[Educationforall] FW: SDSU President Weber considers "local" students a liability to the college's success

Tue Mar 30 06:05:53 UTC 2010

STATEMENT BY PAT WASHINGTON, PH.D.

October 20, 2009
Assemblymember Marty Block
Assembly Select Committee on K-16 Articulation, Access and Affordability

To Examine SDSU President Stephen Weber’s Recent Change to Admission Policies 
and Its Immediate Impact on Local Student

Assemblymember Block, fellow panelists, parents, students and community members.
My name is Pat Washington and I here to represent the San Diego NAACP and because I am a concerned member of the local community, residing in the College/Rolando area near San Diego State University.

Although San Diego State University claims that changes to its admissions policy are driven by the state budget crisis, a pattern of actions over the past decade suggests that the newly implemented changes are more likely fueled by campus administrators’ long-standing desire to restrict local student access to SDSU.  

Indeed, it would appear that discouraging local student enrollment has been a primary focus of SDSU’s administration ever since President Weber was hired in 1996.  For instance, according to SDSU Faculty Senate Minutes of December 7, 1999, President Weber requested, and was granted, impacted campus status for SDSU as early as May 1997—eight months after taking the university’s helm. In the fall of 1999, SDSU used this “impacted campus” designation—THEN, AS NOW—to radically alter established CSU admission requirements for local students.  The devastating consequences of this action for local students are captured in several documents I am providing to Assemblymember Block, including a November 30, 1999 letter (with attached local news articles) from M.E.Ch.A. to the leadership of the California Legislative Latino Caucus and others. 

Fortunately, the impaction policy that SDSU implemented in 1999 did not sit well with either the CSU Chancellor or the Board of Trustees.  Chancellor Reed mandated SDSU immediately amend its impaction policy, and the Board quickly adopted enrollment management principles to ensure “guaranteed access to a local campus for all eligible local students.”  

But SDSU administrators didn’t miss a beat.  According to an internal document, SDSU administrators busied themselves developing strategies to go around CSU enrollment principles designed to protect local students.  The document, entitled “Resisting the Localization of SDSU,” provides suggestions on how to “reduce an increasing ‘provincialization’ of the University (or … [to prevent] SDSU becoming a great-big 4-year Community College).”  In the interest of time, I will not read you all the strategies that SDSU administrators devised for the sole purpose of denying or limiting local student access.  However, there are a couple of strategies you may recognize—for instance, “Create a “dual admission” policy … [which] would remove a significant portion of mandated local first-time freshmen.”  Or one that is currently in play for 2010 admissions: “Raise the academic criteria for admission into individual pre-majors and majors so that we can ‘deny’ more locals access to their desired fields.”  

This is pretty blatant stuff.  It contradicts SDSU’s stated rationale for eliminating the guaranteed local admission policy and suggests that the administration’s claims that “the budget made us do it” are BOGUS.  Even when there have been no budget cuts or impending financial crises, SDSU has been determined to decrease—to restrict in any way possible—local student access to the main campus.  SDSU’s own internal documents reveal that the true purpose of many of the strategies we have seen over the past decade—from dual admission in 2002 to the current requirement that students apply to a major or pre-major—is “so we can ‘deny’ more locals access….”  

One of the new changes to the admission policy is the requirement that new out of service area admits, including those north of 56, live in campus housing.  This requirement is presumably in response to SDSU’s concern that all those dorms are sitting empty because local students don’t need campus housing.  But all the hand-wringing about empty dorm rooms running up costs to the university is disingenuous.   If having empty dorms is such a problem, why did the university pay $26 million dollars for the Albert Apartments the very same day it dropped the local student guarantee?  It’s clear that while SDSU is “rationing” space for the local students in its service area, it is making plenty space available for out of area students.  

Part of what is going on here, I believe, is the over-reaching elitism and bloated self-importance that is so well described in Professor Ann Johns’ article, “The SDSU of the Future” (which I have also made available to Assemblymember Block).  How else can we account for the undisguised contempt evident in the internal document, “Resisting the Localization of SDSU,” where students from the local community are characterized as “provincial” and disparagingly called “locals” and where their admission to SDSU is seen as downgrading the university to a “great big 4-year Community College”?  How else can we explain the Provost’s description of the local guaranteed admission policy as “a major threat to the academic quality of this institution…” (Senate Executive Committee’s Minutes of October 26, 1999), or her characterizing local students as a “problem” and expressing dismay that SDSU may “become swamped with local students” (SDSU Senate Minutes of November 6, 2001).  And how else can we account for the crass generalization about—and crude distinction between—in service area and out of service area students that the President makes by stating, “the balance was between maintaining the minimum standards for select students [i.e., local students] … and enrolling ‘the best talent we can get [i.e., out of service area students].’” (“University ‘Forced to Ration’ Education,” Matthew T. Hall, Union Tribune, 10/15/2009)

President Weber, you suggest in your interview with Matthew Hall of the Union Tribune that local students “aren’t worth the taxpayers’ investment because they ‘may never graduate.’” You go on to state, “At some point, I’ve got to place my bet on the student that’s most likely to be able to succeed and graduate.”   But just so we are clear, Dr. Weber, our students are human beings, not horses—and your actions in denying them access to local educational opportunities have far graver consequences than placing bets at the race track.  

Thank you, Assemblyman Block for allowing me to participate in this Hearing.DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED IN SUPPORT OF WASHINGTON STATEMENT 
10/20/09 Hearing of the Assembly Select Committee on K-16
Articulation, Access and Affordability

Fact Sheet on SDSU Admissions Policy Change that Harms San Diego Area Students

SDSU Chair of Diversity, Equity & Outreach Committee Disputes 2010/2011 Enrollment Management Proposal

SDSU Chair of Diversity, Equity & Outreach Committee – Data Point: Changes
            to Enrollment Management Policy & Ratio of Local to Out of Area Students

November 30, 1999 M.E.Ch.A. Letter to Sen. Richard Polanco, With Attached News Articles Regarding Negative Results of SDSU’s 2009 Impaction Policy

Trustees Guarantee Local Access to Students, March 14-15, 2000, BOT Meeting

Minutes of SDSU Senate, November 6, 2001: Marlin Calls Local Students a “Problem” and Voices Concerns that SDSU Will Be “Swamped” by Them

Internal SDSU Memo: “Resisting the Localization of SDSU”

Professor Ann Johns, “The SDSU of the Future,” San Diego Union Tribune (March 24, 2004)

Relevant Sections of CSU Trustee Policy: Enrollment Management Principles, Nov. 18-19, 2008

Email: “SDSU Buys $26,000,000 Apartments Owned by Wealthy SDSU Alum”

Pat Washington, PhD
4537 Alamo Drive
San Diego, CA 92115
(619) 582-5383 

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