photo credit: Chelsea Kurnick
Xochilt Martinez Balladares (L) and her daughter Serenidad revisit the Women's and Gender Studies Lounge
where Martinez Balladares facilitated a campus club last year.
She was in her last semester as a WGS major when the budget cuts were announced.

In the 1970s, the university was one of the first in the nation to offer women’s studies classes. But, last year, it ended up on the chopping block because of a budget deficit.

Charlene Tung has a lonely job these days.

She’s the only Women’s and Gender Studies professor remaining at Sonoma State University. Her three colleagues lost their jobs in the spring of 2025.

Tung is still there because some students are in the middle of completing majors and minors within the department.

Once a tenured professor, Tung is now on contract to teach just enough classes so that students already enrolled in the program can graduate as planned.

KRCB asked her, “What will be lost if this department closes?”

Tung says, “My gosh, the long activist history of bringing WGS into being. You know, that to me is such a tragic loss. It's so different than any of the other academic programs.”

Tung points to other departments being cut at Sonoma State, like philosophy and economics, which she says did not have to fight their way into existence at the school. 

She continues, “They were assumed to be important. And, yes, it's a loss 'cause now they're assumed not to be important. But they don't have that activist history of people creating the curriculum itself, right? Meeting off campus to, to just gather, to talk about, in this case, you know, women's issues or for ethnic studies, right? Like, that's a long legacy, the shoulders that we stand upon. To me, that’s quite a loss.”

Xochilt Martinez Balladares was a senior in her last semester when the cuts were announced. She says that early in her time studying at SSU, Charlene's support kept her in school when Martinez Balladares’ responsibilities at home almost broke her.

“She ended up reaching out to me,” Martinez Balladares says. “And I don't trust very easily and I don't–I like to feel like I can carry the world by myself, especially as a mom. And so I don't know what it was about the genuine support that I felt when I spoke to Charlene that I kind of like, sat there and told her everything that was happening and she was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

Tung and Martinez Balladares made a game plan together that she says kept her from dropping out. Today, Martinez Balladares works on campus in a program that provides support to first generation and low income students. We spoke, on campus, in the Women’s and Gender Studies lounge, which brought up a wave of emotion for her.

“I was walking up this hallway and it just kind of like, not to be dramatic, it just feels like death. It feels empty,” she says.

If the department closes, she says, “you're not gonna have professors who teach you not just curriculum, but teach you the foundation of life, of social justice, of how to fight for your rights.”

Martinez Balladares shares, “I have a niece who just turned 18 who has really wanted to follow in my footsteps, and I can't imagine if she ends up here at Sonoma State without this department.”

KRCB asked Tung, “What is it like to come to work right now?”

“It's a little bit like torturing yourself,” Tung says. “I mean, I love the students–my students are wonderful. And I have a slew of interns that I'm working with, so that part of it is great. Uh, walking on the campus is like, it's hideou–it’s horrific, frankly. Emotionally? No.”

 When the proposed cuts were announced in January, 2025, students, alumni and faculty from across all of the impacted programs protested. More than 1,000 people gathered on campus for a rally.

Shawn Ramus was in his last semester at Sonoma State this past spring, majoring in Women’s and Gender Studies and running a WGS club on campus with Martinez Balladares.

“We were going to put up the resistance and, and do the education to talk to legislators, to talk to the faculty and the administration and to the public about why this WGS department is so important,” Ramus says.

Within two days, Ramus was meeting on Zoom and texting with a network of people who all care deeply about the department. The group organized a meeting with the interim president of the university, they organized a letter-writing campaign, connected with press and gave speeches at legislative hearings while they wore matching shirts that said, "This is what a feminist looks like."

Martinez Balladares says, “We're rowdy, so we're gonna make sure we're seen and that’s the positive thing, that’s something I’m really looking forward to continuing this fight.”

After Sonoma State announced the cuts, it received $90 million dollars in emergency funding from California.

But, the university is planning on using a lot of that money to build a new data science center and to expand their nursing program.

Recently, the school’s new president Michael Spagna told The Press Democrat he wants to reimagine Women’s and Gender Studies at Sonoma State. He floated the idea of a partnership with other Cal States that still have a program.

But activists say it didn’t need reimagining. They’ll only be satisfied by a full reinstatement of the department at Sonoma State.

They say they’ll continue the struggle because they owe it to the generation of students and professors who fought to create the groundbreaking program in the first place.