Latest news with #SonomaState
CBS News
17-05-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Sonoma State's final class of student-athletes have bittersweet graduation
Sonoma State graduation may be the last ever for student-athletes amid program cuts Sonoma State graduation may be the last ever for student-athletes amid program cuts Sonoma State graduation may be the last ever for student-athletes amid program cuts ROHNERT PARK — College commencements are usually a time of joy and celebration, marking the culmination of years of hard work. But for the student athletes at Sonoma State University, this year's graduation was laced with sorrow and uncertainty. This spring, the university made the difficult decision to eliminate all athletic programs in an effort to address a mounting budget deficit. The decision effectively marked the end of an era, making this graduating class likely the last group of student athletes to don Seawolf jerseys. "It's just hard because as a senior, I've been here for four years and making memories," said Lillian Terc, a senior on the women's soccer team, fighting back tears. For Terc, graduation was not just a milestone—it was a historic moment filled with pride and pain. She is the first in her family to earn a bachelor's degree, but the loss of the athletic program cast a shadow over her celebration. "It's kind of sinking in. You want to be happy that we're graduating and being the last [group], but it's also bittersweet," she said. In January, Sonoma State announced sweeping cuts to balance its budget for the upcoming academic year, including the elimination of all sports programs—soccer, basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, golf, and track and field. "Knowing that it could be the last [student athlete graduation ceremony] definitely makes it a somber event," said Marcus Ziemer, head coach of the men's soccer team. "So I'm trying to balance it. I want to be there for the guys and be positive and supportive and not turn it into a sad occasion." Ziemer, who has spent nearly four decades at Sonoma State—as a player, assistant coach, and head coach—held back emotion as he reflected on the loss. "They took away my livelihood and definitely my identity as well," he said. "I always figured I'd retire at some point, but it would be my choice." Attempts by coaches and students to reverse the decision through legal action were unsuccessful. A judge ultimately sided with the university. Many student-athletes have already transferred to other institutions. But for some, like senior soccer player Graysen Garber, the journey ends here. "Academically, I'm a senior. I have one more [eligibility] season to play. So realistically, I was trying to play in the fall at Sonoma State, wear the jersey one last season. Obviously, I can't do that now. So a little upset. It's not how I wanted it to end," Garber said. Senior Ava Ricker also made the difficult decision to wrap up her collegiate soccer career. She was injured and could not play this past season. "I was working really hard to get back into it. As soon as I was cleared to run and I was getting ready to go, we got the news. I'm actually graduating early. I technically could play for another couple of more years. But I've decided that it's the best decision for me since the cuts happened," said Ricker, a forward on the women's soccer team. Ricker worries about the future of the school. "I would not be surprised if the school wasn't a school in the next ten years or so. And a lot of people are saying that. A lot of people who originally were coming to Sonoma State, just to come here and not play sports, aren't coming anymore," said Ricker. About 50 student athletes received their sashes during a special graduation ceremony held on Friday, ahead of the main university commencement. NBA rookie and former Seawolf Jaylen Wells delivered the keynote address. "It's a bittersweet moment. Of course, we're congratulating all the graduates, but it also kind of is a farewell to the program," Wells said. Wells, who now plays for the Memphis Grizzlies, entered Sonoma State with the Class of 2025 and played two seasons on the men's basketball team before transferring and being drafted. Despite his success, he said his heart remains at Sonoma. "I'm hoping this is not the end. I'm hoping it's just a little break," he said. "I'm hoping we can come back stronger and we've got another athletic program." For Terc and her fellow graduates, the end of their athletic careers doesn't mean the end of their identity as Seawolves. "I'm just going to always carry on the legacy of being a Sonoma Seawolf athlete and on the women's soccer team," she said. "Very proud that I'm a part of this history." The main commencement ceremonies at Sonoma State University are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, where graduates will officially receive their diplomas.
San Francisco Chronicle
10-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Sonoma State can proceed with cutting athletics and academic programs, court rules
Sonoma State University can proceed with eliminating six academic departments and ending its Division II athletics program to address a projected $24 million dollar deficit, a court has ruled. The ruling, Sonoma State University said, denied the motion for a preliminary injunction and two writs of mandate filed by seven university students. The lawsuit alleged that the school exaggerated its budget deficit, failed to consult with the Academic Senate and other interested parties as required by law, and continued to recruit athletes and other students without telling them that their programs would be canceled. The school had previously been halted by a temporary restraining order from enacting the budget on April 15 until Friday evening's ruling by the Sonoma County Superior Court. The university said in a news release that the court ruled Sonoma State was within its discretion and that its plan 'was not made arbitrarily, capriciously, or without evidentiary support.' The ruling also said the university 'substantially complied' with procedures to discontinue programs. 'This Court cannot conclude that the decision to eliminate the athletics program amounted to an abuse of discretion,' the ruling said. 'The law affords (Sonoma State) great deference in making decisions that impact the school's survival and solvency.' The budget, released in January, included plans to end 13 intercollegiate sports programs — including basketball, soccer and baseball — and fire more than 60 faculty and staff members, including tenured professors. Sonoma State University has seen a declining population, from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024, with the worst enrollment loss in the California State University system. The cuts will also end programs awarding students bachelor's degrees in 15 subjects — including physics, environmental sciences and French — or a master's degree in six areas, including English, Spanish or history, the proposed budget shows.
Al Jazeera
24-04-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
The great collapse of US higher education has begun
There is no other way to say it. The American university as the United States has known it since the 1960s is at an end. The spate of college closings and consolidations that began 15 years ago is certain to increase over the next few years. Overall college enrolments peaked in 2010, but have fallen consistently since then, as the cost of college, the COVID-19 pandemic and other trends have curtailed students from attending higher education institutions. But with the recent crackdowns against protests on college campuses, the anti-DEI climate and the US government's persecution of foreign students, American universities are truly up against a tsunami. The trickle of institutions closing or on the margins is all but assured to turn into a flood between now and the end of the 2020s. Sonoma State University (aka, California State Sonoma) is among the latest universities facing budget cuts. Despite a Sonoma County court ruling that has temporarily put the university's plans on hold, Sonoma State still faces a budget shortfall of $24m. Even if the order holds beyond May 1, Sonoma State can and likely will work in good-faith negotiations with staff, faculty and students to eliminate upwards of 22 majors, six departments, and more than 100 faculty positions. Specifically, the art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theatre/dance, and women and gender studies departments are on Sonoma State's chopping block, mostly liberal arts and the social sciences. The most expansive retrenchment in the past decade, though, occurred at West Virginia University in 2023. That August, after a six-year campaign to increase enrolment, West Virginia announced that it incurred a $45m budget deficit, and that enrolment had dropped from roughly 29,000 in 2017 to just under 26,000 in 2023. The austerity plan was to cut 32 majors– including all of their foreign language programmes and its maths doctoral programme – and 169 faculty positions. But after weeks of student protests, the number ended up being 28 majors (nearly one-fifth of its undergraduate majors) and 143 faculty (a 13.5 percent reduction) instead. The sudden shift towards austerity has led to a steady stream of faculty and administrators resigning or taking retirement buyouts to leave West Virginia. Again, the undergraduate liberal arts majors and small academic graduate programmes were the main targets for cuts. Stories like what is happening at Sonoma State and has already occurred at West Virginia are part of a larger and terrible trend. As college matriculation for women has incrementally increased over the past 50 years, there has been a more drastic decline in men attending college, especially among white men. Since 1970, men have gone from 58 percent of all undergraduate college enrollees to only about 40 percent as of the early 2020s. Fully 71 percent of the decline in college attendance since 2010 coincides with the decline of men as students in higher education. Perhaps sexism disguised as disinterest in higher education in the wake of a women-dominant student body might be at least part of the explanation for this steep fall in enrolment. But other higher education institutions are worse off: Clarion University of Pennsylvania, California University of Pennsylvania, The College of Saint Rose in New York and Independence University in Utah, for example. These are among the 76 colleges and universities that have either closed their doors or have merged with other higher education institutions in the US, affecting the lives of tens of thousands of students and several thousand faculty members. Nearly all of these institutions have cited budget shortfalls and lower enrolment as reasons for their demise or mergers. Nationally, the number of students attending US colleges and universities fell from a peak of 18.1 million students in 2010 to 15.4 million in 2021, including a drop of 350,000 students after the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of this past fall, enrolment had climbed to 15.9 million students, a 4.5 percent increase, but hardly enough to stem the tide of closures, austerity and consolidations. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's financial stress test model for American higher education institutions, as many as 80 colleges and universities in the US could permanently close their doors by the end of the 2025-26 school year. They based their findings on 'the worst-case scenario predictions com[ing] to pass from the upcoming demographic cliff (or a 15 percent decline in enrolment).' Demographers have also foreseen an imminent drop in the numbers of college enrollees starting this fall, a consequence of the economic distress that began the Great Recession of the late-2000s. Then there is Trump 2.0 and his administration's persecution of foreign college students. The recent crackdowns on academic freedom under former President Joe Biden, with pro-Palestinian college faculty and student protesters, and under mostly Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida over Critical Race Theory and DEI, have escalated under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration's move to revoke the visas of more than 1,700 foreign faculty and students, and kidnap and deport many others, mostly over pro-Palestine activism and other political stances deemed against the interests of the administration, threatens the one area of sustainable growth in higher education. Neither Alireza Doroudi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, nor any of the hundreds of other victims of this injustice, have committed any crimes under US laws. Unless going to a funeral or writing an op-ed or exercising the First Amendment right to protest is criminal behaviour. In 2023-24, more than 1.1 million international students attended US colleges and universities at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels. But with the Trump administration threatening, arresting and deporting foreign students and scholars in their dozens, it is all but certain that international student enrolment from the Middle East and South Asia will drop in the coming year. There will also likely be a drop in students from China as a consequence of the ongoing tariff fight between the two nations. One-quarter of all foreign students in the US are from China. After decades of universities hiring armies of part-time professors instead of full-time, tenure-stream instructors and researchers, and college presidents running their campuses like for-profit businesses, the implosion of US higher education has been almost inevitable. Despite Harvard recently providing the Trump administration opposition to their repression of colleges and universities, top-down hierarchies and disempowered workforces have rendered higher education's responses to conservative and far-right movements in the US utterly impotent. Add to this the conservative assumptions of liberal arts fields as 'immoral,' 'indoctrination,' and 'libtards' instead of what they really mean: an expansion of one's knowledge of people and the world. There has also been a decades-long overemphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The possibility of Trump's Project 2025 gurus privatising the federal student loan programme would pretty much be the straw that broke US higher education's back at this point. Liberal arts departments especially will continue to consolidate, or university administrators will continue to find reasons to jettison them as a cost-saving measure. Ever larger numbers of senior faculty will take severance pay, early retirement, or will end up sacked. Non-tenured faculty and junior staff will simply be unemployed and, in many cases, unemployable in a shrinking US higher education landscape. Most of all, those students who find themselves at any institutions outside of the top 136 elite universities or the top 50 flagship public colleges and universities may no longer be able to afford college, with tens of thousands unable to complete their degrees. American higher education is not just staring into the abyss – it has already fallen into it. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
CBS News
15-04-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Judge issues restraining order against Sonoma State cuts
A Sonoma County judge has issued a temporary restraining order against Sonoma State University over recent cuts aimed at addressing a budget shortfall. The order gives the university until May 1 to show cause for their planned cuts to academic programs . In the meantime, the university can not take any action on the cuts until the preliminary hearing. The order did not address the planned closure of the athletic programs. Back in January, Sonoma State administrators announced that the school was facing a $23.9 million deficit in the 2025-26 fiscal year. To make up for shortfall they said they would stop funding all athletic programs, implement layoffs, and eliminate academic departments and majors. Tuesday's ruling is part of a lawsuit brought by seven student athletes against the school. The athletes claim school officials knew they would have to make cuts but recruited athletes anyway. In their complaint the athletes say the university defrauded them by "pulling the rug out from under them." CBS News Bay Area has reached out to the school for comment on Tuesday's ruling and haven't received a response. Earlier this month the school released what they are calling "A Bridge to the Future," . In it the school claims they have lost 38% of student enrollment since 2015, which has led to a "significant loss" of revenue. The document presents six goals with the following metrics: Sonoma State has until April 21 to file opposition to the temporary restraining order.
CBS News
09-04-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Sonoma State officials outline recovery plan amid massive budget deficit and cuts
After a $23.9 million budget deficit led Sonoma State University to implement campuswide cuts, university officials on Tuesday laid out their recovery plan. The 9-page document, titled "A Bridge to the Future," noted that Sonoma State has lost 38% of student enrollment since 2015, which has led to a "significant loss" of revenue. The document presents six goals with the following metrics: "We estimate that the expenditure cost of the above steps to build Sonoma State's Bridge tot he Future will be about $10 million, some of which can be one-time funding," the document reads. The document also states the university's investment decisions will "keep (students) in the North Bay to reduce the region's 'brain drain' and create a 'brain gain.'" CBS News Bay Area requested an interview with the university regarding its new direction. In response, a university spokesperson sent a link to the "Bridge to the Future" document. Earlier this year, the university announced $24 million in budget cuts , which included layoffs, department closures, and the termination of its entire sports program. Students and faculty responded to the news with legal action , protests and rallies , including an appearance by Memphis Grizzlies star Jaylen Wells on campus after the NBA All-Star Weekend. Save Seawolves Athletics , a group of current and former Sonoma State student-athletes and coaches, responded to the university's future plans by releasing a statement, titled "A Bridge to Nowhere." "'Bridge to the Future' is not a strategy for survival. It is a strategy for replacement - one that discards real students, staff, and academic communities today for hypothetical gains that may never materialize," the group stated. Zya, a Sonoma State University psychology major who is about to graduate, said the university's financial upheaval significantly impacted her student experience. "Not exactly wasted, but it could've been spent probably at a school that values me as a student a little bit more," she said on Tuesday. "As a student, it's like how am I supposed to value my education when the people above me telling me to already don't?" Izzy, a Sonoma State University student majoring in Liberal Studies, isn't quite sure what her educational future will be. "As of what I know, my major's still intact. I heard that my major's going to be merged, so I don't totally know what that looks like. A lot of my teachers have been laid off and it's really heartbreaking to see. Just cause these teachers have poured so much into my major and program," Izzy said. "At the beginning of the semester, I was feeling so deflated and so saturated with sadness with all the uncertainty. Even though there's so much uncertainty, there's still community here. And there's still community that exists and persists."
