UCLA Plans to Cut, Combine Costly Programs

UCLA weathered a day of extraordinary tumult Thursday as campus officials announced plans to merge or eliminate four costly graduate programs and drop undergraduate nursing studies, while edging toward a compromise to end the furor over Chicano studies.

Chancellor Charles E. Young announced unprecedented changes that would include closing the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, splitting the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and forming a new School of Public Policy to house several previously separate programs. The proposals are expected to save more than $8 million a year, mainly through the elimination of 109 administrative and 31 non-tenured faculty jobs.

“This restructuring will not solve UCLA’s budget problems, but it will provide some significant relief,” Young told reporters. The philosophy, he said, is to target particular programs, avoiding across-the-board cutbacks on the Westwood campus, which has 35,331 students.

The proposals would go into effect in July, 1994, and require approval by the UCLA Faculty Senate and the UC Board of Regents. UC officials Thursday got a taste of the battle ahead when about 50 architecture and planning students loudly banged on the outer doors of the alumni center where Young was holding the news conference to announce the cuts. Police in riot gear guarded the building but no arrests or damage were reported.

The chancellor later hurried to meetings with Chicano activists and faculty in hopes of ending the 10-day hunger strike by nine protesters who want the interdisciplinary Chicano studies program upgraded to a full department. High-ranking sources at UCLA said a compromise was in the works that would give Chicano studies many of the powers of an independent department but stop short of granting it formal departmental status.

The hunger strike has attracted widespread sympathy from the Latino community in California, who portray it as a struggle for recognition of Chicano power and accomplishments. The protest took on more symbolism Thursday as Cesar Chavez’s eldest son visited the strikers in their tents and later addressed a large rally on the steps of Murphy Hall, where Young has his office.

Young and UCLA officials met for two hours Thursday night with a delegation of Chicano studies faculty and students representing the strikers. Emerging from the talks, Young described the session as “positive and helpful” and said he hoped that a solution would be reached today. But UCLA senior Milo Alvarez said the talks “barely opened the lines of communication.”

Further negotiations between strikers and faculty representatives were held late Thursday in one of the strikers’ tents, which are pitched near Young’s office. The talks are complicated by the strikers’ demand that charges be dropped against all 99 protesters charged in the May 11 ruckus that reportedly caused up to $50,000 damage to the faculty center. UCLA is recommending leniency.

Faculty and administrators say negative publicity over the hunger strike and fears for the health of the protesters have increased pressure to find a compromise. Faculty leaders floated a plan Thursday that would enhance Chicano studies by giving its chairman hiring and firing powers over faculty and would allow professors in other departments to devote half, three-quarters or even all of their time to Chicano studies classes. Currently, professors must receive permission from their home departments to teach Chicano studies.

The compromise proposal also suggests that the program could become a department “should the evolution of the field of study . . . warrant it,” according to a letter sent to Young by Archie Kleingartner, chairman of the Faculty Senate.

“The strikers have said this is a significant improvement,” said a Chicano professor who is well informed about the negotiations. “I’m very optimistic about this.”

After three years of study and controversy, Young announced in late April that Chicano studies would be enriched by faculty who would continue to serve from other existing departments, such as history and sociology. But he announced the decision on the eve of the funeral of revered farm worker leader Chavez, and many activists seeking a department were offended by Young’s timing.

At the rally outside the administration center that attracted more than 800 students and activists, Fernando Chavez, 41, an attorney from San Jose, recalled how his father undertook three hunger strikes in his life, one lasting 36 days. The UCLA strikers continued that tradition, Chavez said, adding: “I am proud and honored to be among them.”

He also recounted that the debate over Chicano studies was brewing when he was a student at UCLA 27 years ago. But such discussion must finally end, Chavez said: “Whether you are white, brown, black or Asian, you all will benefit from a Chicano studies department at this university.”

Accompanying Chavez were state Sen. Art Torres, a Los Angeles Democrat who has been a sharp critic of Young, and activist actor Edward James Olmos. Earlier in the day, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina led a delegation that met with Young.

Meanwhile, the campus began examining the proposals to change the four graduate programs and the nursing school. In the most drastic proposed cut, the library programs, which have 215 students, will be discontinued; UC Berkeley is considering a similar cut, which would leave San Jose State as the only school in the state with a graduate library school, officials said. UCLA library faculty would be shifted to the education school. In all 1,791 students are in the schools being moved or discontinued.

Young also proposed phasing out UCLA’s undergraduate nursing program, which has about 115 students. The graduate nursing classes would be maintained.

The library and nursing school deans said they were shocked by the moves to eliminate their programs, complaining that they were easy targets because both fields are service professions dominated by women. “These are not high-power or money jobs,” said Beverly P. Lynch of the library school. But “we serve a diverse population in Southern California. . . . This is very annoying.”

School of Nursing Dean Ada M. Lindsay said closing UC’s only undergraduate nursing program would be very strange because nurses are critically needed throughout the state.

The schools of architecture and planning, social welfare and public health would be shifted to other administrative units, mainly the new School of Public Policy. The new school would be “almost immediately a world-class professional school,” said UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor Andrea Rich, that will be “tackling some of the critical social policy issues of our time.”

That argument clearly did not please students from the architecture and planning school. Their school will be split, with architecture going to a freshly expanded School of Arts and Architecture and planning going to the new public policy school.

Times education writer Stephanie Chavez contributed to this story.