Katie DeBenedetti [00:01:14] Yeah, so it was the first week of classes for the spring semester and there was a all -school email that went out basically saying, you know, we’ve been having these budget issues, everyone’s been aware of them and we’re going to have to make these really big cuts. And that included getting rid of six departments, cutting 20 -degree programs and eliminating all of their NCAA Division II athletics.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:51] What did the university say at the time about why this was happening?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:01:57] So the campus has been struggling with money for years. It’s seeing declining enrollment like a lot of campuses and that accelerated with COVID and it’s also facing two pretty significant funding cuts. One is like this blanket cut of about 8 % to all CSU campuses from Gavin Newsom’s state budget. And then the other is actually from the CSU system. It passed a policy that reduces funding for schools that don’t meet their enrollment targets, kind of punishing them for not hitting their enrollment goals.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:38] You mentioned degree programs, all NCAA Division II athletics cut at Sonoma State, and there’s been really a lot of reaction and also pushback since then, right?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:02:49] There’s been a ton of action pretty immediately after the school announced the cuts. The men’s soccer coaches formed a group called Save Seawolves Athletics and they filed two civil rights complaints against the school for cutting sports, saying that it will disproportionately affect women and students in historically marginalized groups.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:03:22] Jalen Wells, who attended Sonoma State, he is a young NBA player now and he really got his start at Sonoma State and he was in town for NBA All -Star weekend. And so he came up to campus and kind of just spoke about the importance of Sonoma State in his career and how important sports are for the school community at large.
Jaylen Wells [00:03:46] I was kind of under recruited, you know, after the COVID season, you know, I didn’t I didn’t really have many colleges reaching out to me. Sonoma State was one of my three offers I had. So I think a lot of it is bigger than sports. I think we’re not realizing how much of an impact that Sonoma State sports actually has on the community.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:09] And of course, it’s been a couple of weeks now since these cuts at Sonoma State were announced. I guess where has this left the students and professors that you’ve talked with who’ve been impacted by these cuts?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:04:24] So students and professors are really still coming to terms with what’s happened. A lot of the professors I’ve spoken to, like geology professor Owen Anfinson, knew that there were financial troubles and that some staff could be affected, but didn’t expect it to hit tenured professors.
Owen Anfinson [00:04:46] It felt unjust.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:04:48] He’s taught at Sonoma State for 10 years and is really settled in the Bay Area. And now he’s kind of in this holding pattern.
Owen Anfinson [00:04:55] With fires in 2017, a pandemic in 2020. We have survived this. We are recovering. Our numbers show that we’re trying to recover and our geology department is trying to recover.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:05:07] There’s not a ton of geology professor jobs or really professor jobs in general. And the hiring season in academia is usually in the fall. So Anfinson told me he thinks it’s probably not likely he’ll find another permanent role until fall of 2026.
Owen Anfinson [00:05:28] And I was scrolling through my phone the other day. And, you know, half of the photos in my phone are of my family and my friends. But the other half of the photos are of rocks. You know, it’s not just my career, it’s my life. It’s who I am.
Taylor Hodges [00:05:44] A lot of us, like, came to the school to play the sport we love. And so it’s kind of a shock because that’s like the reason we came here.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:05:55] Taylor Hodges is on the women’s soccer team, and she and a lot of teammates have already entered the transfer portal to try to get placed at different schools.
Taylor Hodges [00:06:06] What’s hard for me about needing to transfer is like I’ve made so many friends here, like I’ve made my best friends here and it’s now like putting us in a situation where it’s like I’ll probably never play soccer with them again because we’re going to have to go our own ways.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:23] So, Katie, I mean, I know this all came as a shock to Sonoma State, especially because of the severity of the cuts. Is Sonoma State an outlier here or is what’s happened a sign of sort of what’s to come for other CSU’s?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:06:39] I think yes and no. There are a few things that are unique about Sonoma, including a lot of leadership turnover. They’ve had three presidents since 2022. The university has also pointed to the Tubbs fire in 2017 and generally fires in the region, which have had economic effects on Sonoma and could also be playing a role in students’ decision to come to the area for college, just questioning safety. During that Tubbs fire, the campus had to close for more than a week and the school did encourage students to evacuate.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:15] I remember that.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:07:17] Yeah, but the campus interim president, Emily Cutrer, said that while they’re the first to make cuts, she anticipates other campuses are going to need to in the next couple of years.
Emily Cutrer [00:07:28] All of us are suffering and those that are really suffering are those that are mainly in Northern California. We are facing decreasing enrollment and decreasing state support, and that is leading to making some changes that we just don’t like to take.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:48] I do want to talk about the larger Cal State system. I mean, what else is going on at other campuses in the Bay Area? And I mean, are they struggling with things like low enrollment as well?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:08:00] They are. So a lot of data has shown kind of this trend that CSU enrollment has shifted away from the Northern California campuses specifically and towards the Southern California ones. So other schools in the Bay Area, including Cal State East Bay and SF State, are also going to be getting that 5 % budget cut from the CSU. SF State President Lynn Mahoney announced a fiscal emergency in December. So the student body there has been declining since 2019. And this year, the freshman class is about 20 % smaller than anticipated. And Cal State East Bay is also projecting about a 14 million dollar budget deficit.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:46] Do we have any sense of what that’s going to mean for these schools? I mean, are we also potentially going to see cuts to entire programs or even athletic programs?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:08:58] It’s definitely possible. Mahoney said that announcing a fiscal emergency was kind of just more of an old Senate policy language thing. But it does allow the school to review programs that could be cut or otherwise reorganized. And that’s something that the university says it is considering. In December, lecturers at SF State also found out that they weren’t being assigned classes for this spring. And sections of a lot of freshmen intro classes like English requirements are going to be trimmed way down next fall. And the East Bay campus is doing a lot of similar things. They shut down their Oakland campus and cut women’s water polo last spring. And this year, they discontinued 11 degree programs.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:51] So it sounds like, I mean, cuts are already happening. Lectures are already being laid off at other campuses. Entire degree programs are already being trimmed as well. What is, I guess, being done about all of this? Katie, it seems pretty bleak for the CSU system here.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:10:12] It does. There’s been a lot of activation from local politicians in the Sonoma area. And a big effort that they’re making is just kind of to not only hold the CSU system and Sonoma state leadership accountable for this pretty botched rollout of these cuts, but also to kind of make sure that if and when cuts come to other campuses, they’re done differently. There’s also been a lot of lobbying for restored funding in Governor Newsom’s budget ahead of the May revise. California had, I believe, like a over $300 million budget surplus this year. And so I think a lot of administrations are hoping that Newsom will take some of those funds and bring them back into the CSU’s budgets. But with the LA fires and instability at the federal level, it’s really up in the air.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:15] But it seems like there’s still a lot of people who believe that many of these programs should stick around. I mean, I’m curious about the status of these protests and these lawsuits at Sonoma State. I mean, where do they stand? And is there any sense of whether they’re actually making a difference here?
Katie DeBenedetti [00:11:34] It’s unclear right now. The athletics department is still considering filing a class action lawsuit. And I think a lot of the athletes students and staff affected are gonna have to kind of get moving on finding new places as soon as possible. So even if the cuts did get reversed, there’d be a lot of programs kind of starting from scratch.
Taylor Hodges [00:11:55] I honestly, I feel like the school’s pretty much just going downhill from here.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:11:59] Taylor Hodges, she’s a sophomore and she was thinking that she would play all four years of her college career at Sonoma State. But now she’s entered the transfer portal and she’s looking for another school to go to.
Taylor Hodges [00:12:16] So I’m actually from the Bay Area. My goal with playing collegiate soccer is I didn’t want to be too far away from home. And so that pretty much wipes out another Bay Area school that’s played division two soccer.
Katie DeBenedetti [00:12:27] She told me she’d love to stay in California, but she’s just not sure. And she’ll kind of go where she has to.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:36] Well, Katie, thanks so much for this. I appreciate it.
