San Diego State Chief Loses Faculty Vote : Education: Angry professors will ask trustees to remove President Thomas Day. His controversial budget would cut departments and tenured staff.

Angered by budget cuts that would eliminate departments and leave scores of faculty members jobless, a majority of San Diego State University professors who gathered for a vote Thursday favored seeking the removal of university President Thomas Day.

In an unprecedented meeting of 872 professors, the vote was 55.7% to 42.4% in support of asking the California State University Board of Trustees to declare Day’s position vacant and name a replacement. There were 1,175 professors eligible to attend.

The action followed more than four months of turmoil on the state’s largest Cal State campus resulting from Day’s announcement in May that he intended to shut down nine academic departments and lay off 146 tenured and tenure-track professors.

Faculty members say Day should have worked more closely with them in seeking alternative budget cuts before announcing his sweeping mandate.

Day said Thursday afternoon he would not resign, and that when a final state budget comes down from Sacramento, “it will be crystal clear that what I’ve done had to be done. . . . I’m just another one of the walking wounded caught in the battle between Willie Brown and Pete Wilson.”

In a brief speech to the faculty before the vote, Day defended his actions as critical to saving San Diego’s extensive graduate and doctoral degree programs.

Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz reacted cautiously to the faculty resolution Thursday, saying he and the Board of Trustees will take the vote “very, very seriously.” Munitz said trustees will want to determine by their September meeting whether “Tom Day has the requisite tools to lead the campus forward and pull it together.

“It’s an open question at this point,” Munitz said, citing the “large number of people on both sides of the issue who need to be heard and understood and listened to.”

Faculty members close to Day emphasized what they called “the relative closeness of the vote” amid anger over Day’s decision to eliminate tenured positions.

“This was not an absolutely overwhelming vote against Day,” said chemistry professor Charles Stewart, a strong supporter of the president. “I think it will take more than the vote to remove him, although it draws more attention to his style and does exacerbate tensions on campus.

“Personally, though, I think he’s in hot water” in his ability to work with faculty, Stewart said.

But the professors who pushed for the resolution said the majority vote for Day’s resignation was extraordinary and should be taken seriously.

“If I had 56% of my students vote for my resignation, I’d have to walk out of my class,” said sociology professor Phillip Gay, one of those facing termination in January.

“This is an unprecedented sampling of the university faculty,” said speech pathology professor Michael Seitz, head of the local California Faculty Assn. chapter at San Diego State.

Seitz said debate preceded the vote. “The thoughtfulness that the faculty gave to this issue shows how strongly they feel about the need for new leadership,” he said. “I only wish Tom Day had given that same thoughtfulness before he sent out layoff letters to hundreds of professors.”