Pay Cut Might Stop Ax Poised Over SDSU Jobs : Education: Day says he will press for the option in order to save departments targeted for elimination.

The elimination next fall of nine academic departments at San Diego State University, along with deep faculty and course cuts in nine others, will go forward unless all California State University employees take one-year, 10% pay cuts or enough senior professors accept an early-retirement bonus plan.

That sober message, albeit tinged with a ray of hope, was delivered Monday by SDSU President Thomas Day to the executive committee of the faculty Academic Senate in an unusual session before an angry and at times raucous audience of more than 400 students and professors.

Day promised students he will press CSU trustees to begin negotiations both for a generous “golden handshake” retirement package and a temporary salary rollback at their meeting in Long Beach today.

“I wouldn’t want to hold out false hopes,” Day warned his audience, many of whom remained skeptical of his motives in making cuts that will affect 193 tenured and non-tenured professors and lecturers, out of 1,400 total, and about 2,500 students, out of a total of about 31,000.

“But I’m somewhat more optimistic than I was” last week, Day said. At that time, he discounted the possibility of salary cuts or other mechanisms to forestall for a semester or more the $11.5 million, or 8.5%, in additional academic slashes ordered last week by CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz for all campuses.

A salary rollback would be much cleaner than the retirement plan, Day said later Monday, because the retirement of several professors in one department would not automatically help out faculty in another threatened department.

Day said he has spoken to his peers at several other CSU campuses, and that they have indicated interest among professors and other employees for a pay cut as an alternative, even though in their minds it sends a dangerous message to legislators that the state’s educational crisis can be solved through salary rollbacks. All nine unions that represent employees in the CSU system would have to agree to such a move.

Professor Michael Seitz, the SDSU representative to the California Faculty Assn. and a member of the senate executive committee, reiterated Monday the association’s willingness to talk about a one-year salary cut.

“At least 300 faculty (at SDSU) have told me they are willing to look at a one-year sacrifice,” Seitz told the meeting. But, he added, “I’m not talking for all 1,400.”

Similarly, many students have indicated that they may be more willing to swallow a proposed 40% increase in academic fees--after months of intense lobbying against the proposal by Gov. Pete Wilson--if the money will help soften the impact of academic cuts otherwise inevitable because of state budget shortages.

But, during a day of sharp contrasts at the Montezuma Mesa campus, there remained a great deal of anger at Day for his method of making the cuts.

While hundreds of demonstrating students pounded on the glass windows of Aztec Center and forced chemistry Professor Charles Stewart, the Academic Senate chairman, to move the meeting to a larger room, others within the same center continued their intense preparation for final exams, which began Monday.

In fact, the move to a larger hall disrupted a final exam in Mechanical Engineering 310, where students were in the midst of demonstrating their creations, to move across the floor and manipulate or pick up objects.

Day, acting on the advice of the Academic Senate, explained that he made “deep and narrow” cuts in 18 of the university’s 70 or so academic departments rather than continue the across-the-board reductions undertaken this year, when the budget was reduced 15%.

Scheduled for elimination are the departments of anthropology; religious studies; family studies and consumer sciences; industrial studies; health sciences; aerospace engineering; Russian; German and natural sciences, and the recreation, parks and tourism department.

Significant cuts will be made in art, chemistry, mathematics, physics, psychology, sociology and teacher education, in part because they have senior professors whose layoff will save substantial money.

Stewart’s chemistry department will lose two-thirds of its 27 professors, a bitter pill for him personally.

“I don’t believe the department deserves this,” he said. “But, as the Academic Senate chair, I have no choice but to go along with it.”

But Stewart’s agitation Monday was clearly on display when, in response to student catcalling, he banged his gavel so hard that a piece of wood broke off and sailed behind his ear.

“I come from chemistry, I know about these cuts, in case you don’t know,” he told the students.

One of his colleagues, chemistry Professor Clay Sharts, donned his academic robes and a sign saying, “Chemistry Professor, Cal Tech Ph.D, Will Work for Food,” and paraded to the applause of students.

At the meeting, students continued to argue with Day over elimination of entire departments, despite his explanation that across-the-board cuts, because they would be made by seniority, would target especially young, recently hired professors who are considered the future of the university. In addition, most of SDSU’s nonwhite professors tend to be more recent hires under its fledgling affirmative-action program.

Day said Monday that his decision on which departments to eliminate was based on department quality, importance to the general community and other criteria laid out by the Academic Senate in a restructuring report issued in January.

Students in the affected departments learned few specifics Monday of how the university will handle their plight.

Day said discussions over the next two weeks will determine whether certain requirements will be waived, whether related courses can be substituted and whether other universities, such as UC San Diego, can be persuaded to offer needed courses for SDSU students caught short.

English professor Jerry Farber thundered at Day for not making deep cuts in the athletic department--to the applause of many students in attendance--and said that, although he might be willing to cut his pay for colleagues, “I’m not willing to have one dollar of my salary go to subsidize your football team.”

Day said he has ordered athletic department cuts, to be announced next week, but added that even a complete shutdown of all athletics would save no more than $2 million in state money, far short of the funds needed to forestall academic cuts.

He reaffirmed his opposition to taking SDSU from the most competitive rank of intercollegiate athletics, saying that many people in the university and the San Diego community support SDSU because of its football and basketball teams.