Class Struggles : Budget Worries, Cutbacks Cloud Fall Semester at Cal State Fullerton

Amid the worst wave of layoffs in campus history, Cal State Fullerton will begin the fall semester Monday with fewer staff, fewer teachers, fewer classes--and maybe even fewer students.

Morale on campus is the lowest in years, partly because greater work burdens are falling on fewer people. There is also a pervasive sense of futility and helplessness that, after four successive years of reduced funding, the university’s educational quality is diminishing. And with the budget logjam in Sacramento just now breaking up, no one knows whether deeper cuts will be required in the spring.

“This is absolutely the worst time in the history of the California State University system,” said Joyce Flocken, chairwoman of the Academic Senate who has been a speech communications professor at Fullerton for 23 years. “The amount of money the state is giving us per student is diminishing every year. . . . How do you feed more people at the table if the amount you have to buy food goes down and the number of guests who have been invited has increased?”

Nor are students or their parents pleased.

Freshman Manuel G. Moreno registered for 15 units. He got nine. The 19-year-old Fontana youth had to scramble during the late registration period earlier this month to get at least one more class to boost his total to 12 units so he’d be covered under his family’s medical insurance plan.

“It’s really hard to get anything you want,” he said as he and his father prowled the campus bookstore last week in search of his textbooks.

“I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said his father, Manuel E. Moreno, a 42-year-old Vons warehouse worker. “I’ve paid taxes for 19 years, and now that my son is going to school, he can’t even get the classes he wants. That’s ridiculous!”

What’s most unsettling, say Flocken and others on campus, is that the fall semester is beginning, yet it is unclear given Saturday’s vote in the Assembly how much money the university will truly get from the state. President Milton A. Gordon and his top administrators have planned to cut about 10% from last fall’s strangled operating budget of about $109 million.

It is that reduction--about $9 million to $10 million, based on Gov. Pete Wilson’s recommended cut of 10.38% for the 20-campus CSU system as a whole--that has prompted the following at Fullerton:

- Layoffs of three faculty and about 23 staff members.

- Elimination of 134 classes.

- Cuts in operation hours of everything from the admissions office to the student health center to the library and counseling center.

- No new contracts for about 60 of the university’s remaining part-time instructors.

- Increasing class size for some courses.

- Elimination of the Learning Assistance Resource Center and programs to help prepare entering students for college-level material.

- Cutbacks in a special advisory program for future health professionals, which has a 92% success rate at placing students in medical schools and related health programs.

But if the budget agreement ultimately reached by the governor and the Legislature calls for cuts greater than 10.38%, campus officials will have to try to balance its spending with drastically reduced course offerings in the spring and further inroads in university services.

“The general feeling on the campus is apprehension and a great deal of concern because we really don’t know what’s coming down the pike,” said mechanical engineering professor Jesa Kreiner, president of the campus chapter of the California Faculty Assn.

“At the same time, we can see from the newspapers that there are compromises being made that are going to be made on the back of education, or so it appears,” Kreiner added. “I hope I’m wrong, but somehow this seems to be in the air.”

Meanwhile, rumors and speculation have been flying over just how bad it could get.

“We hear there’s a potential for reductions of pay, maybe even work furloughs,” Flocken said. “Everybody’s just waiting . . . and the waiting is making a difficult situation a lot worse.”

There have also been signs in recent weeks of a backlash emerging among some staff and faculty, who have threatened to picket the administration building on the first day of classes to protest the layoffs.

Still others plan at least a silent protest vigil at Gordon’s Sept. 25 investiture, a traditional campus ceremony that has been delayed two years because of recurrent budgetary problems. Gordon and campus stalwarts defend the ceremony as a necessary rite of passage to mark the era of the campus’ fourth president. Moreover, they emphasize, it will be a bare-bones affair funded by about $25,000 to $30,000 in private donations, which could not be used to restore jobs or classes in any case.

But critics say the cost is really far greater because all classes are being canceled for the day.

“To say the cost to the university is nothing is not true if you’re closing down the campus for a day,” charged chemistry professor Andy Montana, one of the faculty who has opted for a special early retirement package aimed at reducing CSU salary costs.

“Running a ceremony for $25,000 in private donations is one thing, but canceling classes for 20,000 students for a day is another,” Montana said. “The kids won’t even come to campus if we don’t have classes. So they’re not even going to go to this ceremony. . . . I think its horrendous.”

Moreover, such a ceremony, austere as it may be, sends the wrong signal at a time of great hardship on campus, say other faculty and staff.

Gordon acknowledges the critics, but points out that they made the decision to go ahead with the ceremony last fall, before the true dimensions of the state budget deficit emerged.

“Hindsight is a great way to provide insight,” Gordon said. “But we must have an investiture for the university. It is a ceremony that marks the passing of the torch, in essence, from one administration to the next.”

What matters more to Sophia Gonzales, a sophomore communications major, is petitioning her way into an English 101 class, the basic writing course required of all students. Demand for that course is 170% greater than classes available this fall.

“I’ve been trying since my first semester to get an English class,” said the 20-year-old woman who commutes from her family’s home in Paramount and works as an assistant manager at a movie theater. “I ended up getting a 7 a.m. math class instead. . . . I feel disgusted. I pay $554 to come here each semester, and that’s without books. I feel it’s unfair that I can’t get the classes I need.”

Senior Cheryl Zavodnik is one of the lucky ones. She got all the classes she needed to stay on her graduation schedule of June, 1993, mainly because as a student adviser she gets priority registration. Yet just last week, the English major was left to scramble when one of her classes was canceled at the last minute because the professor decided to take an early retirement offer.

She figures she’ll still be able to graduate, even if it means taking courses during the eight-week mid-semester session.

“I’ll be doing it in four years, which is really unusual any more,” said Zavodnik, 21, of Fountain Valley. “A lot of my friends, if they’re business or communications majors, can expect to be here five or six years. In fact, five years (to graduate) is really good these days.”

While students worry about the decreasing availability of classes, faculty fear the quality of education being delivered is diminishing.

Faculty are still expected to teach an average of four courses a semester, plus counsel students, do research and serve on various university committees. The rub is when the size of each of those classes begins creeping up.

“Increasing class size means you’re being asked to do more with less,” Senate chairwoman Flocken said. “If you had a class teaching 30 students and you’re now teaching 50 or 90 students, you’re going to do things differently. If you used to assign four essays, you’re going to stop asking for those kind of papers. . . . You’ll use multiple choice tests.”

That fear was what prompted the “Jericho Resolution” after the administration knocked down the walls of 11 smaller classrooms and laboratories to create rooms large enough to accommodate up to 90 students each.

The Faculty Senate executive committee issued the resolution Aug. 13, demanding that Gordon order the walls restored and that future similar actions be taken only after consultation with faculty.

In his response 12 days later, the president indicated that the various academic department deans were consulted and that there was sufficient demand for the larger classrooms to justify the downing of the walls.

But, as suggested by the biblical title of the resolution, the removal of the walls has become a symbol of faculty fears that protracted financial troubles will irrevocably change the mission of the university.

“It seems to me that if this were a good thing to do educationally, we would have done it years ago,” political science professor Julian F. Foster said last week as the full Faculty Senate considered the Jericho Resolution.

Geography professor Bill Puzo routinely teaches 90-student courses and feels it works for him. But the issue is consultation. “If there’s anything the folks in those (administration) offices should come to us about, it’s changes to the classroom.”

The resolution passed unanimously, this time without the edict that the walls be put back up. But the message was clear: The faculty will not be ignored as administrators grapple with budget-cutting decisions.

“If we don’t stand for quality, it’s not clear to me that the students or anyone else will,” said political science professor Keith Boyum.

Flocken believes the erosion has already begun.

“I think the quality is deteriorating, there’s no question about that. But the faculty are doing the best they can. They are taking on more students; they pay for more things out of their own pockets.”

Student services and having the faculty to teach classes is what most concerns John W. Bedell, assistant vice president for academic affairs and a former chairman of the Faculty Senate. “I’m worried about . . . transcripts getting done and sent to graduate schools on time. I’m worried about a library that is under assault.”

Even more daunting is the fact that 400 of the campus’ 705 full-time faculty are eligible for a special early retirement package recently approved by the governor and the state Legislature.

The goal is to reduce the number of highly paid older faculty. But because the offer came so late in the summer, faculty have until Oct. 3 to opt for the plan. That would also be their last day on the job, and, coming more than four weeks into the semester, could cause serious dislocation for students. Bedell said about 10% of the eligible faculty are expected to take the “golden handshake.”

Another person fretting about things to come is Albert Flores, a philosophy professor who runs the university’s highly praised advisory program for medical and health professionals. If the budget cuts are greater than planned, Flores will lose all funding for his program, which helps place Cal State Fullerton students in medical schools and other health professional programs.

“If we cut that $35,000 budget, I’m going to be out of business, “ Flores said. “That would be a real tragedy because this is one of the things that makes this university unique.”

Even with the obstacles and uncertainty ahead, Gordon, faculty members and staff say everyone will work harder this fall.

“We’re still going to have students that want to learn and we’ll still have people that want to teach them, and all the other employees that want to support this learning activity,” said Gordon, whose two years at Fullerton have been marked by budget crises. “We’re going to still be here doing the best that we can.”

Added Flores: “This is a caring institution.”

Recession Reductions

Recession economics will come home with a vengeance this fall at Cal State Fullerton. Since the peak year of 1990, the number of students has remained stable while the number of classes available has fallen 10% and the faculty has been reduced by 24%.

Total Total Total Students Classes Faculty* 1992* 25,400 3,705 716

* Includes full-time faculty and part-time instructors

*

Money Woes: As the university’s operating budget has declined, more positions have been frozen and students are carrying smaller academic loads:

Operating Budget Units Frozen Budget Shortfall Per Faculty (millions) (millions) Student Positions 1992** $100 25.0 9.8 248 1991 109 16.0 10.2 156 1990 111 4.7 10.6 21 1989 107 2.3 10.7 21 1988 100 *** 10.6 0

** Estimated, based on the governor’s proposed budget

*** Less than $1 million

Source: Cal State Fullerton