No wonder the search details were so secret. The sole job qualification was "demonstrated obedience to the Chancellor's Office." #FireMildredGarcia #ReplaceTheCSUBoardOfTrustees

Unless the new President repudiates and repairs what the old President did, it won't matter. SSU needs to be more vocational? SRJC has Art, Art History, Theater, and Dance. This was never about vocations. This was about destroying SSU. And that program is still being executed. #FireMildredGarcia

Good news, the problem with the Admissions Office has been solved. Now, let's get to the REAL problem: Making sure that there is something to be admitted to. Reinstate Philosophy, Geology, Art History, Theater, Dance, Language, WGS, Athletics, Physics, Economics, etc.

Money rates SSU one of America's Best Colleges. If SSU's administration commits to a program of academic and administrative excellence, including hiring the best people, not the most needy people, because the mission matters, rather than competing with its vocational neighbor SRJC, it might be true.

$90M. But still no way to restore Philosophy, Theater, Dance, or Art History, or to even discuss it. They want to turn SSU into a vocational school. But even junior colleges with vocational programs, like SRJC, have Theater and Art programs. Nothing makes sense.

Legislators: The law requires that you reinstate Division 2 Athletics at SSU. Will you commit to doing so? Cutrer: No. The defiance expressed in this meeting is the voice of Mildred Garcia speaking through her meat-shield, Emily Cutrer. Change will have to start at the top. #DissolveCSUTrustees

Assembly member Chris Rogers discusses the implementation plan.

Senate President Mike McGuire discusses $9M in discretionary funds that can be used to restore programs.

Assembly member Chris Cabaldon describes the extraordinary budget commitment from the legislature:

Almost ready to begin.

Live from the SSU legislative hearings. Someone thinks we don’t care. We care. It’s Standing Room Only.

We'll be there today. I hope the legislators are as angry as we are. CSU lied, they said the cuts were due to the budget, but then when the legislators restored the budget, they made the cuts anyway. This is public corruption. It is lies. It is misappropriation of funds. CSU Board of Trustees.

Cutrer's disastrous leadership: "The school will have to rebuild its entire athletic department from scratch, including hiring a new athletic director, coaches, administrative support staff and recruiting enough athletes to field at least 10 teams, to be eligible for full NCAA membership."

"Whatever fraction of the $9 million in discretionary funds ends up being spent to undo Cutrer’s sweeping reductions, it’s likely to disappoint...faculty and hundreds of students who’ve been organizing and protesting since January to restore programs and bring back downsized professors."

Cutrer's disastrous leadership led to this tragedy: "Although the deal includes $8 million over three years for Seawolves athletics, none of the teams is expected to return to the playing field next year. Most of the athletes transferred, and many of the coaches took other jobs."

It was all a lie. The budget wasn't the reason for the cuts, it was an excuse. Once the budget was restored, with even more, many of the same cuts will remain. Cutrer must be held accountable for lying to the campus community for six months.

You can tell how bad things have gotten when CSU Board of Trustees and the State of Ohio's assault on higher education are this tightly aligned. If the Board won't get rid of Garcia, then the board itself has got to go, by act of the legislature.

Press Democrat asked all the right questions, but they mostly got non-answers, until the end, when Mills explained that the liberal arts deliver the most important job skills. But nobody will ever explain how killing the liberal arts gives you more of the job skills that the liberal arts give. #SSU

This article contains factual errors and misdiagnoses the core problem, which is not the GE pattern. But it gets some things very right, especially the importance of making the liberal arts accessible to new populations, rather than further isolating the liberal arts in elite schools.

More assaults on CA higher education. The right move would be to invest in higher education and make CA higher education the envy of the country, and a reason why people move to California. The economic impact would be extraordinary. No reason to tear it down.

Useless article suggests that it is "unrealistic" to expect Philosophy and athletics as SSU, that massive cuts are inevitable. But there is nothing inevitable about the enrollment decline. It had a cause. The cause can be undone. The PD lacks the vision to see such a simple thing.

This article assumes that if you go to college you'll get the kind of education that has historically proved very valuable. But if they go to SSU, where Philosophy isn't even offered, and the experience is increasingly tailored to vocational training, it might not be true any more.

#SSU is not the only one disastrously and thoughtlessly deploying AI in education. "...We need to convince the people in charge of our schools — especially our elementary schools — that the zealous embrace of [artificial intelligence] is not the way forward."

The best you could say for Chancellor Garcia is that she is willing to shoot one of the CSU campuses in order to get money for the others. That makes her a hostage-taking terrorist -- at best. She must be removed.

SSU's disinterest in reversing the cuts, even as new money arrives, proves that the budget was only an excuse for what they wanted to do anyway, and they're still going to do it anyway, whether there is a budget crisis or not. Remove Chancellor Garcia.

BUDGET CRISIS CANCELLED!!! But will the cuts that were allegedly required by the budget crisis be rolled back, or was the "budget crisis" not the problem after all, but only an excuse? Time will tell.

There is no budget crisis. If somebody engages in self-harm, you take away the knife, you don't follow their behavior to its logical conclusion. California needs to protect CSU from itself.

The Court is saying that if you don’t want Chancellor Garcia to gut the CSU, then fire her. You hired her. Fire her. So that’s the next order of business.

Disappointing. But courts are guardians of process. If CSU wants to self-destruct, it is allowed to do so, as long as they do it intentionally, which is what is happening. It's why the Courts can't save the federal government from DOGE. Only the people can take back these institutions from misrule.

WRONG: "The challenge of creating jobs the community needs, is where SSU needs to lead." Actually, CSU's job is to create citizens. It's not a vocational school. It has a higher purpose -- we need effective thinkers who can build meaningful communities and contribute to society many different ways.

CSU's new program represents a staggering breach of trust. But OpenAI's role is worse. It has engineered a system that encourages dependency under the guise of empowerment, and monetizes institutional confusion and policy lag: It is an ethical regression dressed in futuristic branding.

"Spending $17 million on an 18-month contract with OpenAI to provide all students and faculty with ChatGPT seems frivolous, to say the least." But it's actually much worse than that, because if students misuse the service, which they do, then the entire purpose of the CSU is threatened.

Good journalism clarifies issues. This article muddies, despite admitting that capital spending is a different budget. This article obscures the one story: Enrollment, which requires Marketing and Academic development, which requires competent leadership, which we do not have. End of story.

Anyone who thinks we don't need Dance at Sonoma State, Dance isn't serious or important, Dance is expendable, Dance doesn't do anything in the real world, ought to spend a few minutes with this video: #AttackOnSSU

Caught in the act!

The measure of #CSU's mismanagement: CSU forecast "5-8%" enrollment decline as a result of its cuts. When the real number comes out, everyone will know where they pulled their fake number from, and everyone will know the definition of incompetent management.

I don't know why Judge English thinks he halted the cuts even temporarily. I went to Sea Wolf Decision Day. Philosophy wasn't there. The cut programs weren't there. That means that the implementation of the cuts continues, and at the most devastating moment -- when new students arrive.

And to tolerate a state political system -- led by the Governor -- that is dismantling California's higher education system from within. The CSU Board of Trustee's aren't fighting it; they are leading the charge.

Speaking of those who would betray Sonoma County… www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news...

When your University President quits and three years later CSU still hasn’t begun to search for a permanent replacement.

The universe could never be more on-messsage than when raining all over Sea Wolf Decision Day.

“The loss of this department would significantly impact organizations like Verity that depend on its student volunteers to sustain our critical services,” said Verity’s Executive Director Rebecca Fein in a letter to SSU administration."

Do not dismantle higher education. It is a national strength — the envy of the world.

"The vote of no confidence underscores the urgent need for a leadership approach that prioritizes transparency, shared governance, and the well-being of the SSU community...Faculty, students, and staff continue to advocate for a more inclusive and sustainable future for Sonoma State University.​"

"Stories like what is happening at Sonoma State and has already occurred at West Virginia are part of a larger and terrible trend..." And conservatives call the liberal arts "'libtards,' instead of what they really mean: an expansion of one’s knowledge of people and the world..."

They’re talking about the federal government, but they might as well be talking about the CSU in general and #SSU in particular.

As the CSU faces ongoing financial mismanagement, faculty layoffs, and resource reallocation, the events at Millie Watch...served as yet another reminder of the growing divide between the administration’s rhetoric and the reality on campuses.

Why does #SSU in any way resemble what's happening in Republican-led anti-DEI states? California must embrace higher education.

Newsom wants 8% cut for higher education, but less than 2% cut for prisons. These cutbacks are already having an impact: The UC recently announced a systemwide hiring freeze, and #SSU is laying off tenured faculty and eliminating 20 degree programs, six departments and all intercollegiate sports.