SDSU Expects to Lose 100 Tenured Jobs : Education: The unprecedented move to meet state-mandated budget cuts is called a ‘tragedy and a travesty’ by President Day.

San Diego State University will probably lay off 100 tenured professors and other faculty members this fall as the university struggles with an estimated $11-million cut in the funding needed to maintain services, President Thomas Day said Tuesday.

The job losses would be the first layoffs ever of SDSU’s tenured faculty and the first of such magnitude in the financially strapped California State University system.

At an afternoon meeting before the Academic Senate and other staff members, a grim-faced Day announced that 100 tenured faculty members from 10 to 12 departments and possibly administrative staff will be laid off to help compensate for the estimated 8.5% SDSU is required to trim from its budget for the next fiscal year.

SDSU has 31,000 students, 1,200 full-time faculty members and 4,400 class sections. But all three of those areas could be cut back 8% to 1978 levels, Day said.

Although he has yet to decide what departments to trim--or eliminate--letters informing employees who are to be let go are scheduled to go out by mid-June.

“This is not a pleasant task for any of us,” Day told about 200 solemn faculty members who crowded into Hepner Hall. “We are at a point now where the two systems of education in California will crash. We are tearing down systems of education that took a generation to build. It is a tragedy and a travesty.”

Day and 20 other CSU presidents were asked by Chancellor Barry Munitz last week to prepare a budget draft with an 8% cut by June 5 that would “avoid, if possible, laying off any tenured or tenure-track faculty this fall,” said Colleen Bentley, a CSU spokeswoman.

Munitz wants to delay layoffs of tenured faculty until at least the 1993 spring semester, with the hope of persuading the Legislature to allocate more money in the interim, Bentley said.

But SDSU, still financially reeling from last year’s $20-million budget cut, was forced to bite into the academic core for this year’s additional funds, administrators said.

“Last year, part-time instructors were not rehired because (the administration) chose to protect the academic core of the university: full-time tenured academic members,” SDSU spokesman George Cole said. “Even though last year’s budget cuts hurt us deeply, this year the cuts are so deep that they are cutting into the backbone of the university. We are at the point now where we are destroying the dream of what higher education should be.”

Because of last year’s budget cuts, the college was forced to offer 662 fewer classes and lay off 83 administrative personnel and 550 part-time instructors, many of whom had taught large freshman and sophomore-level courses for years, Cole said.

The setbacks provoked student protests and led the faculty’s union to file a grievance with the Public Employee Relations Board against the college, questioning whether the layoffs were necessary.

This year, union leaders are wondering again whether the announced cuts are essential.

“San Diego for over a year has been out in front of the pack on cutting classes for students and laying off faculty,” said Pat Nichelson, president of the California Faculty Assn.

“There is no doubt that the cuts that are in store (for the CSU system) are deep and lethal to student access and faculty job security. But we are always very suspicious of the quickness of San Diego to both talk about and to declare layoffs,” Nichelson said.

The news was met with concern but little surprise by faculty members, who had heard rumors of the layoffs.

“The cuts mean a lot of people will get hurt. I will probably be forced to retire to save some junior faculty member,” said Al Hillix, chairman of the psychology department and a 33-year veteran teacher. “It makes me sad to think I may be forced out.”