UCI Faculty’s Phones on the Line : Budget: Due to cutbacks, some are being told to either pay for their own or have it yanked out.

Forget the million-dollar medical machinery and the high-priced professorial talent. The latest victim of budget slashing at UC Irvine is as basic as the telephone.

Faculty in some hard-hit departments are being told: Pay for your own or it will be yanked. At least professors won’t have to compete with students for the nearest pay phone, though.

“Our intent right now is to keep the administrative phones, but we did talk about pulling them out so nobody could call us,” said Terry Parsons, dean of UCI’s School of Humanities. “Life would be easier. I mean that tongue in cheek, of course.”

Pay-as-you-go telephone service is just one measure the School of Humanities has proposed to balance an expected deficit of $500,000 in its operations budget of $3 million. But Parsons is leaving it to the 10 individual departments to decide how to balance about $90,000 of those cuts--with phone or without.

So far, history and German will require faculty to pay $27 a month to let their fingers do the walking. The department of French and Italian will not. No word yet from English, philosophy, classics and the rest of the school.

For those who can’t or won’t pay, “it will be a return to the 19th Century,” predicted Michael Johnson, chair of UCI’s history department. “It will not be good for all the obvious reasons: Students would have difficulty contacting (professors). People doing research will have a hard time. . . . Normal everyday business will be slower.”

Asking faculty to pay for their office phones is tough choice, but the magnitude of the budget problem is overwhelming, Parsons said.

“When we got our budget allocation, three of us sat in our office and laughed for 15 minutes. It’s the only way to keep sane,” he said.

As it is, Humanities will cut non-essential classes, increase class size, eliminate temporary lecturers and visiting professors, and trim office costs.

And if you’ve got to cut, phone service is not critical to teaching, some say.

“It will certainly be awkward and unpleasant,” Parsons said. “(But) you don’t need a phone when you’re in class or during office hours.”

This is not a first for UCI.

“Our phones were out during the ‘70s for more than a year,” said Johnson, who hopes to save the history department about $10,000 in telephone costs. “I was here then. Everything slows down. It’s harder to reach people, as you might imagine.”

No serious backlash has surfaced so far, but the idea is only about 1 1/2 weeks old, and is only just now filtering down to individual departments.

Most of the 25 permanent history professors will pay to keep their telephones. Said Johnson: “Everybody is concerned. . . . But given the other possibilities (for cuts), this a minor one.”

Not so for French and Italian Chairman Richard Regosin, Parsons said. “He is adamant. They aren’t going to do it.”

Johnson will keep his switchboard link. Except it’s going to cost him $53, instead of $27.

“My phone has buttons on it, buttons I never use,” he explained. “That’s one of the great prerogatives of the high office of department chair.”