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This fall, a series of town hall meetings open to faculty, staff, students and alumni helped introduce President Alexander Gonzalez to the campus and the issues on people’s minds. During these three, hour-long open exchanges, the President invited the audience to raise questions or share issues of concern. The issues raised were wide ranging, but clustered in several areas. Below is an edited version of some of the key comments made by the audience.

Gonzalez What I’d like to do is just open it up to you…This is your chance to stand up, to be heard, and to be counted. What I’m going to attempt to do over the next several weeks is gather information and then develop a process where we can put it together and begin the planning process.
Budget

Audience I remember when you interviewed, we were talking about budget cuts and one of the things you said that really stuck with me was the comment about student affairs: that the services we provide students need to stay intact. But what we are experiencing is that the budget, across the board in student affairs, is being cut. So if we have an increase in students, how are we supposed to continue to provide them excellent student services?

G. This year we’re experiencing budget reductions, obviously. Next year is going to be worse. This year we are in relatively good shape, but next year we are not going to have any growth money. That is the crisis for California higher education. ...We’re serving more students with fewer resources. In the past years we’ve been given an increment for growth, but in reality, it has been offsetting what we’ve taken as budget hits. The net result is that we’ve been taking more students, and serving more students with fewer resources. ...

For the first time in the history of California, since the Master Plan for Higher Education was developed in 1960, we will be turning away qualified students. And that is a very real retreat from what the people of California want to see in higher education. ...I think at this campus, from what I’ve seen, the faculty are doing a very, very good job of accommodating students, being able to meet the needs of the students within the budget that we have. Next year is going to be more difficult.

University Fundraising
A. It starts with little things. You can’t have a strong development effort unless we recognize and trumpet our own successes, modestly, but get them out there. I don’t think faculty, students and administration have focused on that sufficiently. So, I would hope to see more and more of that.

G. Maybe we should do it shamelessly, not modestly. A lot of our success will be based on how successful people think we are. People like to be associated with success. This is a key area for me personally, to get out there to talk about the University and create partnerships and find donors.

Athletics
G. It is a recurring theme, athletics. It’s a vital part of the University. It gives students an opportunity to compete with other universities, and gives alumni a lasting connection the University as it develops a sense of pride. ...I will be putting together a task force to evaluate where we are in athletics and where we should be going. I hope to get those recommendations soon.

Campus Identity
G. The name of the campus has come up several times. There is the use of Sac State, versus California State University, Sacramento, versus the Capital University, versus something else. Any input you could give me on that?

A. I’d like to use Sacramento State University. ...We should all be very proud of the place. As you said, it’s the flagship of the system. ...

A. You talked about being the flagship campus in the CSU. ...How do we become the flagship campus?

G. I sincerely believe, after having been here just a short time, that all of the ingredients, all of the components are here to make this the flagship campus. When you buy real estate, it’s location, location, location. We have that. We have location. We are in the capital. We get a lot of press. ...We have a great group of faculty and staff and students here. Everything is here. We just have to be able to make ourselves get to the point that when people (want information) on the political scene, the social scene, whatever, they come to this campus.

A. So, we have four names and that could be confusing for students. ...I think that identity, who we are culturally, who we are in name and who we are in the city are all things I look forward to you helping us define.

G. I hope to get us moving in that direction in the next several weeks and months. ...I know it’s business jargon, but it’s branding of the University. It’s happening all across the country. ...As foreign as it may seem to an academic institution, it happens all of the time and we need to do some of that...identification is very important.

Community and Growth
G. One of the issues I identified early on is that we need to get back into the community, both individually and collectively. ...I’ve met with all kinds of people and that theme keeps coming up. There’s not enough interaction. We need to refocus. ...I think it is everyone’s responsibility. The best advertisement, if you will, is word of mouth. When you talk about the University—when you’re out (in the community) and when you mention that you work here and like the place—that word gets around and it gets around quickly.
We have a big impact. You can’t go far without meeting one of our alums. I run into them everywhere. There’s no doubt that this University adds to the quality of life and to employment in this region.

A. I just moved here from Madison, Wisconsin and had a really nice feel about the Capital City, of course, and the University flavor. Although I really like the downtown area, I don’t feel there’s a University presence, even in the immediate area of the University.

G. Well, in the 65th Expressway area, they have big plans, but they need the University’s input and the University’s partnership to develop those plans. ...Any thoughts as to if it would be a good thing to do? Whether it would be used?

A. One of the things we clearly need to talk about is better use of evening hours and thus more efficient use of scheduling. It can’t really happen unless we have the infrastructure, either off or on University property, which is very expensive to deal with. ...So to the extent that we have input, to the extent that we’re talking with the developers about this, I hope we stay focused on the possibility of using it to expand our schedule.

A. So how do you create the environment there that can support the kinds of things that make sense to a university community? We need to do an inventory of what’s immediately around here. ...I imagine if you were to draw a circle about a mile in diameter or two miles in diameter around campus, this would be like a small university town. I mean, there are thousands of students that are in rentals and apartments all around the area. ...I think that might help us in our conversations with the city, if we went forward with a plan that really made sense and wasn’t just a wish list.

Student Residential Housing
A. We’ve talked a lot about commercial development in the area. Is there room here for residential development? And is that something we’re considering?

G. There seems to be a lack of sense of community from the students’ point of view. For many students the primary on-campus life is limited to the interactions in the classroom. And that issue is really brought forward by what we are doing about housing, especially public-style housing.

G. I think we’re at the point now that we’re going to get ready to issue a request for proposals to look at alternative financing strategies...to replace all of our existing dorms over a period of time. So at the end, we’ll have dorms that are going to be not only new, and what students want, apartment-style living, but also that increase the number of students who will live on campus. My view is that we can probably build between four and five thousand beds. And, that would be a significant change, to have four or five thousand students living on the campus.

A. How do we go about servicing the counties outside of Sacramento...serving other areas of the so-called service area?

G. While we are a regional university, I see as a future goal that we will draw students from across the state and we have to look at that as an issue.

If we have the amenities, like housing, we will be drawing people from outside the region. Students will want to come where it’s convenient and where we have a very good basis of academic programs, like we do here...we do have a very, very good core of academic programs that attract students here now. And, if you add those amenities, then it’s going to start raising everything up as well.

Transportation
G. I do have to mention that parking is one of the themes for everyone. ...Parking, parking, parking. It’s a problem across the state and I’ve heard even Humboldt has problems with parking.

A. At present, we have a parking office that gets its funding from parking fees and citations and they’re not really funded to address the whole transportation issue...We have a lot of resources here on campus, but the bureaucratic structure doesn’t allow that to work. ...I know people who vanpool with state workers where the state workers’ fee is subsidized and CSUS workers in the same pool are not. I would like to see a whole new look at how to approach transportation.

A. Transportation issues need to be looked at. I really think we need to expand the shuttle system if there is any way we can do it. I really think the parking folks have done a magnificent job of trying to control an unbelievable situation, but I believe that in the long term, the shuttle is going to be not only the best, in terms of efficiency, but also a wonderful model for our students and for them to realize this as an alternative.

Closure
G. Again, I want to thank everybody for taking the time to come. I think there were a lot of very good suggestions. I hope we were listening carefully. I know some of the deans and vice presidents are here too, so they were listening to what you had to say as well. I want to thank the students especially for taking the time out and for not being afraid to say, “This is what I think.” I’ll be reporting back to the campus soon.

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