City College seeks private donations to save classes

By Don Clyde
STAFF WRITER

City College began accepting private donations to save courses scheduled to be cut during the spring 2010 term, but has abandoned the idea of attaching the sponsor’s name to rescued classes, according to Chancellor Dr. Don Q. Griffin.

“So far we’ve raised enough money to save about 50 spring [semester] classes. We hope to save at least 100,” Griffin said.

Since California can’t fully support its public education system, City College will probably have to resort to accepting private donations for a few semesters, Griffin said.

“This is something we don’t want to do, but these are not ordinary times,” he said referring to the massive cuts in state funding that every public education institution in California is dealing with.

City College already cut over 200 classes during this fall term and plans to cut over 500 during the next spring term. The drastic cuts will help to close the college’s $18 to $20 million budget shortfall for 2009-2010.

City College offers about 9,800 courses. Total cuts would amount to around eight percent of classes.

Griffin originally proposed that private individuals or companies could pay $6,000 to save a class and get naming rights to it. The novel idea was well received by the public and by City College board members during a June 25 board of trustees meeting. However, there was some concern about giving naming rights to certain institutions.

Questions were raised by board members about complicated vetting procedures to make sure unsuitable    organizations or corporations were not donating money to City College.

“When you take away the naming rights, this policy really starts to look more like an ordinary fund-raising campaign,” said Hal Huntsman, president of the Academic Senate.

Milton Marks III, president of the board of trustees, said naming rights was a sticking point on the board. He added that dropping the controversial naming idea makes private sponsorship more acceptable.

Private sponsorship, while not an ideal solution, was “unfortunately a necessary thing to do,” according to Marks. He also said it doesn’t appear that board approval is a requirement for the private funding move.

“I don’t think there’s legally any regulation that the board has to approve, but we might have to approve this from a political perspective to show that we are behind the chancellor,” Marks said.

Thirty-three year old City College student Aaron Mosby, who is studying small business ownership and automotive technology, said the private sponsorship move was a great idea. He agrees with any plan that would save classes from being cut.

“It’s already too tough to get into classes. Cutting classes discourages students from pursuing an education, and it sends the wrong message,” Mosby said, adding that students, especially those seeking financial aid had enough stacked against them already. He had to drop a summer course because he couldn’t afford the textbooks.
Mosby said if corporations sponsored classes they could have access to a willing pool of interns who could get real, hands-on training.

“It could really prepare us to enter the job market,” he said and walked off to Science Hall to look into getting some training in electrical engineering.

Other students wondered if there might be bias towards certain fields. “Maybe it’s good for technical courses, but how will the humanities [department] fair?,” 26-year-old Stephanie Haney said. Haney, studying health science at City College, said that sponsorships by corporations with deep pockets might opt to save classes in science and technology.

Griffin said most donations so far have been from individual donors who didn’t want to steer their money toward any particular department. Donors have the option to choose which department donations go to, but department faculty will choose which individual classes are saved.

“A lot of people at City College have also been making donations. It’s a re-affirmation that we’re here to serve the student body,” Griffin said.