California is a mess. Its government colleges and universities are about to get a minimum of 8% cut. Then you have the UC system that will lose billions due to its promotion and acceptance of Jew hating, harassments and campus closures—which the Governor approves of (if he didn’t, he would have stopped it).
“Seven student athletes have filed a lawsuit against SSU over plans to eliminate all intercollegiate sports as part of $24 million in budget cuts.
• The lawsuit alleges that SSU misled students by recruiting them and letting them start the semester despite knowing earlier than announced that athletics would be cut.
• The plaintiffs are seeking a judge’s intervention to halt the elimination of SSU’s NCAA II athletics programs.”
No one should be surprised that college officials lied to students and parents. For years they have claimed they are educating students—now we know it was just indoctrinations.
Student athletes sue Sonoma State University, CSU over plan to scrap all intercollegiate sports programs
The widely expected move follows a pair of civil rights complaints filed within days of the Jan. 22 announcement outlining the end to all SSU sports programs, along with academic cuts and layoffs.
MARISA ENDICOTT AND AUSTIN MURPHY, Press Democrat, 3/10/25 https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/sonoma-state-california-lawsuit-sports-budget-crisis/
For more stories about SSU cuts, go to pdne.ws/4jp7Znc
• Seven student athletes have filed a lawsuit against SSU over plans to eliminate all intercollegiate sports as part of $24 million in budget cuts.
• The lawsuit alleges that SSU misled students by recruiting them and letting them start the semester despite knowing earlier than announced that athletics would be cut.
• The plaintiffs are seeking a judge’s intervention to halt the elimination of SSU’s NCAA II athletics programs.
Seven student athletes have sued Sonoma State University and top college administrators over a controversial plan to end all intercollegiate sports under a proposed package of $24 million in budget cuts that have rocked the Rohnert Park campus this year.
The 53-page lawsuit, filed Friday in Sonoma County Superior Court, was brought by the plaintiffs on behalf of all SSU students and student athletes.
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The complaint alleges administrators knew how drastic the cuts would be well before the Jan. 22 announcement, after the spring semester started, and deprived students of crucial information that could have affected their enrollment decisions, amounting to “fraudulent conduct.”
“Defendants knew that student athletes were giving up numerous opportunities to play college sports at other universities,” the lawsuit states. “Yet despite knowing all that, Defendants still went out and continued recruiting Plaintiffs and other student athletes to Sonoma State without ever disclosing that they were about to eliminate all athletics.”
The lawsuit names SSU’s Interim President Emily Cutrer and California State University Chancellor Mildred García, accusing them of violating procedural requirements for program discontinuation.
Read the lawsuit here:
The group is not seeking damages but rather for a judge to stop SSU from “unlawfully cutting athletics and numerous academic programs, severely damaging the college careers of countless Sonoma State students.”
Six of the seven student athletes named as plaintiffs were recruited to SSU for the fall semester of 2024 or the spring semester this year. They are being represented pro bono by the San Francisco-based Joseph Saveri Law Firm.
Plaintiff Abbey Healy, a member of the women’s soccer team, transferred to SSU this semester because it offered a concentration in pre-law and philosophy.
But the sweeping cuts erased both her sport and that academic path.
“I felt that my voice might help make a difference, and hopefully make the right kind of impact, so this doesn’t happen to other students,” Healy told The Press Democrat Monday.
Spokespeople for SSU and CSU said they were aware of the lawsuit and were reviewing it. They did not offer additional comment.
The lawsuit is the latest development in a standoff between the SSU administration, on the one side, and faculty, staff, students, alumni and their allies, who’ve waged an opposition campaign to the cuts that spanned from CSU’s Long Beach headquarters to Sacramento, with near-weekly rallies on the Rohnert Park campus.
Sonoma State’s financial crisis is among the most dire of several CSU campuses in Northern California that have seen dramatic drops in enrollment over the past decade along with rising costs that have opened up massive budget gaps.
To close its deficit, SSU administrators, led by Cutrer, ordered an unprecedented slate of cuts that would eliminate more than 100 faculty, lecturer, coaching and staff positions, six academic departments and two dozen degree programs.
All of SSU’s 11 athletic programs, with an annual roster of 195 to 235 students, would also be dropped at the end of this school year. Athletic scholarships will be honored for students who want to stay if they continue to meet academic requirements, but many have scrambled to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal in an effort to find opportunities at other universities.
In a Jan. 31 interview with The Press Democrat, Cutrer said decisions were still in flux until the eleventh hour and depended also on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget. That proposal, released in early January, included an 8% funding reduction for the CSU system and accounts for roughly a quarter of SSU’s projected deficit. Cutrer’s Jan. 22 announcement was then delayed until the athletic director returned from NCAA meetings, she said.
Emiria Salzmann, head coach of SSU’s women’s soccer team, expressed skepticism at Sonoma State’s claim it did not have prior knowledge that the cuts were coming.
If the administration knew it intended to cut athletics, “then essentially, we were recruiting student athletes to a university that doesn’t have a future for them,” said Salzmann, an SSU grad in her 14th year as women’s soccer coach. “It’s unethical to do that.”
A first-year student from Fremont, Healy played soccer at CSU Monterey Bay in the fall, then made the decision to transfer to SSU because it offered her desired philosophy course track.
The pre-law part of it “definitely sparked my interest more,” said Healy, who decided to “really push” for admission to Sonoma State.
Salzmann, the soccer coach, “was willing to give me a chance” she said. “I was so excited to be coached by her.”
News of the cuts came down on her second day of classes. “I hadn’t even met the team,” said Healy.
“Having all this ripped out from under me was scary. Now I have to find somewhere new. I’m kind of lost in the whole process.”
Cutrer’s decision will force Healy “to transfer for the second time in her first year of college,” the complaint states, “because both of her passions were extinguished.”
Another plaintiff, Vincent Lencioni, a graduate of Santa Rosa High School, played baseball at Napa Junior College last spring. After that season, he was recruited by several colleges.
