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‘They’re Scared to See Our Faces’: Angry Sonoma State Community Protests Wide Cuts

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Sonoma State students march toward Seawolf Plaza, rallying against widespread program cuts as the university grapples with a budget deficit, in Rohnert Park, California, on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)

Hundreds of students and staff gathered at Sonoma State University on Thursday, angry and grieving one week after the school announced massive cuts to academic departments and the elimination of its NCAA athletics program.

The gathering at Seawolf Plaza came as university officials held a town hall to discuss the cuts — a meeting that was shifted to a virtual format because it was “expected to surpass the capacity of any campus facility,” interim President Emily Cutrer said this week. The move angered many students who were hoping for an opportunity to speak with the administrators face-to-face.

Instead, students, faculty members, coaches and groups supporting many of the departments slated to be cut swarmed around a large outdoor screen to watch the meeting.

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Boos erupted from the crowd as Cutrer and other administrators appeared on screen at 1:30 p.m. Students yelled for the interim president to “go back to Texas” and called her a “liar” as she answered questions. They cheered along with others on screen who called for accountability and expressed frustration over the rollout of the cuts.

Natalie Santoyo Martinez, a second-year liberal studies student, said the administration could have chosen to move the town hall to the Green Music Center, or even the courtyard students and staff were gathered in.

“I think they did that only because they’re scared,” she told KQED. “They’re scared of what we have to say, and they’re scared to see our faces, and they’re scared of us crying and pleading with them.”

The cuts were announced Jan. 22 in an email from Cutrer. She said the university would be slashing more than 20 degree programs, six departments and all 11 of its NCAA Division II athletic programs at the end of the academic year in the face of a massive budget deficit.

Since the announcement, students and staff have pushed back, launching a legal fight and amassing more than 5,000 signatures across multiple petitions urging the school to back off its plan to lay off 60 employees and shut down liberal arts degree programs. Departments facing closure have mounted their own resistance.

Owen Anfinson, an associate geology professor who’s been at Sonoma State for a decade, was in Arizona with two of his research students when he was notified that his department would be closed.

Associate geology professor Owen Anfinson, who was one of the 46 faculty members to receive a layoff notice, poses for a photo at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (Gina Castro/KQED)

“We were in the lab, and I get an email that says ‘Budget Deficit Update,’ and I kind of joked with the faculty at the University of Arizona and my colleague from Macalester College that these emails are never good,” he told KQED before the town hall. “Then, reading through paragraph maybe four, all of a sudden, I see that a geology program is terminated, and I look at my colleagues, and I was like, ‘I think I just got laid off.’”

He knew that there were budget cuts coming, and geology had already been slated to consolidate into the physical sciences, losing its department chair and cutting administrative costs. But as a tenured professor, Anfinson didn’t expect to be told he was losing his job in January.

“The day before I received my letter of layoff, I received a letter from the dean of our department encouraging the school to consider my request [to become] a full professor,” he said. “So I just had made it through all levels of review to become a full professor, and the day before essentially being let go.”

Anfinson has two children with his ex-wife in Santa Rosa and is expecting another child the day after his layoff will be made official in July, and now has to consider moving for a job.

“Faculty positions are rare, and they are hard to find and they are hard to get. Personally, it is a tough scenario for my job, my academic career,” he told KQED. “There are no jobs available in the entire country right now. In geoscience, there are maybe 10 academic jobs available, none of which are in my field.”

Anfinson was among a contingent of geology students and professors holding signs with quips like “It’s not our fault” and “Don’t extinct us” who gathered outside the Sonoma State student center — near the campus ballroom where the town hall was originally set to take place.

The timing of the cuts, announced just three days into the spring semester, was another point of frustration for many students, who accused school leaders of waiting until after they had paid tuition to announce that their degree would no longer be available.

“It’s been a true roller coaster of hope and despair,” said Don Romesburg, the Women and Gender Studies department chair. “The administration made far more sweeping cuts to academics and other programs than any of us anticipated, and they made them at an especially cruel time.”

“The academic job cycle is from September to December, so if I’m lucky, I might find a job in like 18 months,” continued Romesburg, who was wearing his doctorate graduation regalia and a sign that said “Hired 2008, Awarded SSU highest teaching honor 2014, Fired 2025.” “It’s really devastating materially for all of us as professors. We don’t know where our paychecks are coming from in August.”

Some students have already signed year-long leases in the area, and others who will want to transfer say the timeline for getting into another California State University campus before next fall has already passed.

Marcus Ziemer, the men’s soccer coach, said the vast majority of the school’s 227 student-athletes have already entered the NCAA transfer portal, but coaches and players with spring seasons are now scrambling to balance continuing to compete while helping players take other campus visits and navigate recruitment negotiations.

Emiria Salzmann, the women’s soccer coach, told KQED last week that most schools looking for a new coach for a fall sport like soccer have already wrapped up their hiring process for the upcoming season.

Sonoma State alumni, students and staff dominated the CSU Board of Trustees meeting’s public comment this week, where the school was required to present a balanced budget that was ultimately accepted by the board.

Lianna Hartmour, a 2007 alum of the Women and Gender Studies Department, one of six being shut down, told the trustees that she owed her career to the degree program at Sonoma State.

“WGS [Women and Gender Studies] is a vital career-based major, which is a stated priority for the CSU system,” she said during public comment on Tuesday. “Like many WGS graduates, I got my first job out of college, where I had my WGS internship. I went to UCLA for grad school because of the WGS research.”

Hartmour is now the president of Sonoma County’s Sexual Assault Prevention, Intervention, and Healing Center and works as a programming director at Zero Breast Cancer, a program aiming to reduce the risk of the disease.

“WGS is vital to employment in Sonoma County and beyond,” she told the trustees.

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