Day Urges Campus to Unify on Cuts : Budget: San Diego State University president listens to uproar of pleas for alternatives to mass layoffs and the demise of departments.

After a day of wild speculation at San Diego State University, President Thomas Day implored students and faculty members Friday to form a unified campus response to radical budget cuts taking place next year.

Appearing embattled and weary at an afternoon rally in a crowded student union auditorium, Day staved off queries about which departments and professors were on the chopping block, then listened to suggestions on lessening or avoiding wholesale departmental slashing.

The campus has been rife with rumor since early Thursday, as word of an $11-million state funding cutback was whispered in hallways, announced unofficially to classes and shouted over pitchers of beer. The 8.5% budget cut is expected to be carried out by eliminating at least 10 academic departments and terminating more than 100 tenured faculty positions.

Day said confirmation of the cuts will be announced Monday in a meeting with the executive committee of the Academic Senate.

“We are not going to come out of this whole,” Day said Friday. “We are trying to identify the fewest areas possible and then go deeply into those.”

Already college deans have notified faculty members that entire departments are being eliminated, or that partial layoffs of the faculty--tenured, tenure-track and part-time instructors--are to be announced in June.

Despite attempts at “narrow” cuts, a broad range of departments have already been given unofficial notice, said Michael Seitz, a professor of communicative disorders in the health sciences department. Anthropology, aerospace engineering, religious studies, family sciences, chemistry, mathematics and all foreign LANguages except Spanish are among those to be affected, said Seitz, who is also the president of the university’s faculty union.

Seitz’s own department of health sciences has been listed unofficially.

“I’m half a breath from a goner,” Seitz said. “We have 120 days to come up with better solutions,” he said, referring to the notice period for tenured professors who are terminated. “The question is, do we do it together?”

The cutbacks represent the severest and most comprehensive campus restructuring in the California State University system. SDSU--with 31,000 students, 1,200 full-time faculty members and 4,400 class sections--is considered the flagship school for the state university system.

At the rally, Day spoke for more than an hour, during which he explained the necessity for the cuts, then fielded questions. Dozens of students appealed to Day to spare their departments.

Ramona Trees, who returned to school after working for 10 years as an executive in a mortgage company, said the academic disciplines about to be lost include those by which students gain an appreciation for cultural diversity.

“When all these departments are gone, we will be left with a technical institute,” said Trees, an anthropology major who was recently accepted into the department’s graduate program.

Trees said budget balancing decisions are being made unilaterally by the administration. Her faith that the university will hear her concerns has waned since the sudden rumors about the cuts surfaced.

“Yesterday, I found out I don’t exist,” Trees said. “There was no consultation with people at the departmental level. Nothing was discussed with people who are going to be directly affected.”

It has not been determined how students will complete their studies in departments that are to be eliminated, Day said. Course requirements may be changed, substitute courses offered, and a more flexible system of accepting transfer credits may go into effect, he said.

Many faculty members are resisting the cuts as they have been proposed. University-wide salary cuts instead of eliminating departments have been suggested by many faculty members, including those whose jobs are secure and those already given notice.

Day said such a cut is unlikely because of policies of the statewide faculty union that determines salary matters for all 20 state university campuses. A proposed across-the-board salary cut had been broached several months earlier, Day said, and the response from the university chancellor’s office was that SDSU could not negotiate a separate contract for its staff, Day said.

“That’s a lie,” shot back Seitz, the union president. “Listen, Tom, you get your authority. I’ll get mine.”

Outside the hall, Seitz and several students tempered verbal attacks on Day by saying that he is “still our leader” and is not yet “part of the problem.”

“He has the potential to become part of a solution,” Seitz said.

The rally dispersed, and Day--trailed by detractors and supporters--made a 10-minute cross-campus trek from the student union to his office in the administration building.

Asked if he felt solidarity with the students, Day said: “Yes. But I’m not sure they feel that way about me.”