Bad Chemistry Boils Over Between SDSU Students, Dean : Education: Angry chemistry scholars, facing deep cuts in the department, ask, ‘Why us?’ The sciences dean’s reply frustrates them.

For more than an hour Tuesday afternoon, confused students at San Diego State University threw angry questions at the dean of the college of sciences, asking, in the words of one, “Why me? Why us? Why are we being robbed?”

Dean Donald Short conceded that a robbery of sorts was taking place but said he was powerless to stop it, and that chemistry--long considered a staple on most college campuses--would have to be slashed.

“This isn’t basketball they’re talking about--this is chemistry,” said one student at the meeting in the Chemistry-Geology Building. “How can they justify it?”

Short said the state budget crisis demands that 14 of the department’s 23 professors--13 of whom are tenured--be eliminated under a proposal being considered and likely to be adopted unless all California State University employees take one-year 10% pay cuts.

He said it’s also possible that enough senior professors accepting an early-retirement bonus plan would waylay the recommended cuts in one of the oldest departments at SDSU, with 104 undergraduates and 50 graduate students.

Short said the likely scenario--and the medicine that all chemistry majors should prepare themselves to swallow--is that the 13 chemistry professors will lose their livelihoods, and SDSU students will have their academic lives altered substantially.

The tone of the meeting was tense and hostile, and several students said later that many of Short’s vague answers made no sense and offered no reassurance.

“He would like us to swallow this. He would just like us to sit back and see if it all works out,” said Peggy Goodes, 24, a senior biology major, who said her course of study would be compromised because biology majors need chemistry classes, especially pre-med students, such as her.

“I think the cuts need to be more across the board,” Goodes said. “He needs to look at other departments. He didn’t want to answer the question, ‘Why chemistry?’ He never gave us an answer.”

Short said he was merely following orders, that the mandate of SDSU President Thomas B. Day was to make cuts “deep and narrow,” to avoid precisely the sort of across-the-board slashes that chemistry majors find so intolerable.

Short termed the state’s budgetary needs “irrational” and said that he, like many college administrators, were having to make rational decisions in the face of circumstances that make no sense. Students asked why the school’s administration was being spared budget cuts.

“It’s a very difficult situation when the university is placed in the position of throwing away excellence. It makes absolutely no sense,” Short said. “Which, again, gets back to the whole question of why me, why us. There isn’t a good answer. It comes down to very fine detail, and, in a rational world, it makes no sense.”

When asked, “Why chemistry?” Short said he couldn’t discuss the matter to anyone’s satisfaction and therefore wouldn’t entertain the question or a discussion involving it.

“The message you’re sending is that you don’t regard chemistry as being part of the core, or the infrastructure, of the university,” one student said.

“I’m very reluctant to get into specific reasons of why chemistry,” Short said. “It would not be proper to do so, since many of the reasons involve comparing specific people in the chemistry department with people in other departments, and I can’t get into that. I won’t.

“I’m caught in a peculiar circumstance of this very complicated calculus of how do you choose who to cut, how deeply do you cut . . . that is difficult to understand. It simply shook out that way, at this point in time.”

Later, Short said in an interview that similar cuts in biology, for instance, would directly affect the school’s contribution to the lucrative biotech industry in San Diego--and therefore, biology was spared.

“Most of the biotech program would have been gone,” Short said. “And, if you look at the mission of SDSU, you have to look at the fact that we must mirror the industrial demand. We have a huge biotech industry in San Diego.”

As it is, Short said he was “troubled” by having to cut two-thirds of the faculty in chemistry, which provides many courses for the school’s pre-med majors.

“For two years in a row, this university has sent more students to Harvard Medical School than any other school on the West Coast,” Short said. “That includes USC, Berkeley, Stanford and Cal Tech.”

Larry Bennett, a chemistry professor with 22 years service at SDSU, said the cuts were politically motivated, and he accused Short of not being more open-minded about making the slashes more unilateral.

“Graduate students will not want to come here. New students will not want to come here,” Bennett said angrily. “We serve 17 different majors. But this whole department is being wiped off the face of the earth, except for marginal service to other departments.

“I think you could tell he has some hostility for this department--the exact nature of it, he’s not willing to reveal. Research at this university started in this department. These people being laid off elevated research to a new level. We offered the first joint doctoral degree,” Bennett said, referring to a program shared with UC San Diego that began in the 1960s.

“Now we become the first chemistry department in the history to receive anything close to this level of devastation. Now, we’ll make news all over the world--for getting wiped out, and that will be our reputation. Anyone who wants to come here for science, but especially chemistry, will have serious second thoughts.”

Short simply refused to discuss allegations that he has a bias against the chemistry department. Bennett said the proposed slashes may occur because chemistry fails to generate the same kind of research money that it once did or that biology does now.

Short suggested a plan for students whereby they could finish their degree requirements, one that was met with unbridled skepticism, and at times, sneers and derisive laughter.

He asked students to provide names, addresses, phone numbers and a detailed accounting of all courses needed before they can graduate. He promised that, with tolerance and patience, he could accommodate their requests.

“And we will sit down and essentially tailor a plan for every individual student,” Short said.

“But how ?” one irate student asked. “The numbers don’t add up. You say you’re not going to waive any classes, and that we’ll still have chemistry, but with 14 fewer professors, I fail to see how it can happen. You’ve basically said that everyone can have all their chemistry classes, but, unless through some strange quirk, everyone needs the same class , I fail to see how it can happen.”