School Daze : Budget: CSULB has $15 million less to spend. Students now see the effects of state-imposed austerity.

Claire Diaz, a political science major at Cal State Long Beach, discovered Tuesday that she will probably have to postpone her graduation date--and her wedding plans--for up to a year.

Craig Stuart, who is majoring in Spanish, found himself sitting in a microbiology class so crammed with students that he couldn’t hear the instructor’s lecture.

And Jason Valen, a design major, said he will most likely drop out of CSULB altogether this semester to take his chances at Long Beach City College. “I just couldn’t get the classes I need,” explained Valen, 25.

The problems faced by all three students--and thousands of others who reported for the first day of fall classes Tuesday--are the result of a $15-million cut in the university’s budget that has eliminated 10% of the semester’s course offerings--about 331 classes--by laying off the instructors who teach them. Although the cuts had been announced earlier, most Cal State Long Beach students came face-to-face with them for the first time this week as they scrambled to get into classes that were rapidly filling.

“I feel horrible about this,” said Diaz, 21, explaining that her commencement--and subsequent wedding plans--could be delayed for as long as a year by her failure to get into three required courses that she will have to make up before she can graduate. “This is a mess, and I think it’s unfair.”

Said Stuart of the overcrowded conditions in his microbiology class: “I’ll just have to sit in the front so I can hear. It’s going to make it tougher.”

Indeed, such stories were typical among the estimated 31,000 students returning to classes on Tuesday. While most had preregistered using the university’s sophisticated phone-in system, many said they either had been unable to get the classes they wanted in advance or had arrived on campus only to find that last-minute cuts had eliminated some of the classes in which they thought they were enrolled.

Students are allowed to enroll in courses after the semester begins, but only with the permission of the instructor. As a result, Tuesday was marked by long lines at the administration building, students who spent hours rushing between professors’ offices, and classes attended by standing-room-only crowds hoping to enroll.

Some of the scene was observed by university President Curtis L. McCray, who gamely spent part of the morning manning a student government-sponsored information table designed to help students cope.

“I want to get into a soccer class that I’m already late for,” explained Melissa Wilson, a freshman. “Should I go on in or wait until tomorrow?”

McCray’s answer: “I would go in anyway. Get your name in early.”

Wilson said she was pleased to see the university president getting so involved in campus life, but other students took a more skeptical view of the gesture.

“It’s just for image,” asserted Traci Fitzpatrick, a 30-year-old anthropology major. “There’s nothing you could actually take up with him here.”

McCray himself reacted with surprise at what he characterized as the students’ relative calmness in the face of what he has previously described as an educational disaster. “I thought there would be a greater sense of anxiety and concern,” he said.

McCray announced the unprecedented cuts in the university’s $155-million budget earlier this year after the chancellor’s office ordered them in anticipation of a $14.3-billion deficit in the state’s budget for 1991-92. Some other campuses in the state’s 20-campus university system have announced similar cuts.

In addition to reducing the budget for each academic and support department by as much as 11%, the president approved budget cuts of 15% for the university’s Center for International Education, which oversees foreign students on campus; 33% for the university television department, which produces cable television shows and teleconferences, and 41% for radio station KLON, a local jazz music station operated by the university.

McCray also had announced the layoffs of hundreds of full- and part-time lecturers and staff members, as well as significant reductions in enrollment.

The irony of his reaction to Tuesday’s events, he said, was that while he was happy to see that students were taking the problems in stride, he was also concerned about what kind of message that would send to Sacramento, where the cuts had originated.

“Apparently the politicos want us to be more efficient, and we are,” McCray said. “But I can’t believe it’s not affecting the quality of education, and I hate to be proving the legislators’ point that we can run more efficiently (with no repercussions). How long can the pressure stay on without being felt?”

Elsewhere on the campus, however, many students said they were already feeling the effects of the cuts.

Gwen Dettmer, a pre-nursing major, said she would probably transfer to another campus in Fresno or Sacramento if required courses became any harder to get. “I’m mad and disappointed,” said the 19-year-old student, who has lived in Cypress all her life. “I wanted to stay in the area by my family.”

Steve Hoard, a 24-year-old design major, said he commutes from his home in Encinitas near San Diego to two community college campuses besides CSULB to ensure himself access to the classes he needs. The weekly toll: about 360 miles.

And Ingrid Franco, a freshman majoring in linguistics and accounting, tried to take anatomy, algebra and comparative literature this semester, but was able to enroll only in microbiology and physical education classes. As a result, she said, she will take the required courses when she can and may have to graduate at least a semester later than planned.

There’s a definite downside to that outcome, however. The first member of her family to go to college, Franco, 18, is being put through school by her father, an immigrant from El Salvador who works as a cook in Los Angeles. Already, the student said, her father is contemplating taking on a second job to pay for the extra tuition that will be imposed by any delays in his daughter’s progress.

“It puts a lot of pressure on someone,” she said.