San Francisco News Blog

Long weekends are less fun when taken because the state's dead broke and run like a banana republic

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So SFSU personnel enjoy four-day furlough weekends like the one commencing today -- who doesn't like time off? But it really puts the damper on it when you're taking time off not because you want to -- but because you have to.

"I would guess most students enjoy the time off. But at the same time, it's taking them longer to get through and graduate," said Erica Thomas, an SFSU history grad student and an office coordinator in the geography department.

Over the past year, we've documented the jarringly dire conditions at SFSU. With state-mandated four-day weekends, SFSU students are now getting a triple-whammy: Their tuition has increased, classes were slashed -- leading to persisting enrollment chaos -- and now the number of times classes meet has been reduced as well. The governor of our great state once made a movie about this; it was called Raw Deal.

Staff and faculty have a different conundrum to deal with. They now have more free time (good) but are earning 10 percent less (bad). Some staff we spoke with do make big plans during these state-mandated four-day weekends. But they're all too aware that they now have several hundred dollars a month fewer coming in to pay for barbecue, plane tickets, or anything else.

"I choose to put it out of my mind," said Courtney Rose Rump, a staffer in the criminal justice department and a philosophy graduate student. "We voted to have these [furlough days] in order to avoid having people laid off. I have my friends coming into town this weekend. I planned the visit around the time off."

Meanwhile, students masochistic enough to sign up for Saturday classes will still have the joy of attending those, sandwiched between Furlough Friday and Furlough Monday.

Sometimes you just can't win.