In an email summarizing the event obtained by The State News, Dean Thomas Stubblefield wrote that the deficit was caused by a combination of pandemic-era cuts, expensive retention packages, and rising costs. 

The college will attempt to handle the deficit over the next two years, according to the town hall. The budget will be reduced by $4.1 million in the 2027 fiscal year, and then again during the 2028 fiscal year.

That’s all on top of the university-wide 9% budget cuts that colleges are being asked to make over the next two fiscal years. 

This has led the CAL and department heads within the college to find the money wherever they can — including the eyebrow-raising asking of faculty if they could go without office phones. 

"I thought, if they’re cutting the phones, what’s next?" said Victor Rodriguez, a CAL professor within the Romance and Classical Studies department. "Are we exchanging our computers for typewriters now?"

Jenny Jimenez, a spokesperson for the CAL, said the college will also cut costs by pausing admissions for 17 graduate programs and delaying the start for 2 programs for the 2026-27 academic year. Within CAL, there are a total of 24 graduate programs. The readjustment will reportedly help the college save $2.8 million, according to Stubblefield's email. 

Rodriguez and Graduate Employee Union President Jared Maul said they worry the one year pause could be prolonged.

If the college faces further cuts in future years, they said the paused programs could be the first to go, because the college will already be operating without them. It could "become a reason to justify more cuts," Maul said.

There are also suspicions about how the large, sudden deficit came to be.

Rodriguez said some faculty members believe that the deficit "might have to do with bad decisions made by previous leadership."

Stubblefield only began as dean in July. He succeeded Chris Long, who held the position from 2015-2024. Yen-Hwei Lin served as Interim Dean between the two. 

Another CAL faculty member said that the administration "is not very forthcoming" with information about how the college realistically accumulated the debt. 

Long, who is now the provost of the University of Oregon, did not respond to requests for comment. Stubblefield said in a statement that the "financial challenges that have built up over several years."