Monterey College’s Beloved Theater Program Threatened

Monterey Peninsula College is millions of dollars in debt and the only solution right now is to severely cut funding to several departments, which could mean a big step back behind the curtain for its newly revamped theater program

Budget cuts are something most colleges have experienced in some way during the last 3 to 5 years, but MPC has a unique demographic and it says state regulations stifled the school’s growth.

Enrollment has dropped to nearly 2,000 students in the last few years and that means a big drop in money.

“The best analogy I can give you, is imagine that you had a quality state of the art computer programming class and you are teaching your students to program and build systems and websites and they say, we are going to do this, but you can’t have the monitors on your computer,” said Gary Boulin, chairman of the Monterey Peninsula Theater Arts Department.

The department just went through a multimillion dollar facelift thanks to bond money last year. Now, the theater department could lose $500,000 from it’s budget.

The cut would eliminate all administrative jobs in the department except for two, and Boulin said it will make it merely impossible for his students to put on another production.

The president of MPC said the money had to be cut.

“The college right now is in a $2.5 million deficit,” said President Walter Tribley.

A big problem is the college serves a unique demographic

“We had a whole lot of students who were taking classes repeatedly,” said Tribley.

MPC, unlike other colleges like Cabrillo or Hartnell, has a large population of retired workers and community members who want to take classes over and over.

“The state has stopped the ability for colleges to claim those enrollments for funding and that hurt Monterey Peninsula College.”