Audit Clears Managers of Deaf Center

An audit begun after the forced resignation of the director of CSUN’s National Center on Deafness has found that the center’s financial difficulties were caused by overstaffing and an increase in students’ demands for services.

Cal State Northridge administrators said the audit found no misappropriation of funds or intentional mismanagement of the center’s $1.2-million 1989-90 budget, which was nearly exhausted by February, four months early.

“It was a very complicated set of circumstances,” said Bob Suzuki, vice president for academic affairs. “Things were not well looked after.”

An internal audit, expected to be completed next week, calls for cutting clerical and student positions from the center in an effort to keep the center financially solvent through the end of the semester. Even so, Suzuki said, CSUN will have to spend about $50,000 to subsidize interpreting services, which help deaf students attend regular CSUN classes.

The director of the deaf services center, Victor H. Galloway, resigned March 6 after administrators accused him of mismanaging center funds.

Galloway has acknowledged that expenditures got out of control, primarily because the number of students, as well as their needs and demands for interpreters, mushroomed this year.

Besides the additional interpreter costs, Suzuki said, the center became slightly top-heavy in clerical and professional positions after moving into a new, $2.7-million building a year ago.

“They had just moved into a new building, they had a lot of space,” he said. “I think they began to think very expansively. I think there were a lot of good intentions about trying to expand the scope and all of that, but unfortunately they didn’t have sufficient funds to expand that far.”

To cut costs, CSUN administrators plan to transfer at least one and possibly two center secretaries to other areas of the college, Suzuki said. The center will save about $5,000 by farming its work study students out to other departments. Center travel accounts have been frozen and supply purchases will be cut back.

During the summer, administrators will try to solicit additional funds from the federal and state government to run the center in the future, he said. One proposal is to tie the center’s budget to the number of students enrolled there.