SF State faculty and lecturers are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst in response to proposed budget cuts to the California State University system.

Just before the start of the spring 2008 semester, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $312.9 million reduction in the CSU system’s budget in response to a $14 billion statewide budget deficit.

The proposed cuts will result in denied admissions to 10,000 prospective students statewide as well as reduced health benefits and compensation for CSU faculty and staff, according to a press release issued by the CSU office of public affairs.

“We recognize this is a difficult budget year, but these cuts will impact student access to the California State University because we will not be able to admit all the students who are qualified,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed in a statement.

The CSU budget for the next academic year will not be finalized by the state legislature until sometime this summer, but SF State’s department deans and faculty chairs are scrambling to prepare for the fall semester if Schwarzenegger’s proposal becomes reality.

As e-mails circulate to non-tenured instructors warning that their jobs cannot be guaranteed for the fall and faculty meetings focus on decreased class sections and increased workload for professors, some have characterized the situation as “grim.”

If Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget is approved, SF State could see 10 to 30 percent reductions in class offerings and slashed funding for lecturers.

Frustrations are already high among students who have been burdened with a 9 percent fee increase since the beginning of the academic year. In addition to threats of more fee hikes, students now face the possibility of finding their graduation goals further away than planned if required classes are cut.

But the CSU system is not a new target for offsetting statewide financial problems and many see the current crisis as part of a continuing political trend.

“There’s been an attitude of ‘let’s cut taxes’ without consideration of what that means,” said Carlos Davidson, SF State’s program director for environmental studies. “The people of California have to understand that if we want access to higher education, we have to start paying taxes to support it. That’s what makes public education possible.”

Financial situations vary significantly by department, but there is little indication that any area would escape impact. Some of the largest departments with the most students could be hardest hit.

“We created a bare bones schedule for fall ’08,” said Kathleen Mosier, chair of SF State’s psychology department. “We will have very limited lecturer funding and so our course offerings will be severely curtailed unless additional money is allocated.”

With approximately 1,650 students, psychology is SF State’s second largest major.

Mosier foresees potential cuts of 25 to 30 sections from the psychology department’s class schedule and has warned all part-time lecturers that there is no guarantee they will have jobs in the department when fall comes.

But making it through the fall semester is just the first hurdle.

“I’m thinking about the long-term picture,” Mosier said. “If the student population stays the same size and our resources are not restored and increased, it will have very damaging effects.”

She said she sees the root of the problem as lack of political will.

“The state legislature doesn’t seem to understand the consequences of cutting educational funding so severely,” Mosier said. “Each campus will limp along with minimal resources and none of us will be able to do the high quality teaching we want to do.”

Kathy Skillicorn has been lecturing in the broadcast and electronic communication arts department at SF State for the last four years.

She has been told by her department chair that while everything possible will be done to save her job and the jobs of other non-tenured staff, there are no guarantees that the department will be able to employ her in the fall.

“Lecturers are the lowest on the totem pole, and that means we’re the first to go,” she said. “That’s just the way it is.”

While she admits she would have preferred better news, she said the level of candor and openness in communications between administration and staff has made a hard situation easier to accept and gives her an opportunity to formulate a “plan B.”

For Skillicorn, that could include looking for a position at a junior college, returning to her previous work in social research or even switching sides of the lectern and going back to school for a doctoral degree.

The current situation serves to underscore what she has known all along—lecturing holds little job security.

“It’s not sustainable,” she said. “It’s very hard to live on a lecturer’s salary. But given that, it’s a great job. It’s just not something you get to do without supplemental income.”

Still, Skillicorn would prefer to remain at SF State. She said she hopes for the best for herself, her colleagues and her students, but sees the proposed budget cuts as a bad sign.

“It’s a disservice to students,” she said. “It’s a disservice across the board. And sadly, it’s an indication that education isn’t valued.”

The president of SF State’s chapter of the California Faculty Association, Ramón Castellblanch, stresses that the budget numbers the university is reacting to are tentative.

“There is no definite number as to what our budget will be next year. And what that number is will depend in some part on how we at San Francisco State get active in the state political process,” said Castellblanch, also an assistant professor of health education at SF State.

The CFA is organizing an event to educate the community about the importance of CSUs and lobby for funding. That is scheduled to take place on March 17 from noon to 2 p.m. in McKenna Theatre.

SF State President Robert A. Corrigan, state Sen. Leland Yee and others will be speaking.

Castellblanch said the faculty union and President Corrigan have been working closely together to form a strategy to fight the budget cuts. He noted that this is a complete reversal from last year when tensions between Corrigan and the union ran high during the threat of a faculty strike.

He described the budget process as “a dance” where funding is taken away, then various programs and institutions compete to get portions of their budget restored.

Castellblanch said that in his political experience, the 10 to 20 percent who lobby legislature most actively get some level of funding back while the other 80 percent “get clobbered.”

“We don’t have to just passively accept these cuts,” he said. “We can still protect the CSU and the vital role it plays in California.”