The California State Legislature has demanded the administration produce a “comeback” plan following recent cuts within 30 to 60 days. This was after a nearly 6-hour long forum at Sonoma State on Feb. 21, where community members, students, faculty, and administrators answered questions and gave comments to a panel of California Legislature members.
In a follow-up interview after the forum, State Senate President Mike McGuire said for the “comeback” plan they are looking for metrics, a plan for recruitment, acknowledgment of impacts on campus life, and the creation of a community “comeback” committee.
“The more the community is involved at SSU, the stronger this university will be now and the decades to come,” said McGuire.
The event took place just after a ‘Pack the Plaza’ protest led by the women and gender studies department, as hundreds of faculty, community members, and students gathered in Ballroom A for an open discussion about the recent cuts. Suits mingled with SSU athletics jerseys and yellow t-shirts reading “this is what a feminist looks like; Save WGS.”
Six state legislators were in attendance, including Representative Mike Thompson, Assembly Member Chris Rogers, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, Assembly Member Damon Connolly, Senator Christopher Cabaldon, and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire.
“The chancellor’s office, as well as administrators at Sonoma State must acknowledge their failure and mishandling of the university’s budget and its budget cut roll out,” Connolly said.
The legislators were upset the school had made this decision without consulting them. Rep. Thompson said he was usually involved in big decisions like this, but this time, only found out in a Zoom meeting the night before the cuts were announced.
“I just want to be on the record saying that I’m not interested in giving a single penny to this campus if we can’t figure out a path to recovery,” Thompson said.
During the forum the legislators asked Interim President Emily Cutrer what the plan was moving forward. Cutrer talked about plans including data science, marketing and recruitment, which included receiving a $2.5 million grant from the CSU system this January to go towards those plans.
“Centralized market planning and decision-making will streamline content and communications,” Cutrer said.
Cutrer also discussed the desire to focus on the areas of data science, healthcare, and the wine and hospitality industry in order to “address the needs of the North Bay.”
“We will, through collaboration with regional businesses and many community partners, build pathways to provide engaged problem-solvers and thought partners for the regional workforce,” Cutrer said.
Despite these verbal plans, Cutrer expressed they have yet to finalize a written plan.
“If it were just me writing a plan, or the provost writing a plan, or even the cabinet, we could do it in two weeks,” Cutrer said.
She explained she would need more time, because she couldn’t form a plan alone.
“And yet you made the cuts alone,” Connolly said.
Cutrer made a comment that perhaps she had written too many papers in graduate school where she started with an outline and edited it later.
“This isn’t a paper that gets revised. It’s people’s lives,” Rogers said in response.
Connolly went on to note how the cuts did not consider the wider public, noting the importance of programs like women and gender studies in Sonoma County, as well as the increased enrollment in the geology department.
CSU records show that from 2018 to 2023 operating cost for instructors went down 11.5 percent, while spending on campus police went up 13.3 percent, management salaries increased by 20 percent, balance of cash on investments increased by 69 percent, and planned capital spending for buildings increased by 81 percent.
“Cuts were made to CSU administration, layoffs, yet your salary and the salary of the chancellor have not gotten cut,” Connolly said.
In response, the ballroom erupted with applause.
“Whatever we do sets a precedent for other institutions, and so right now, we have not been given the go ahead to take cuts to executive salaries,” said Cutrer.
Dr. Cutrer’s current salary is $381,408, plus $60,000 for housing, and the chancellor has a salary of $795,000, plus $96,000 for housing and $12,000 for an annual car. Including benefits, this is almost ten times the salary of the average SSU professor. Professor salaries are only four times the average rent price in Rohnert Park at about $2,300 a month.
Sen. Mike McGuire turned his focus to the recent “crisis in leadership” as he called it, regarding the number of scandals and firing of presidents at Sonoma State.
In 2022, previous SSU president Judy K. Sakaki resigned after spending $600,000 in university funds to settle a sexual harassment court case involving her husband. Last year, former president Mike Lee resigned after the chancellor disapproved of Lee’s decision to give into the demands of students protesting the genocide in Gaza, calling it “insubordination.”
“It is unacceptable that there have been three presidents in three years,” McGuire said.
“There’s three to four North Bay campuses that are having problems. Do we have to have a president for each one?” Thompson said. He continued to put pressure on the higher-ups, asking whether the chancellor’s office needed the same funding as an entire university.
Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry showed her support for the WGS department. “When our women’s caucus heard that there was not going to be women’s studies, we were appalled,” Aguiar-Curry said.
Upon hearing this, the audience burst into applause, with those wearing WGS tees cheering the loudest.
“As we all know, women are leaders, not followers,” Aguiar-Curry said.
Rep. Thompson put the student athletes into the picture, calling what they had a “double hit,” in that once they chose the door to SSU, the other doors closed. Now, they’re out of a scholarship and there’s no guarantee the other doors are going to open back up.
Rogers, a former graduate of the political science department at SSU, brought up an example of how the cuts were affecting the surrounding area. “Sonoma Clean Power in our community is about to do a 6-8 billion dollar geothermal plant with no geology department at the closest feeder school,” said Rogers.
The CEO of Sonoma Clean Power, Geof Syphers, an alumni of the physics department at SSU tried to offer alternative solutions, such as redesigning the application process to stop auto-rejecting certain students to bring back enrollment. Syphers said he hopes to continue hiring graduates from Sonoma State.
Lena McQuade, a WGS professor who won the SSU teacher of the year award, spoke out about the absurdity of the school laying off the very same instructor. “You do not earn this award by impacting the least amount of students,” McQuade said.
Another major concern was the decision to lay off a third of the IT department, despite the school investing more heavily in technology. “Maybe if you’re gonna focus on data science in your plan, you shouldn’t cut the IT department,” Rogers said.
A member of the IT department, Dustin Mollo, spoke about his heartbreak of losing his passion, and the way IT is often devalued in institutions, despite its importance as the very basis of any university software. “How is the campus going to lean more on IT when we’re cutting a third of the IT staff? That’s like asking a runner to sprint faster after they’ve lost one of their legs,” said Mollo.
All the school needs to do to fix this deficit, according to Rogers, is tap into 0.03% of the CSU’s reserve funding. Cutrer stated many times that she would love to, but it was reportedly smaller than projected, and none of the reserve funds were being offered by the chancellor.
Rogers pointed out that the reason the reserve isn’t available is because the CSU made the decision to invest it into areas like the stock market for a long-term profit.
“How have you determined that a better investment is to leave those funds in an account– that yes, might have a rate of return– but does nothing for stabilizing the economic impact of the community,” Rogers said.
The other reason the school seems to be struggling, according to Cabaldon, is overspending due to state compacts, referring to the state budget promises not being fulfilled. “This last year when the governor said ‘please keep spending SSU, as though you had money, pull it out of your reserves, I promise next year we’ll give you twice as much. A burger today, I’ll pay you on Thursday,” said Cabaldon.
Connolly also pointed out that the $42 million investment into the Marina Housing complex, which has yet to turn the school a profit or meet its goal of housing university faculty, may be part of the reason for this deficit as well.
Cutrer responded “If we could have foresight back in 2019 might we have done it? Maybe not.” Cutrer added that the administration could not sell the complex for five years due to the nature of the contract.
