MISSION VIEJO : Budget Cuts Could Close College Paper

Students and faculty at Saddleback College are protesting a proposed $9,000 budget cut that could force the closing of the award-winning campus newspaper, the Lariat, which has been published for 23 years.

As part of an effort to deal with an estimated $2.8-million shortfall in the 1993-94 fiscal year, interim Saddleback College President Calvin Nelson has proposed eliminating the pay professors receive for working as coaches to student programs. These faculty-advised activities include programs such as the Lariat, the student art gallery, the forensics team and Summer Stock, a musical theater.

In the case of the Lariat, longtime adviser Michael Reed would be asked to teach two more classes per semester, rather than being paid to help students produce the newspaper, which requires about 20 hours per week in addition to class time.

If Reed returned to classroom teaching full time, the college could serve more students and, in turn, receive more funding from the state, according to school officials.

While the potential loss of the gallery and Summer Stock musical program has already caused a major dispute in the community, it has only been in the last few weeks that students and faculty learned about the possible loss of the Lariat.

“I would say it’s almost positive that the paper could not come out,” said Dan Rivas, the college’s dean of liberal arts. “There would be no one to do that type of work.”

Without the Lariat--where students practice what they’re learning in classes--the nationally acclaimed journalism program at the college would be “decimated,” Rivas said.

The school says it costs $9,000 to hire other instructors to teach the two classes per semester that are lost to coaching the Lariat. Officials said that campuswide the cost is $238,400 to cover advisers’ time away from the classroom. The school would not eliminate those instructors, however; rather, it would add revenue by being able to enroll more students.

College administrators will present a preliminary budget to the Saddleback Community College District Board of Trustees on Monday. The board has final say on the proposed $37.4-million budget for the college.

“It affects a lot of outstanding programs,” Nelson said of the proposal. “I certainly can understand the frustration on the part of the students, faculty and staff. But there’s not a whole lot of options.”

Students and faculty recently urged district trustees to save the Lariat.

The Lariat itself joined the fight last week by publishing letters and editorials urging administrators to cut elsewhere.

“Wake up, people!” wrote Miryam Ghodsian, a former Lariat editor-in-chief, in a column criticizing increases in tuition at the same time programs are being cut. In an interview, Ghodsian said the proposal “can only be viewed as a form of censorship.”

Ghodsian also questions why the new journalism program at Irvine Valley College, which is part of the district, is not facing similar cuts.

The campus is “just absolutely shocked” about possibly losing the paper, which recently was judged the second-best community college newspaper in the state, Reed said.

“It’s the way people communicate and find out what’s happening on this campus,” he said, adding that he would be willing to work for free, but only if every athletic coach and adviser had to do the same thing.

About 180 students are in the campus journalism program. A staff of 25 students produces the Lariat 23 times a year, distributing about 6,000 copies free each week.