty accept (SDSU’s) special model yet see ways to maintain it without having such a destructive mechanism,” he said.

And the chancellor called Senn’s departmental proposal “the type of faculty input that needs to be worked with . . . so that the campus can hammer out a compromise.”

At the September meeting of CSU trustees, Day’s 19 colleagues sat stolidly as Munitz talked about SDSU’s problems and the faculty vote asking for Day’s dismissal.

While reluctant to get involved in the issue, a few later said that Day’s strong personality undoubtedly is a factor.

“Tom’s not a compromiser, and compromise is often sought in these situations,” said Curtis McCray, president of CSU Long Beach, the second largest campus. McCray had originally planned for about 14 tenured layoffs this year but was able to cancel them.

“I’m certain that we might be into that situation again next year and already my provost is talking with faculty about how we can reach consensus around the next budget-cutting process,” McCray said.

The president of San Francisco State proposed no tenured layoffs “because tenure means not just freedom of inquiry, but also the chance for people to commit themselves fully to the institution.”

But Robert Corrigan said that each campus has the ability to do things differently.

“People like Tom have a very clear sense of their values and priorities, and the correctness of their position,” Corrigan said.