Day to Postpone SDSU Staff Cuts Until Next June

In a new concession to try to defuse tension between himself and the faculty, San Diego State University President Thomas Day announced Monday that he will cancel the layoffs of 146 tenured and tenure-track professors for the entire academic year.

Day said the needed money would come from a reserve fund of the California State University system, which has been set aside by CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz to soften immediate blows to campuses as a result of state budget cuts.

“I think it’s a very important thing to do,” Day told the executive committee of the SDSU Academic Senate at a special meeting Monday, adding that Munitz had said he “would receive favorably” a request for the money.

Munitz said Monday night that “I have encouraged Tom to pull all the (termination) letters” and that a reserve fund “was set up to allow all the campuses, including San Diego State, to have a clean slate and buy a transition year to figure out how they are going to have fewer people next year . . . and with the present shortage of funds, it’s incredibly important that we have fewer people next year.”

Day said that he already has instructed his vice presidents and academic deans to begin planning the spring semester class schedule on the assumption that there will be no tenured or tenure-track layoffs or elimination of nine academic departments until the year is completed.

Day--and Munitz--hope that the additional breathing room will lessen animosity at the state’s largest CSU campus and allow Day to recover from a late August vote by the faculty demanding Day’s firing.

“It has to be clear that this only delays having to make faculty layoffs,” Munitz said, adding, however, that those professors eventually dismissed next year do not have to be the same ones earlier targeted by Day.

“This is a rescission, not a postponement, of the present (termination) letters,” Munitz said. “There undoubtedly will be layoffs going out at San Diego--and at other campuses--next spring which will be effective at the end of June, but they could be for different professors.

“That will depend on a genuine consultative process with the faculty,” he said, “and the burden is now on the administration and the faculty to work together, for Tom to bring the critical core of faculty back into the decision-making process.

“By rescinding the present letters, we won’t keep the current people out on a limb and we won’t undermine the validity of the consultation process.”

But actions Monday indicated how hard that move back to collaboration will be, with many SDSU faculty still unwilling to accept either the notion that tenured layoffs will be necessary or that Day will genuinely consult with them.

Day made his announcement with little emotion or excitement Monday, reflecting his reluctance to trumpet any sign of compromise with professors who have attacked him repeatedly with harsh rhetoric.

Day warned that his plans will still go into effect June 30, 1993, unless the faculty comes up with alternatives that he would accept for cutting almost $12 million from the academic budget.

“I urge everyone at whatever level to take a realistic point of view” in considering how to plan the future, Day said. “It’s much nicer to believe that next year will be better . . . but that’s unrealistically optimistic in my best judgment.”

That did not sit well with some faculty members who attended Monday’s meeting and who want Day to start from scratch with professors on planning for a smaller campus without the threat of his specific layoff plan hanging over them like a Sword of Damocles. They have asked that deeper cuts be made in administrative, student support and athletic areas.

“He refuses to budge from a chance to lay faculty off at some future date, and we don’t feel he really wants to consult with us,” sociology Prof. James Wood, one of those with a layoff postponed, said after the meeting.

“It’s too little, too late” to pull back our call for resignation or firing, said Prof. Michael Seitz, head of the of California Faculty Assn. unit at SDSU. “It’s become a style and management issue at this point.”

Day and Munitz have long argued that too many professors still refuse to accept the reality of permanent cuts to the CSU budget, which will force a downsizing of the SDSU campus and the need to lay off some tenured professors.

Day had announced plans in May to eliminate, beginning this month, nine departments and to fire almost 200 professors and lecturers, including a large number of tenured professors.

After a torrent of protest by faculty groups--including a vote of no confidence by the Senate in June--Day agreed in August to use more than $5 million in library, laboratory and other equipment budgets to postpone his plans until the spring.

But professors voted 55.7% to 42.4% at an unprecedented general faculty meeting Aug. 28 to demand that CSU trustees fire Day because of his handling of budget-cutting decisions. A majority of the faculty members agreed with those professors who argued that Day failed to consult adequately with them.

Day’s announcement Monday is geared toward trying to re-establish a dialogue with the faculty, and has the strong support of Munitz, who has said Day must work to restore an “active consultation process.”

Munitz has said that, while Day’s bitter medicine for his campus may prove to be correct, “You can’t (have changes) at an academic institution without the faculty having a feeling of participation.”

CSU trustees will meet today and Wednesday in their first meeting since the state budget was approved and they will discuss the SDSU faculty vote concerning Day. Munitz will make a public statement Wednesday about the president’s future, although there is little expectation that the trustees will ask Day to resign.

The precise amount of money that Day will need has not yet been determined, he said Monday, because the campus does not yet know the savings it will realize from a still-unknown number of senior professors eligible for an early retirement bonus. Day told The Times that it could range anywhere from $500,000 to $3 million.

Day’s lobbying of Munitz has been supported by both SDSU alumni and San Diego businessmen, who have realized that continued campus confusion and anger could have harmful long-term effects on the region.

Already, enrollment is at its lowest levels in a decade, due to what both sides say is months of negative publicity surrounding possible layoffs.

Day’s advisory committee of community business leaders and professionals wrote to Munitz last week, urging any help that the chancellor could give SDSU to avoid layoffs until after the academic year.

“We’re obviously concerned about the impact on San Diego State, the crown jewel of the CSU system,” Ron Fowler, president of Mesa Distributing Co. and a member of SDSU’s community advisory board, said Monday.

“It would depolarize the situation because, with Tom and the Academic Senate going at each other, the campus is not going to come up with the best solution.”