Monday November 26, 2018
Volume 104 Issue 35
The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
CSUF operating at budget deficit Cisneros wins 39th District The school has been working off of reserves for two consecutive years. AURIELLE WEISS Staff Writer
President Fram Virjee said Cal State Fullerton has been functioning at a budget deficit for about four years, during the biannual Fiscal State of the University presentation at the Academic Senate meeting on Nov. 15.This is the second consecutive year the school has worked off a budget deficit and has been working off its reserve money in order to continue its programs, Virjee said. “We still are operating at a deficit (of) $1.1 million for this year, using our reserves to cover that,” Virjee said. “We can’t live off our reserves year after year or there won’t be any, and they are diminishing as you all know.” CSUF’s operating budget includes money given from the state and money that the campus and campus programs generate. This year’s budget was $589 million, according to Danny C. Kim, vice president for administration and finance/chief financial officer. Virjee and Kim methodically broke down the funds beginning with their ongoing costs. Virjee said about $20 million of CSUF’s annually given baseline funding was used for salary, benefits and fixed costs, stressing that it was “simply not enough.” “It won’t be a surprise to you that that was spent before we got it, fully absorbed by the mandatory costs that we had over last year. They ate up that before it ever even came to us,” Virjee said. Even though Virjee said he
The district was the last of the seven Orange County districts to turn blue. CAITLIN BARTUSICK Managing Editor
IAN FINLEY
Asst. News Editor
JESSICA RUIZ / DAILY TITAN
President Fram Virjee presented the fiscal budget at the Nov. 15 Academic Senate meeting.
feels the budget doesn’t reflect what the campus deserves, CSUF did receive supplemental funding, $1.2 million, for increasing the average course unit load. He added that the number was, “about the same as our deficit.” Kim said that because enrollment is down, partly due to the
lower graduate student registration, that translates to a loss of about $3 million. The headcount of graduate students getting a master’s or doctorate enrolled at CSUF has steadily gone down since 2015, according to CSUF student data. Between the fall of 2015 and 2018, CSUF
saw a decrease of 460 graduate students. In addition, Kim said Graduation Initiative 2025, the CSU’s effort to graduate more students in a timely manner, comes with two ramifications: finance and access. SEE FINANCE
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Democrat Gil Cisneros has defeated Republican Young Kim in the race for the 39th Congressional District seat, marking the last of the seven Orange County congressional districts to turn blue in a historically conservative region. The race was called by the Associated Press on Nov. 17 at 6:03 p.m. Cisneros leads his opponent by nearly 6,350 votes at press time. On Nov. 7, the day after Election Day, Kim was leading by 8.6 percent. Throughout election night, the race remained close and undecided, yet Cisneros’ supporters remained optimistic. Mail-in ballots counted in the days following helped Cisneros take his first lead on Nov. 15 by a narrow 941 votes. After that, his lead continued to grow until Kim officially conceded on Saturday night, ending her bid to be the first Korean-American woman elected to Congress. SEE POLITICS
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ESPN writer speaks on campus Julie
Virjee’s journey
Baxter Holmes talked about his career and the stops he’s made along the way. MEGAN GARCIA Sports Editor
Editor’s Note: This story has been reprinted due to an error that put the wrong story in its place in the Thursday, Nov. 15 issue. Writing a story on certain aspects about an athlete or sport that are unknown to most people — such as a hydrogen bomb that miraculously didn’t detonate during 1961 in a city known for producing the most NBA players in America — requires more than putting a pen to paper. From the NBA’s addiction to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to Brooklyn Nets point guard D’Angelo Russell’s profound relationship with dogs, Baxter Holmes wasn’t fatigued by any storytelling when he spoke to the Society of Professional Journalists chapter at Cal State Fullerton. A week after signing a multiyear contract with ESPN, the NBA national-feature writer shared his words of wisdom with college journalists about finding a story and how to tell it. Harrison Faigen, president of Fullerton’s SPJ chapter, invited Holmes to the biweekly meeting for students to learn about his personal journey and how to write daily beat coverage. “He finds these angles that no one else finds and tells these stories that no one else is telling, and I think that’s what makes him such a unique and talented writer,” Faigen said. Holmes didn’t start his reporting career in the most traditional
From Burbank to Rwanda, she has pursued a range of different interests. MATTISON CANO Staff Writer
COURTESY OF ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN
Baxter Holmes spent four years on the Los Angeles Lakers beat, much of which involved writing about Kobe Bryant.
way. As a teenager in Oklahoma, Holmes was a member of his high school’s basketball team. At some point, a teacher asked him to cover the team for the local newspaper. The days of game previews and recaps are now long gone for Holmes, as behind-thescenes stories of the NBA and even a James Beard Foundation media award are stacked underneath Holmes’ byline. Holmes has fixated himself in the nooks and crannies of the NBA’s on-and-off the court stories.
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From tales of the league’s brightest stars frequenting the grapevines of a Napa Valley winery, to the chaos of Los Angeles Lakers’ legend Kobe Bryant’s farewell season, the smallest details are always noticed by Holmes. There’s a human element to basketball that is more than just filling a notebook with stats and play-by-plays of the athletes on the court. “I think people sense that I have a genuine curiosity about something that I am really trying to understand. I will commit the time. I will commit weeks,
months and sometimes years just trying to understand one thing to a degree where I can explain it,” Holmes said. Before anchoring himself to the Lakers for ESPN, Holmes joined the Boston Celtics beat with The Boston Globe. At the age of 25, Holmes was competing with reporters who had been on the Celtics beat longer than he’d been alive. “I thought ‘Man, they’re going to wipe the floors with me,’” Holmes said. SEE EXTENDED
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California State Fullerton’s Julie Virjee is best known around campus for her role alongside the university’s president, but when Virjee introduces herself to people around campus, she’s not the university’s first lady, she’s just Julie. Virjee grew up in Southern California in the Burbank/ Glendale area and experienced a fairly normal childhood. She was involved with many activities, including the Girl Scouts, and piano and ice skating lessons. She tried everything she was able to. “My parents were very sweet and just let me try things that I have never tried before. It was fun,” Virjee said. Virjee loved family time and being goofy with loved ones. She was especially close to her father, a prominent surgeon, and looked up to him in many ways. “All of his lab coats had his name and said M.D. He always told me that M.D. stood for ‘my daddy.’ I really took that to heart; he was my everything,” Virjee said. SEE PASSION 5 VISIT US AT: DAILYTITAN.COM