The puzzling notion of which days the campus will be closed along with the additional faculty furlough days have been leaving everyone frazzled. Adding this undue confusion to the already stressful 32 percent fee increase and 428 classes cut from this academic year just isn't fair on anyone.

People expect hard-and-fast deadlines and rules from a prominent university and yet this year all they are getting are contradictory dates on when the campus can function as a learning institution.

The forms faculty must fill out for their furlough schedules, due Sept. 15, miss a couple of dates that were stated in messages from SF State President Robert Corrigan about campus closures. The missing dates include holidays and the week of Thanksgiving break, Nov. 23 - 27.

To reiterate, this all comes from the CSU Board of Trustees' decision to initiate mandatory faculty furlough days in an effort to address a $584 million budget deficit for 2009-2010. Faculty and staff will take a total of nine furlough days this semester, amounting to a 9.23 percent salary cut -- reducing salary expenses annually by $275 million.

Initiating faculty furlough days wasn't the wisest decision made by CSU officials. The confusion keeps on coming when people start to unravel the bureaucratic tape covering the details of furloughs.

Full-time staff need these days off. Administrators take off some others. Some days the campus is locked down. Other days students will have class but possibly no teacher.

Let migraines begin.

Perhaps implementing furlough days shouldn't have occurred at all. Instead, pay cuts to executives could have relieved everyone else from this nightmare.

The median salary for presidents of public four-year colleges was $427,000, according to a November 2008 annual salary and compensation survey of college presidents conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The average faculty salary, on the other hand, was roughly $74,000, according to 2007 figures.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Jim Doyle reported Chancellor Charles B. Reed's approval for pay increases to CSU Presidents by 11.8 percent in 2007, while later announcing a 10 percent student fee hike 2008-09.

But on Sept. 8, state lawmakers brought back a bill that prohibits executive pay raises in any year in which the budget is less than or equal to the preceding year. If passed, SB86, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would prevent CSU executive pay raises and perks such as vehicle and housing allowance.

Limiting cuts to only state employees would help the CSU reap benefits while preventing education from being put on the back burner. Perhaps that would mean administration buildings being closed some days and slightly longer lines for student services, but when you consider how much we are paying for such drastic cuts and the uncertainty students are going through, it doesn't sound too bad at all. The 400,000 CSU students and more than 50,000 employees most likely wouldn't mind.