So the question is asked, where is the fuckin' money goin' to? if San Diego State is charging hand over fist for every little thing. Well, the dirty truth is that the California State University system has become a wealth-hording mechanism for this tiny clique of college presidents, all of whom now make anywhere from over $300,000/year to just over $500,000/year. SDSU Persident Adela de la Torre makes $533,148 every year now.
Besides the CSU presidents, all the administrators got seven percent raises, while the professorate negotiated for a four percent raise and only got a three percent raise because one hundred million dollars was taken out of the CSU budget by the state government. Herman claims that even the four percent raise was behind the rate of inflation. And then there's the housing issue....
Back in 2000, Malin Burnham (a Point Loma real estate mogul), John Moores (then-owner of the Padres baseball team) and some other benefactors bought the SDSU presidency a house in the Alvarado Estates gated community, which was occupied by then-president Steven Weber. After Weber, it was Elliot Hischman's address, but in early 2018 the Aztec Shops paid 2.8 million dollars for a house on the same street (Yerba Santa Drive) and the new president wasn't even chosen yet! Adela de la Torre has been living in it for five years -- it came with a four car garage, a pool, a putting green, and a Zen rock garden.
Bonus: The Strange, Fragmented World of the SDSU College Republicans
The College Republicans at San Diego State are an interesting picture, because while the College Democrats run a competent and quiet organization, the other side has been involved in a large amount of drama since 2016; first they invited David Horowitz* to speak, and his fliers created a near-riot. Then they tried to ape the UCSD Republicans and have Milo Yiannopoulos come speak in the then-new student center, only to have the college say "no" by claiming they would need multiple bomb-sniffing dogs and beefed-up security (you have to remember there were violent protests at Berkeley when Yiannopoulos spoke.) Because the organization was no longer under the SDSU Associated Students umbrella due to something that happened 10-15 years ago (I cannot find it online), they made the crazy choice to "un-charter" themselves in January of 2019, cutting themselves off from the California College Republicans organization because they wanted to keep their same president, Madison Marks-Noble, who graduated the next year anyway.
So what is "fragmented" about it, the reader may ask? Well they don't have a consistent online identity at all; is this their Twitter account? Or is it this? According to this Facebook account (which is linked to the second Twitter account), their chapter is the only legitimate one on campus, but the older one is still operating. Is this a breakup, or two factions competing? And to make things "worse", SDSU has its own Turning Point USA outlet, to ratchet up the confusion. And all the while, the SDSU Democrats just keep chugging along....
* Not to be confused with this guy:
Compare those salaries to the top management of the state of California. The UC and CSU presidents are paid obscene amounts to run colleges--badly. https://www.calhr.ca.gov/cccc/pages/cccc-salaries.aspx
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