In response to budget cuts totaling nearly $150,000 imposed by Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson, the Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services will to slash several tutoring programs for students as early as next quarter, spurring a large outcry from both students and office staff.
O.A.S.I.S. tutor Noah Myers leads a physics tutoring session on Library Walk on March 7 as part of a protest against office budget cuts ordered by the the Student Affairs department, which has financially downsized many of its programs.
Designed to provide free weekly math and science tutoring sessions to any UCSD student who wishes to sign up, O.A.S.I.S. also offers other programs to help students improve their networking and language skills.
O.A.S.I.S. staff and students who use the office’s services organized a two-day protest on Library Walk earlier this week to voice opposition to the proposed program closures.
Thurgood Marshall College sophomore Junie Chea, who has used multiple O.A.S.I.S. services, participated in the protest on March 7, which featured tutors teaching students on pieces of butcher paper taped to the ground and several groups of students holding signs that read, “We Want to Learn!”
“Angry doesn’t even begin to sum up my feelings,” Chea said. “There are so many people being affected by these cuts, and the administration is doing nothing.”
Chea, a biology major, indicated that, with the help of O.A.S.I.S., she has improved her performance in required math and science classes.
Earl Warren College senior Daniel Watts, a candidate for the 2006-07 A.S. presidency, has also recently spearheaded efforts to show student dissatisfaction over O.A.S.I.S. cuts.
Watts helped organize and circulate a petition that called for a referendum for students to decide whether to raise fees to cover budget cuts, but he failed to gather the required number of signatures before March 3, the deadline to place the measure on the A.S. general election ballot.
However, Watts said that he plans to continue the petition as a symbolic message to the administration that students are unhappy with the budget cuts.
“O.A.S.I.S. is important to my friends, so it’s important to me,” he said.
The budget cuts reflect the administration’s doubts about the office’s ability to actually help students improve their academic performance, according to Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Edward J. Spriggs, who indicated in an e-mail last month that more “concrete results” of student success need to be demonstrated by O.A.S.I.S.
In addition to O.A.S.I.S., every other division of Student Affairs, except for the Office of Students with Disabilities, has also faced budget cuts ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent, according to Watson.
The office’s Community Learning for Academic Success mentoring program, designed specifically for freshmen, is taking the hardest hit, losing about $100,000 in funding a year earlier than originally promised by Watson’s office.
Watson informed O.A.S.I.S. Director Patrick Velasquez in a June 2005 memo, which has been obtained by the Guardian, that cuts from the CLAS program’s temporary three-year budget were due to public scrutiny of the complex formula designed by Watson’s office to allocate money to the program. The formula added the money to or subtracted funds from the O.A.S.I.S. budget based on freshmen GPAs, even if students never used the academic-support service.
“The continuing public complaints that the trial budget allocation formula is inappropriate and unfair to O.A.S.I.S. have proven to be distracting and counterproductive,” he stated in the memo. “I am therefore concluding the trial within this academic year.”
However, Watson indicated that he does not remember sending the memo.
“I do not recall any public criticism of CLAS that I stated in a June 2005 memo,” he stated in an e-mail.
Efforts to increase O.A.S.I.S. funding are underway, Watson stated, but he did not elaborate.
