Recently, a development from CA Governor Gavin Newsom stated that the CSU system will be faced with a 7.95% reduction in funding (about $375 million). This dramatic decrease alone hurts students because it would affect the quality of mental health services, cause a hiring freeze for faculty and staff, and defund other basic services. Being the largest college on campus, the College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral and Social Sciences (CHABBS) has already faced many challenges, including lack of resources and course offerings for certain departments. This proposed budget cut would be an additional burden on students and faculty when they are already faced with various obstacles. 

Cutting humanities funding won’t just harm CHABBS majors, but it would harm everyone. Everyone not only benefits from learning English, history, and communications, but students also find benefits from hands-on learning: such as Internship and Service Learning programs, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) courses, Visual and Performing Arts courses, and the Ethnobotany Garden, to name a few. Of course, there are resources in the community and with other institutions, but there are already many barriers to accessing them (e.g. cost, work/school schedule, distance, etc.). The communities built from these classes are where students, including myself, have gained the most skills and have found their closest friends. With funding cuts taking away access to these resources on campus, it diminishes the sense of community and transferrable skills needed for success after graduation.  

This would also cause layoffs for extremely valuable faculty and staff members. Professors don’t just lecture and grade exams, they serve as mentors and guides for their students. Taking them out of the university would harm everyone since they are integral to their respective departments. Some professors also run concentration programs and majors completely on their own, meaning that without them, the program wouldn’t exist. Inevitably, this would lead to shifts in aspirations or students leaving the university. If it weren’t for one of my professors mentoring me for an entire school year, I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself. It is also unfair to the professors who depend on their jobs for their livelihoods, as they would lose benefits and their income. 

Whereas other colleges get job fairs and networking opportunities on campus, many CHABBS majors must rely on outside events, which many of them require commuting far distances. From my personal experience, I’ve had to drive all the way to San Diego for a job fair. This event was one of the few easily accessible ones for my field, thus I was willing to make the drive from my apartment in Vista. While it was an amazing experience and I gained lots of valuable connections with companies in my field, I just thought to myself “what if someone had no way to access these events?” The event was in a part of San Diego that was only accessible by car.  

With the budget cut, this leads to the question of whether something on campus will ever happen. It already sets a massive barrier to those who don’t have a reliable form of transportation, live farther away, or the date of the event doesn’t work.  

For CHABBS majors, without certain course offerings, they are unable to finish their degrees on time or they’re unsure of how to pursue their desired field. CSUSM currently has a 24% graduation rate (for 4 years starting as a freshman). As a result of inadequate resources and support, students end up taking longer than 4 years to finish their degree, with many of them not having the finances for tuition or other commitments (family, full-time work, or simply don’t have the capacity to continue).  

While I’m lucky to be graduating in 4 years, I’ve also faced the struggle of finding classes within a slim list of offerings that interested me, so I’ve ended up taking classes that offered little of what I needed for my career interests. 

Overall, the budget cut is an asinine proposal which hurts students and faculty. For many, people attend college to discover and pursue their dreams, and the decrease in funding will only make it harder for many to make that happen. The Cal State system prides itself on preparing students for the real world, which is sadly dependent on state funding and tuition. The budget cut will only have serious consequences, which creates more obstacles for humanities and social science departments.