Commentary : The real issue is one of power. Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds has had ongoing intramural scrimmages with SDSU President Thomas Day since she was appointed. : North County Campus Can’t Cut Cord to SDSU Yet

A furor has erupted over the issue of governance of the North County campus of San Diego State University, which at some future date will become CSU San Marcos, the 20th campus in the California State University system, and the first public institution of higher learning built in California in about 25 years.

The chancellor, W. Ann Reynolds, and four of five trustees serving on the CSU board’s recently appointed Ad Hoc Committee on Governance, support the separation of the North County campus from San Diego State University as soon as possible and recommend the appointment of a new president before the fall of 1989.

To support her position, the chancellor has maintained that the Legislature and the governor will not fund San Diego State University-North County unless it is made an independent institution. This is patently untrue, as state funding has been approved continuously for the campus since its establishment in 1979. In fact, 304 acres were purchased last year for a permanent site of SDSU-NC, in San Marcos, at a cost of $10.4 million, which proves the commitment of statewide elected officials to the new campus.

The real issue is one of power. Chancellor Reynolds has had ongoing intramural scrimmages with SDSU President Thomas Day since she was appointed. She views Day as too independent and powerful, and a president she cannot control because of Day’s persona and the nationally recognized reputation of the institution he leads.

Reynolds does not want SDSU to play a major part in the development of the new campus because she does not want to give Day any more power than he already has. This is evident in her current drive to separate the North County campus from SDSU, a power play that has no credence in terms of sound educational or fiscal policy. In fact, the chancellor’s plan would cost the state an additional $2.3 million a year.

Longtime supporters of a CSU campus in North County have cried foul. Up until just a few months ago, the community leaders and legislators were told by the chancellor’s office that SDSU-NC’s current status as a permanent off-campus center, offering upper division and graduate courses in limited degree programs only, would remain in place until some later date when expansion was deemed necessary and lower division courses were added in 1995. Only at that point would SDSU-NC become independent. It is not independence but the timing of independence that is at issue.

Legislators, community leaders, students and faculty in North County vigorously oppose early independence from SDSU, stating that substantive issues surrounding the orderly development of a new campus must be addressed before independence is granted. Faculty recruitment, program development and accreditation are prime examples of concern.

Supporters of the North County campus are very concerned about the projected nationwide shortage of doctoral and post-doctoral candidates to fill the faculty positions. They contend, and rightfully so, that the new campus would be better served if it had the opportunity to recruit faculty under the auspices of SDSU, whose national reputation of excellence and highly accredited programs would draw the best possible candidates. This position has a great deal of credibility given the fact that CSU expects to lose 11,000 full-time faculty members over the next 10 years, and the University of California will share a similar fate, losing 7,000 faculty members because of retirements.

The chancellor maintains that qualified teaching staff would be attracted to the North County campus because they would be given an opportunity to build a new public institution. That argument does not stand up to close scrutiny.

Faculty outside the CSU system were queried on the issue. No interest was shown in joining a campus that had no lower division general education courses, no core faculty, no reputation, no accreditation, no core library or auxiliary educational resources and no foundation on which to build a strong, nationally recognized university. It is clear that severing the campus would cripple current efforts to develop an institution of quality, like SDSU.

If the chancellor has her way, SDSU-NC would become similar to some of the smaller campuses in the CSU system that have tried valiantly to succeed but have struggled in their independence and are constantly pointed to as examples of an administrative model gone awry. To break SDSU-NC off prematurely is to condemn this new university to a similar fate.

Perhaps the greatest affront of all has been the attempt of the chancellor and her staff to make these critical decisions behind the carved doors of the CSU headquarters without the benefit of input of community leaders or the students who have made several attempts to be heard. The once-hallowed halls of academia are no longer sacrosanct, as external forces have become the life blood of the universities. State funds only account for 40% of the budget at San Diego State University and the difference is supplied by research grants, donations from foundations and community support. SDSU-NC’s strong community support must be nurtured, not ignored.

It’s been 25 years since a public university was built in California. What worked in the 1960s isn’t necessarily relevant today. Universities don’t just stand alone but are an integral part of the community they serve. Certainly building a university today, with no current history, is a monumental task, the success of which depends not only on the educational community but on the very community which is to be served as well.

To blatantly ignore the community’s wishes is to invite disaster. We urge the CSU Board of Trustees to carefully consider the issues surrounding the governance of SDSU-NC and reject the chancellor’s demand for early independence. SDSU-NC should serve its incubation period under the administration of SDSU until its core faculty, programs and library are in place and lower division courses are introduced in 1995.