CSUN Plans Cuts, Layoffs of Part-Time Instructors : Education: Notices will be sent to 29 faculty members. The anticipated action prompts a campus demonstration by 250 protesters.

Cal State Northridge is preparing letters notifying 29 part-time instructors that they either will not have jobs next semester, or will have their hours reduced.

The 29 are among 182 with whom the university has contracts and who must be notified by Friday if they are to be laid off or given reduced workloads. It is unknown how the administration determined which 29 instructors would receive notices.

The university employs another 437 part-time instructors who are hired on a semester by semester basis without contracts, and it is not known how many of these will be reappointed, said Donald Cameron, executive assistant to the vice president of academic affairs.

“It depends on the budget situation in Sacramento and our registration,” he said. “We won’t know that until the middle of January.”

The anticipated teacher layoffs prompted a demonstration on campus Wednesday that included 250 students and faculty members.

“This kind of deteriorating education must be stopped,” said Albert Baca, president of the university’s Academic Senate, who marched with the protesters. “We must say no to further budget cuts.”

Statewide, cuts in state funding this fall resulted in the elimination of 3,800 classes and the layoff of 3,000 instructors, according to California State University system statistics.

At CSUN, administrators said 73 instructors were laid off and 350 classes eliminated.

But California Faculty Assn. official Don DeMoro said the faculty union is concerned that Gov. Pete Wilson will propose mid-year budget cuts for the California State University system. “There are ample rumors that we’re targeted for mid-year cuts that would go even deeper,” he said.

Fran Grimes, a part-time English professor at CSUN, said teachers are predicting that all part-timers will lose their jobs.

She and other faculty members were joined by several students, including David Weiss, student government president, as they marched from the campus bookstore to the library. The crowd swelled as the procession made its way across the campus.

Many of the protesters carried hand-lettered signs that denounced reductions in state funding for education, with messages such as “No More Cuts,” “Are These Your Final Exams?” and “The Next Class Cut May Be Yours.”

Weiss, who along with others spoke to the crowd after it assembled in front of the library, called on students and faculty members to write letters to their legislators protesting the state of higher education in California.

“These budgets are eroding the quality of education on this campus and throughout the California State University system,” Weiss said. Legislators must be reminded that education “is not a cost. Education is an investment in our future,” he said.

William Forthman, president of the CSUN Chapter of the CFA, urged protesters to each write “10 letters or so this weekend” to lawmakers.

To students, Weiss said, “You may find the classes you thought you signed up for are no longer there” next semester if instructors are laid off.

“We’re not cutting fat anymore,” said instructor Etta Fieldman. “We’re cutting to the bone. Soon, we will have a corpse laying around.”