Mario Garrett
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
San Diego State's growing contempt for undergrads
San Diego State University is running on a flawed system of public funding and private profits. In August 2010, an article in the Los Angeles Times by Carla Rivera exposed “…evidence that [CSU] officials are improperly depositing public funds into the accounts of nonprofit campus foundations and have failed to correct the problem despite warnings from auditors.” Is this simply a hiccup or a testament of how “state” universities do business? SDSU has multiple layers of funding. In the 2011-12 SDSU budget of $768 million, only 17 percent is coming from state appropriations (while tuition fees comprise 24 percent.) Although state appropriations comprise an increasingly diminishing proportion of the total budget, these funds are the heart of higher education — because state funds exclusively pay for faculty. When faculty bring money in for research or activities, that money is funneled through foundations as private funds — and for which the university takes a proportion, in some case more than 50 percent, as indirect costs (known as facilities and administration costs or F&A). These faculty--and administrators--are given time off to conduct their research or fundraising, using state funds. They are excused from teaching so that they can work full time--with public funds--to bringing in private profits to the university. With this public funding and private-profit model, it is clear that having more administrators and research faculty improves the university’s chances of getting more private money. When state appropriations shrink it behooves administration to offset the loss of funding by attracting private contributions, increasing tuition costs and making classes cheaper. By maintaining a strong administrative core the university ensures a continuing supply of private funds. In order to maintain a large administrative core, SDSU had to cut teaching faculty which resulted in increasing class size, diminished enrollment, limiting offerings and increasing workload for teaching faculty. The numbers of tenured professors within the CSU system have been on the decline since 1987, while part-time faculty (cheaper) are becoming an increasingly larger part of the CSU system. Part-timers rose nationally from 36 percent of the faculty in 1990 to 46 percent in 2003, but by 2008 half of all teaching at the CSU is done by part-timers (49 percent). While the CSU replaced tenured professors with part-time teachers, tenured administrators mushroomed. Ralph D. Westfall crunched the numbers and while full-time faculty in the whole CSU system rose 3.5% between 1975 and 2008, administrators rose 221% If this trend continues, Westfall notes, there could be two administrators per full-time faculty in another generation. What Carla Rivera exposed was not just a hiccup but a culture of doing business within San Diego State University.— March 30, 2013 6:32 p.m.
San Diego State's growing contempt for undergrads
Nothing will change. Despite having some excellent teaching professors, published researchers and students with high GPA, SDSU remains stuck in a quagmire of autocratic administrative practices. With more budget cuts predicted, it is just as predictable that these administrative practices will become more evident. Last year’s settlement with the whistleblower David Ohton for $2.7million (Union Tribune, 2/2/2011) in which “…(Sally) Roush covered up the allegations” is the latest legal settlement where SDSU administrators’ concealment cost Californians money. By settling out of court and not having to admit any wrongdoing, the system protects the very same people that we need to examine. It is business as usual. There remains at SDSU a culture of abuse, mismanagement, ineptitude and/or complacency. University administrators can flaunt federal law (Whistleblower Protection Act) with impunity since they have liability insurance to cover them and their chosen friends. Settlements mean nothing to SDSU that has insurance against such continuing practices. A Kafkaesque travesty of punishing the whistleblowers, while at the same time rewarding other faculty who break university policy (and the law) plagues SDSU repeatedly. History reveals a university littered by such moral failures. In 2009, former Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel, after “improper use of state funds,” resigned and was rewarded by a $136,000 settlement. That same year an employee Courtney Bale was awarded $150,000 for sex discrimination charges that she brought against SDSU. In 2008, swim coach Deena Deardruff Schmidt settled for $1.45 million--again for sex discrimination. In 2005, Athletic Department equipment manager Steve Bartel settled (for $60,000)--a suit with seven allegations, including defamation, discrimination and emotional distress. Most of the time administrators wear down out-of-favor faculty members. Professor Jim Burns, the mechanical engineering professor, experienced three years of harassment, retaliation and obstructionism perpetrated by administrators. He reports that he told SDSU’s Provost Nancy Marlin “You can't say you weren't informed.” The sad part of this tragedy is not that these issues happen; it is that they happen everyday and that there is no one to stop them. By settling out of court, the administrative failings remain hidden. There is no public outcry because there is no pointing finger. The CSU has bought a get-out-of-jail-free card. By having state-funded insurance that protect administrators and their friends from prosecution, they can act with impunity. However, whenever these administrative failings happen, we, as an institution, lose a little bit more integrity. With an ever-increasing administrative layer that are accountable to no one the priorities of an educational establishment changes. ______ Mario Garrett is a professor of gerontology at San Diego State University.— March 28, 2013 3:39 a.m.