Class Struggle at CSUN : Education: State budget cuts have shortened the list of offerings. Frustrated students are admonished to be flexible.

Hard-luck stories about closed classes replaced the usual light back-to-school banter Monday as students enrolled for the fall semester found a Cal State Northridge slimmed down by the huge state budget deficit.

A typical exchange went like this:

“You get all of your classes?” a male student asked a female student as they passed in front of Oviatt Library.

“Are you kidding?” she replied sarcastically.

“What class didn’t you get?”

“497,” she said.

“Oh, I didn’t get into that one either.”

Campus officials said that although such situations were common--more than one-third of CSUN’s 30,000 students were bumped from at least one class they had sought--the 10% cut in this fall’s class offerings failed to produce the panic that many students had feared.

Indeed, said Eric Forbes, CSUN’s associate director of admissions and records, the average student carried the same number of classes this fall as a year ago.

“The idea of students not being able to find classes is overly exaggerated,” Forbes said. “There will be more room in classes next week for students who are persistent and have focused their search on the classes they need.”

As of Monday, however, students appeared frustrated and crabby.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder along classroom walls, sat on counters and floors, and lined up in hallways, straining to hear and hoping that other students would drop out. Afterward, they huddled around beleaguered professors and begged to be allowed into their classes.

In response, instructors in disciplines ranging from geography to political science lectured on a variant of the economic theory of supply and demand: No matter what the demand, the supply of chairs in a classroom won’t grow to exceed the limit set by the fire marshal.

“We just can’t . . . accept everyone who wants in,” Richard Ye, associate professor of accounting, told the 15 students crowding around his desk, adding their names to a waiting list for a class required of business majors. “The class seating is limited and the quality of teaching goes down when there are too many students.”

Although enrollment was supposed to be limited to 25, Ye said he would allow 10 more, giving preference to more advanced students and those with higher grades.

Among those clamoring to get into Ye’s class was Angela Zebekis, a senior. “It’s really up in the air,” she said of her chances. “It doesn’t look good.”

Guillermina Patino, a first-year student from East Los Angeles, spent Monday morning racing to get her name on waiting lists for three different freshman English classes. She probably won’t know whether she raced fast enough until next week.

“Right now I feel frustrated because I need the class and they don’t have it open,” she said.

Also hoping that her name would rise to the top of class waiting lists was Julie Stratton, a radio-television-film major who transferred to CSUN from San Diego State because of deep cuts planned at that campus. But at CSUN, she still failed to get several required classes.

“All I’ve heard for four hours in four classes is about the budget cuts,” Stratton said of the first-day lectures in classes she was trying to sign up for. “I came up here expecting something different. But there’s no opportunity at all to get in and there’s nobody willing to help you.”

Forbes disputed that claim. He said that academic counselors are available to help students understand their options and that many classes, listed in a thick computer printout on his desk, remain open.

“The more flexibility a student has, the greater the opportunity that will be present,” he said.