Earlier this month, the Palm Desert City Council ratified a letter in opposition to proposed budget cuts to the California State University (CSU) system.
“This is an investment,” Mayor Jan Harnik said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “And if we don’t make sure that everyone has relevant education, we fail.”
The letter, sent in late February and addressed to State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), calls on the elected officials to not only oppose the proposed $375 million cut in state funding for the CSU system, but also uphold the state’s commitments to the system as outlined in the Multi-Year Compact.
“The CSU plays a vital role in fostering social mobility for thousands of California students and their families, graduating over 125,000 individuals each year,” Harnik wrote in the letter. “Beyond being educational institutions, CSU campuses serve as economic engines for their local communities and are key partners in strengthening our public sector workforce.”
Harnik said her decision to write the letter was simple and comes down to the time, money and energy the city, and region at large, has put into the CSU San Bernardino Palm Desert campus.
“Currently, there are four beautiful buildings on the campus, and not any state money has been used to build those,” she said. “That’s all private funds or city funds that have been used to build those buildings.”
And later this year, a groundbreaking ceremony is set to be held for the campus’ new Student Services Building, partially funded by a $79 million state budget appropriation the school received in 2022.
“The one thing we know is we can’t stop now, and we are going to do whatever we can to move this forward and to continue building relevant, accessible education for every community member in our region and beyond,” Harnik said. “We will keep speaking up, and we will continue doing whatever we need to do to make sure that there’s access to that education and access to a better life.”
The council’s ratification came days after a student action at CSU San Bernardino, led by the Students for Quality Education (SQE) group, calling on the school’s administration to address concerns over rising costs, diminished instructional investment, safety – particularly for undocumented students – and a lack of campus leadership and transparency at CSUSB.
“We do a lot of advocating for students,” Jorge Paz, a member of SQE and education major who expects to graduate this fall, said. “But, we thought, why not just do something as simple as letting them voice their own concerns and write their own letters and just give [the administration] that raw, unfiltered emotions that these students have.”
Julian Olmos, a member of SQE and a history major who expects to graduate in the fall of 2026, said that, as a student, he has seen fewer classes being offered, shorter hours at libraries and student resource centers and growing class sizes.
“On top of that, we’re seeing prices of other things go up,” he said. “Food on campus is really expensive, and the price of parking is now $10 for a day pass.”
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The students delivered more than 170 letters to the school’s administration last Tuesday and, two days later, met with CSUSB President Tomás D. Morales to talk about some of the issues brought up in the letters.
“He stated that there’s a lot of things that he can’t necessarily do, which, to some degree, you know, is validated. There are a lot of state-mandated things that the university has to uphold,” Paz said. “But where we really are trying to get him to do is advocate, really pushing for him to advocate for his students and to be transparent about that advocacy.”
Morales was not immediately available for an interview, but the university sent a statement to The Record that acknowledged the challenges increased expenses can have on students, while also noting that 60% of CSU students systemwide will have their tuition fully covered by grants or waivers.
“The other 40% of CSU undergraduate students either have their tuition partially covered by grants or waivers or have family incomes greater than $127,000,” the statement said.
The statement, which can be read in full at the end of the story, also said that Morales and his cabinet would continue conversations with the student body through Associated Students Inc., the elected student body representatives.
Megan Haynes, an SQE member and English and writing studies major who will be graduating this spring, said that the group had been trying to get a meeting with Morales for months before the letter-writing campaign to no avail.
“It was very challenging,” she said. “And it kind of demonstrates this transparency barrier between the administration and the rest of the student body.”
That transparency barrier extends to faculty as well, according to T.C. Corrigan, a professor in the department of Communication and Media.
“There are moments of relative transparency,” he said. “But there are also efforts to make sure that there’s a sort of division of who has what information on campus in ways that are less good.”
Despite the lack of transparency, Corrigan said he was proud of the students for being able to organize the action and was surprised by the number of issues brought up in the letters.
“Our campus has been, in my estimation, and I’ve heard it from other folks, it’s been a little bit sleepy in terms of activism for some time,” he said. “And this looks promising to me, and I’m optimistic that them being able to get a meeting so quickly with President Morales indicates that there’s opportunities for working constructively.”
Corrigan, who serves as the vice president of the CFA San Bernardino campus chapter, also noted that a lot of the issues facing students, staff and faculty at CSUSB were being felt across the CSU system and pointed to a recent CFA report, “Shortchanging Students: How the CSU is Failing Our Future,” that looked at how money was being spent systemwide and its impacts.
“One thing that it shows is that as the CSU [system] has gotten more diverse, the percentage of funding going to instruction has fallen relative to consultants, cops, campus administrators and capital investments,” Corrigan said. “So while the budgeting starts at the legislature, there are also priorities within the CSU system itself that seem out of whack in terms of how that funding is then divvied up at the system wide and campus levels.”
For Corrigan, it’s clear that there are concerns within the CSU budget stemming from state funding and stagnant or declining enrollment, but he said there were ways for it to be addressed without such large negative impacts on students, staff, faculty and the communities served by the universities.
“Over the last two decades, the university has squirreled away billions in a rainy day fund, and they’ve massively increased executive compensation and administrative bloat,” Corrigan said. “But now that it’s actually raining, they’re asking faculty and students to hold the umbrella.”
Read CSUSB’s full statement below:
We acknowledge any increase in expenses can create a challenge for students. Yet, with this tuition increase that was adopted by the California State University Board of Trustees in September 2023 and that went into effect for the 2024-25 academic year for all 23 CSU campuses, 60 percent of all CSU undergraduate students (those with the greatest financial need) will have their tuition fully covered by grants or waivers, and financial aid will be adjusted to cover the additional cost of tuition. The other 40% of CSU undergraduate students either have their tuition partially covered by grants or waivers or have family incomes greater than $127,000.
The increase allows for additional academic support, early alert systems, outreach and case management efforts to support student success, retention, persistence and graduation. It will also help fund high-impact, hands-on practices such as undergraduate research and internships, as well as wider availability of courses and sections to accelerate students’ time to completing their degree.
Equally important, the current state budget crisis is affecting all 23 California State University campuses. Systemwide, based on the governor’s preliminary spending plan released in January this year, the CSU faces a $375 million cut, or 7.95%, to its 2025-26 operating budget; for CSUSB, that means a projected $18 million reduction in support from the state.
In regard to Palm Desert Mayor Jan C. Harnik’s letter to state Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel opposing the proposed $375 million reduction in state funding, we are fully appreciative of the support from Mayor Harnik and the Palm Desert City Council. And we also appreciate the acknowledgement of the role CSUSB, our Palm Desert Campus and the entire California State University system has as one of the major catalysts of economic growth in the state as we prepare California’s workforce.
At CSUSB and across the CSU, students and faculty are advocating for increased state support through outreach to policymakers, raising awareness about the impacts of the cuts, and emphasizing the importance of the CSU system to California’s workforce and economy. Faculty and staff are also working creatively to maintain program quality despite constrained budgets.
University President Tomás D. Morales and his cabinet have met with the students and will continue conversations with the student body through the Associated Students Inc., the elected student body representatives.
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