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EDITORIAL: The budget cuts in counseling and other student services have the potential to cause problems with the success rates of students at BC. The Bakersfield College Chicano Cultural Center will not be eliminated due to budget cuts, but its director will be moved to another position, according to Cornelio Rodriguez, center director.
And the same thing will happen to Dr. Wilhelmina Anthony, who heads the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, Anthony confirmed.
Due to a shortage in state funds, community colleges are required to make reductions in their budgets for the 2002-03 year. BC is expected to cut in areas that provide services for students, such as counseling, EOP&S and centers.
“The center will not be eliminated due to budget,” Rodriguez said. However, the center’s hours and some services will be reduced, he said.
The Chicano Cultural Center provides services to Hispanic students to help reach their goals, whether it be graduation, transferring, Spanish or referral services.
“(The Chicano Cultural Center) helps students say, ‘Oh, I hadn’t realize that I was close to reaching my goal,'” he said. “So we help them know about these kinds of things.”
The cuts will reduce services at the Chicano Cultural Center, he said.
“Currently I do believe we have an efficient method of how we run the center,” he said. “But with the cuts in the follow-up services, it’s like saying, ‘Come to BC and good luck. Sink or swim.’ But I would like to see our funds restored and also have an increase in those funds.”
He said that the cuts could affect students’ success dramatically.
“I think as it is right now at the status quo, we are already functioning at a minimum,” he said. “Now that we’re being cut I see it as a traumatic impact on student success. I think the state legislature, and the governor, needs to be educated in terms of the impact it will have on our society.”
But the budget just does not affect students and services alone. Rodriguez said that he will be moved to another position where there is funding to keep him employed.
“I will have an assignment at BC,” he said. “What it is, I don’t know.”
Manuel Gonzales, who is the director of Extended Opportunity Program & Services office, explained how the lack of state funds affects all community colleges.
“What’s happened is that the state is facing up to a $15 billion budget deficit,” he said. “The legislative analyst office has recommended to the governor that certain areas in state government be cut back. And the cutbacks would effect a lot of agencies and community colleges being one of them.”
EOP&S is not facing any cuts, but expects to receive a slight increase in funding next year, he said.
Gonzales also said that the EOP&S is looking for ways to cut spending in their program to keep Don Turney, a counselor for CalWORKS, working at BC.
“I’m looking at our (EOP&S) budget to see how we might be able to bring him on full-time as an EOP&S counselor,” he said. “Because he does a good job and is well liked by the students and the whole rally around him. The chances are good that (Turney) will not lose his job.”
But in May, Gonzales said that Gov. Gray Davis will be reexamining the state’s budget along with the recommendations for the cuts in funding.
Anthony, who directs the Martin Luther King Jr. Center along with various other services, said that the center’s funding will be cut in half.
“We have no final answers,” Anthony said. “The Martin Luther King Center is funded 100 percent by matriculation dollars. And those matriculation dollars will be cut in half. So we’re definitely affected and even I am affected.”
Anthony said that due to the cuts, she will be moving to another position at BC.
“I will be having to take a position where there’s a budget,” she said. “And if I move from here, I really don’t know what is going to happen of what kind of oversight or not because there are scholarships and mentor services I would like to continue.”
She also expressed her concerns of how the education has become moreover a political agenda in oppose to success.
“Community colleges carry the bulk of the weight for communities,” she said. “You know funding is such a political issue, and in that sense, I’m upset about that. I’m upset that we make education, in this country, so political. The education for young people should not be aligned with politics. And legislatures make the major policy determinations about education for young people. Right now, we are in the midst of a budget cuts with our current governor trying to make decisions on budgets, which makes him dependent on whether he gets reelected or not.”
Bakersfield College’s administration, however, was not available for comment.