CSULB Braces for Worst : Budget: The university seeks to cut $13.2 million. An estimated 1,000 classes and hundreds of jobs could be lost.

Cal State Long Beach officials have begun preparing for the worst, a $13.2-million budget cut that could eliminate classes, faculty, staff, and the only accredited art museum in the state university system.

An estimated 1,000 classes may be eliminated in the fall, forcing students to delay graduations next year until required courses become available.

Last week, university officials announced that they will either lay off or not rehire 506 full- and part-time lecturers and 249 staff members, most of them by July 1.

In addition, a university task force has recommended that the University Art Museum be closed and 49er football be eliminated or downgraded to save money.

Officials are trying to whittle $13.2 million from the university’s $155-million budget in anticipation of a dramatic decrease in state funds next year.

“The cuts will come from everywhere,” CSULB President Curtis L. McCray said. In fact, he said, they may signal the first phase of what he sees as the gradual shift of education from something that happens at a university to a process that will someday occur mostly on computer screens and video terminals.

“I suspect that economics and the environment will force us to (conclude) that it doesn’t make sense for 31,000 people to congregate in the same place,” McCray said. “Eventually all of us will begin to experiment with new ways of teaching, ways in which technology can be used to educate. I think we’re watching a transformation in public higher education in California as we know it.”

In the short run, he said, the layoffs will reduce the university’s 34,000 enrollment by about 3,000 students. Many will leave simply because they won’t be able to get the classes they want. The process has been aided, McCray said, by the fact that the university stopped accepting applications from freshmen on April 15 and transfer students on May 1. Applications last year were accepted through the middle of June.

McCray said he had informed the Cal State chancellor’s office of the need for the faculty and staff layoffs in a letter last week.

University officials will now begin negotiating with union representatives regarding the details, he said. Officials said 57 full-time lecturers who have been at the university for at least six years and 383 full- or part-time lecturers who are on temporary contracts will be eliminated. No tenured or tenure-track professors will be laid off, McCray said. Specific decisions on who will go, he said, will be made by individual department heads in the next several weeks.

Jack Munsee, president of the local chapter of the California Faculty Assn., which represents the instructors on campus, said he would be meeting with university officials soon to discuss whether some of the layoffs can be avoided. “I think it’s tragic,” he said of the university’s action eliminating the positions.

And Eugene Prince, president of the campus California State Employees Assn., which represents non-teaching staffers such as clerks, laborers and custodians, said the pending layoffs would have a drastic effect on campus services. “It will affect the operations of the university,” he said. “We’re really at (rock) bottom now.”

McCray said the current financial problem stems from the governor’s proposed budget for 1991-92. It reflects significant losses in state revenue because of the decline in the economy and increased costs of services such as prisons and welfare for a burgeoning population.

The $13.2-million reduction at CSULB was ordered by the chancellor’s office of the state university system. The Long Beach campus was one of several in the 20-campus system ordered to cut back on expenses. Earlier this year, McCray set up the task force of administrators, faculty, students and other university staff members to recommend specific areas in which the cuts could be made.

Last week, the task force published a sweeping 86-page report recommending immediate trims in the operating budgets of a number of programs. Looking to future savings, the task force also recommended the eventual elimination or downgrading of football and gradual phasing out of the University Art Museum.

All the recommendations, according to university spokeswoman Toni Beron, must be approved by the president.

Among other things, the group called for immediate reductions of 15% and 25% respectively in the operating budgets of the athletic department and the University Art Museum, followed by the gradual downgrading or elimination of football and the phasing out of the museum over the next two years.

Additionally, the task force’s report calls for spending reductions of 41% for the university-owned KLON radio station, 33% for University Television, 15% for the Center for International Education and 13% for the Center for Public Policy.

These particular programs were cited for the stiffest cuts, according to the report, because they are not directly involved in classroom instruction.

While McCray said he was ready to accept most of the recommendations outright, he said he would form independent committees to examine the football program and art museum to determine if they can be saved.

The mood on campus during last week’s commencement exercises was glum, with speaker after speaker warning graduates of the economic perils facing higher education in California.

At the art museum, a quiet, art-lined haven for students and visitors alike, administrators bitterly criticized the cuts as students removed their works for the summer.

“You can’t get a good education unless you are visually literate,” said Connie Glenn, the museum’s director.

Since its founding 18 years ago, she said, the art museum--a 10,000-square-foot facility on the fifth floor of the campus library and the only accredited museum of its kind in the Cal State system--has become a major venue for art lovers in Southern California. In addition to showing the works of some of the university’s estimated 1,200 art majors, she said, the museum exhibits as many as 17 major artists a year, attracting about 55,000 people, mostly students. The institution receives all but $388,000 of its $1.2-million annual budget from grants and donations, Glenn said.

“You don’t learn about art in a darkened room with a slide anymore,” said Glenn, adding that the museum’s closure could seriously jeopardize accreditation of the university’s art department. “It’s just an inadequate way of learning,” she said.

Luis Tentindo, a 21-year-old art major, agreed. “I think it’s terrible,” he said of the possible closure as he removed two oil paintings from the annual student art exhibit, which closed last week and could have been the museum’s last. “I’m very sad about it.”

Elsewhere on campus other students complained bitterly as the realities of the cuts and their effects began to sink in.

Lesley Buchanan, a liberal arts major, said she would probably have to postpone her scheduled December graduation. To earn her degree, she said, she needs one more anthropology course. But because of the cuts, she said, she could not get the class in the fall.

“I’m upset,” Buchanan said. “I’m 25 years old and I want to start my career.”

Heather Wilson, 21, said that she had been forced to give up a part-time job as a teacher’s aide to accommodate a changing course schedule. She said fall classes were not available.

And Kelly Dufrene, an interior design major, said she was forced to attend summer school and pay an extra tuition of $278 to take a required course that would not be available in September.

“I don’t feel good about being here,” said Dufrene, 21. “I’d rather be spending my summer making money for the fall. If you have to go to school you can’t work. It’s a vicious circle.”