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Sonoma State Is Eliminating Athletics, Slashing Several Degree Programs to Cut Budget

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A Sonoma State basketball player guards a Stanford player at Maples Pavilion in 2009.  (Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Updated 6:14 p.m. Wednesday

Sonoma State University is eliminating its entire athletic department, dropping several degree programs and closing or merging some academic departments in a major cost-cutting effort, officials announced Wednesday.

Additionally, the university will cut 46 faculty positions, four management positions and 12 staff positions, interim President Emily Cutrer said.

The athletic director is notifying student-athletes and coaching staffs of the decision to eliminate all Division II athletics on Wednesday, Cutrer said, and athletes who choose to remain students at Sonoma State will still be eligible for scholarships as long as they meet their current terms.

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Sonoma State is facing a projected budget deficit of $23.9 million, and the California State University system as a whole could be staring down a $1 billion shortfall in the 2025–26 academic year as funding and enrollment both shrink while costs continue to rise.

Sonoma State’s enrollment has plummeted 38% from its 2015 peak, Cutrer said in a message to the campus community, and efforts it has already made to trim spending are not enough.

Leaders of the CSU Employees Union, which represents thousands of support staff at Sonoma State and the system’s 22 other campuses, blasted the deep cuts and said they will be meeting with students “to make plans to fight for a better path forward.”

“Sonoma State’s plan for massive layoffs and elimination of whole programs — including student athletics — can only mean one thing: The University is waving a white flag and signaling it sees no future for itself,” said Michael Cullinane, a 21-year employee of the Sonoma State library and president of the campus’ CSUEU chapter. “A campus with very few courses, no athletics, and a workforce so reduced they struggle to meet the needs of their student body is not going to attract prospective students.”

Nicholas Arnold, who works in information technology at Sonoma State, said staff members were shocked by the breadth and scale of the cuts.

“People knew that layoffs were on the table, but I don’t know that people knew the extent of what that would look like,” said Arnold, who is also a CSUEU labor representative. “I’m not surprised that there were cuts. I just don’t know that we’re going to be able to solve the budget issues by eliminating staff.”

In addition to the elimination of athletics and reductions in faculty and staff, the university is closing the departments of art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theater/dance and women and gender studies.

It will no longer offer the following degree and certificate programs: administrative services credential in educational leadership and special education; art history BA; art studio BFA; dance BA; earth and environmental sciences BA; economics BA; education leadership MA; English MA; French BA; geology BS; German minor; global studies BA; history MA; interdisciplinary studies BA; interdisciplinary studies MA; philosophy BA; physical science BA; physics BA; physics BS; public administration MPA; Spanish MA; theatre arts BA; women and gender studies BA.

All ethnic studies programs — currently including the departments of American multicultural studies, Chicano and Latino studies and Native American studies — will be consolidated into one department offering a single major. The anthropology and human development programs will also merge, as will liberal studies programs.

“People are distraught. There were some very, very deep cuts,” Arnold said.

The university plans a town hall meeting for 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 30 in the Student Center ballrooms to discuss the program reductions and their fallout.

KQED’s Samantha Lim contributed to this report.

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