CSUN Faculty Urges State of Emergency : Finance: Teachers call for drastic reorganization after learning that budget reductions could be far worse than anticipated.

Faced with possible budget cuts of at least 11.5% instead of the 3.5% they had braced for, Cal State Northridge faculty members Thursday urged that a campus emergency be declared and all spending be put under control of a special committee that would minimize instructor layoffs and class reductions at any cost.

The Faculty Senate--shocked by reports of plans for mass layoffs and department closings at San Diego State--voted almost unanimously to urge that the administration of the campus be drastically reorganized.

The resolution will be reviewed by the incoming CSUN president, who can either implement or ignore it. The identity of the new president--being picked by the Board of Trustees from a field of four finalists--could be announced as early as Thursday, said President James W. Cleary, who is retiring next month.

“We are faced with an unprecedented educational crisis at CSUN, and we must use this last meeting of the Senate to address this issue forcefully and with a clear plan of operation,” wrote Ronald L.F. Davis, author of a resolution the Senate passed Thursday with only one dissenting vote.

The Senate acted after learning that the school faces a budget cut of 8% to 8.5% in addition to the 3.5% already revealed in a memo distributed to the faculty last month.

At a meeting last week of the Dean’s Council--composed of the heads of the schools that make up the university--acting Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald E. Bianchi told members to “make plans for an additional 8.5%,” Davis said.

“There’s rumors that there might be more,” Davis added.

The resolution called for a one-year moratorium on “business as usual” at the university, the formation of a special committee to deal with the budget crisis, and the implementation of an emergency operating budget that places a priority on preventing the loss of faculty and classes.

Addressing the Faculty Senate before the vote, Davis said the move was necessary in order to set up a mechanism for dealing with the budget crisis, and to formalize the Senate’s position that classes and faculty should be retained at all costs.

“There should not be a tree trimmed on this campus as long as we are laying off,” he said. “We can deal with a messy campus for a year if we can put that money in the classroom.” Under the resolution, a special committee would review all university expenditures and determine where cuts would be made. In addition, the offices of Administrative Affairs and Student Affairs, which now have their own budgets, would come under the authority of the academic vice president, providing those funds for use in academic programs.

Last month, Bianchi circulated a memo that outlined possible budget cuts based on a 3.5% budget cut. Faculty and students were bracing for cuts that would have resulted in the elimination of certain majors, the merging of some of the university’s schools and a requirement that students declare majors and graduate earlier.

Bianchi’s memo also mentioned the possibility of a 9.5% cut, but “it’s even worse than that,” Faculty Senate President Albert Baca said in an interview. A cut of 12%--the exact percentage was unclear--”means almost dismantling the program here,” he said.

Cleary attended the faculty meeting and pleaded for calm.

“Let us try to look at the situation in a cool sense . . . in a fashion that would be objective and not one that would show we’re panicking,” he urged the Senate.

But the overwhelming sentiment among faculty members appeared to be a feeling of crisis.

The meeting, the last of this academic year, came the same day that San Diego State announced plans to cut several departments and 100 faculty members, news of which “spread like wildfire” on the CSUN campus, Davis said.

“We don’t want something like that happening here over the summer while the faculty is away,” Davis said in an interview.

A flyer distributed during the meeting questioned the need for a director of public affairs and other public relations workers who, the flyer said, publish “glossy magazines promoting CSUN.” It also questioned the necessity of the Office of Facilities and Planning Operations and several other positions and offices.

“It’s just devastating,” Jane Bayes, who teaches in the political science department, said in an interview.

To meet a 12% budget cut, her department would have to eliminate nine of its 27 teaching positions and more than 37 classes. In the School of Social and Behavioral Science, 250 classes would be dropped, Davis said.

Bayes and others lamented the loss of young instructors who work part time and “bring zest and new ideas” to their fields, as well as of older faculty members, part of the Faculty Early Retirement Program, who are experts in their areas of study.

“They’ll be the first to go” because they are not included in the full-time, tenured teaching staff, Bayes said.

In another move, the Senate passed a resolution asking the Board of Trustees of the CSUN Foundation to “significantly reduce” its grant of $500,000 per year over a 10-year period to support NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletics, and divert the funds to the university library.

“It’s a frill. It’s not the central core of the university,” Bayes said of the athletic program. “And if the faculty doesn’t say that, who will? . . . When there’s limited resources, what is more important?”

In an interview, Davis called Cleary a “lame-duck president” and criticized him for being “unresponsive to the emergency” caused by the budget cuts.

Passing the emergency resolution was meant to “send a signal to the new president,” Davis said. “It’s an emergency situation. It’s a crisis. You can’t simply act as if it isn’t.”