Cal Poly Pomona announced Friday that all summer school classes will be cancelled in an effort to conserve funding for the regular academic year.
With Cal Poly facing budget cuts of $20 million to $35 million, the administration believed cancelling summer school was the only option.
“I understand the enormous disruption of your academic and personal lives this has caused,” said President Michael Ortiz in an e-mail sent to students Sunday.
“However, I must tell you that, agonizingly difficult though this decision was, we had no choice.”
The university will immediately begin the process of refunding fees for students who already signed up for summer classes.
As expected, the move has sparked outrage among many students. The Cal Poly Pomona Students Protest Group, an organization on Facebook established to address the issue, had more than 600 members as of Sunday afternoon.
The group is asking that rules regarding course prerequisites be eased for fall quarter.
Marco Guzman, a third-year chemical engineering student and founder of the group, said he is concerned with how the situation was handled.
"It's really upsetting how [Ortiz] tried to pretend he didn't know this was going to happen," Guzman said, noting that most people expected the California Special Election ballot measures to fail.
In his e-mail, Ortiz said he spent the weekend reading “numerous messages of distress” from students and announced that he would be holding a meeting to answer questions at noon on Thursday in the Ursa Major Suite of the Bronco Student Center.
Guzman said he and other group members are planning on attending the meeting.
"We're going to listen to what [Ortiz] has to say and take it from there," he said.
Guzman has resisted requests by members of the group to hold protests during commencement, saying his goal is to be "recognized and heard in a peaceful and organized manner."
Students who still wish to enroll in summer school may have the option of taking courses through the College of the Extended University. However, lack of state funding for the program means fees will be $220 per unit for lectures and $280 for labs.
The administration is asking students to visit the summer school 2009 Web site to suggest classes they would like to see offered.
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