The University of California at Merced is the target of a group of 23 San Diego professors who have proposed that the state UC system shutter the campus to save money.
The proposal was written as a letter to leaders at the UC San Diego campus and University Office of the President. The letter was sent anonymously Wednesday afternoon to the Sun-Star.
As part of a three-point plan, the professors suggested that either one or two campuses should be closed to create an eight- or nine-campus system. They also put Riverside and Santa Cruz on the chopping block.
UCSD professor Andrew Scull, chairman of the sociology department, confirmed that he had written the letter. Twenty-two other department chairs in San Diego also signed it.
Officials at UC Merced and the University Office of the President passed the idea off as an improbable course of action crafted by employees upset by impending pay cuts. "At a time such as now, when the UC Office of the President is proposing systemwide salary reductions in the form of pay cuts and furloughs, it is no surprise that employees would go public with alternate plans of action," UC Merced spokeswoman Tonya Luiz said.
UC President Mark Yudof said he was utterly opposed to closing campus doors.
"I am 100% behind Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz, and do not see the call to reduce expenditures on those campuses, beyond their proportionate share of the systemwide deficit, as a solution to our budgetary ills," Yudof said in a statement to the Sun-Star.
Scull said he received an e-mail from the University Office of the President thanking him for the budget suggestions.
Pete King, a spokesman at the systemwide offices in Oakland, said an automatic response is generated for each sender due to the high volume of responses.
Scull said the letter was crafted after an informal meeting in June at which UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox explained how systemwide cuts would affect the San Diego campus.
"It was disastrous," Scull said of the cuts to the San Diego campus. "It would result in the end of the campus as we know it."
UC must cut costs to cope with a combined $800 million funding shortfall for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years.
The UC Board of Regents is scheduled to meet next week to vote on how to impose an 8% pay cut on all university employees earning more than $46,000 yearly. All other salaries -- with the exception of student workers -- would be cut 4%.
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