“Where would you put the library?” asked Mary Stephens, vice president of Administration and Finance at Cal State Long Beach. No, last Friday’s meeting between CSULB faculty and administration — a two-on-one talk-off between film professors Michael Charles Pounds and Brian Alan Lane and Stephens — was not about the location of a brand new library.
The meeting was supposed to be about the budget solutions op-ed the professors published two weeks ago in the Summer Forty-Niner, but it wasn’t about that, either. It was much deeper than that — MUCH, much deeper. The kids aren’t playing well together.
The question posed by Stephens was in response to a call by Pounds and Lane to cut administrative staff and cap administrative salaries in order to save CSULB money. According to Lane and Pounds, when the president of CSULB makes more money than the president of the United States, something isn’t right.
The problem was that Pounds and Lane really didn’t understand what the “administrative” classification was. It wasn’t their fault, either.
CSULB’s internal budget and financial statements lump together a number of items and label them “administrative” costs. So, according to Lane, even an accountant has trouble understanding what’s being paid to whom.
Let’s just say the baby blocks didn’t fit.
When Pounds and Lane referred to administration, they meant employees under the management personnel program, or MPP’s.
Pounds and Lane, in laymen’s terms, were referring to the “people in charge” and their staff; not the librarians, academic advisors and all the other positions lumped under the administrative classification. The two sides were speaking a different language.
The worst thing about the whole meeting was that it highlighted the disaccord among the faculty and administrators. Nobody poked anybody else’s eye out. There wasn’t a bunch of crying or anything of that sort. The two sides were clearly in disagreement about key issues ranging from the value of tenured positions with respect to non-tenured positions to the complexity of the provost position.
The 1 1/2-hour meeting transcended the simple budget fixes proposed by Pounds and Lane, becoming reminiscent of a collective bargaining negotiation. The funny thing was that it seems no one had real a grasp of what was going on.
Granted, the arguments presented by both sides were rendered futile on account of Pounds and Lane’s classification error.
Even after this major error was clarified, however, the evidence needed to support any type of cuts directed toward the “people in charge” seemed nonexistent. The financial records remained cloudy. Not only were the baby blocks not fitting they weren’t in the room to be played with.
Baby blocks or no baby blocks, there always seems to be a silver lining to a dark cloud when men and women — or boys and girls — sit down and talk things out. In this case, both sides agreed in a way that would truly make momma proud.
The schoolyard combatants agreed to communicate, with respect to the budget crisis. And both sides agreed to share — information that is.
This meeting did not solve the budget problems, nor did it encourage cuts to management. However, it did provide a chance to make things better. Pounds and Lane really appeared passionate about the need for cuts to management.
Given this type of determination, it is expected they will give it at least one more push.