Though funds for the California State University system have increased in recent years, the tight budgets across campuses since the recession have resulted in postponed projects for the upkeep of buildings. Major Capital Outlay reports for the entire CSU system show that this is not isolated to SF State.
In the late 1990s, SF State worked to reduce a $66.2 million maintenance backlog from 1994, and did so with success. But by 2000, the University recorded an increased $67.3 million in work yet to be completed.
There were more than $5 million of incomplete asbestos removal projects for buildings on campus, according to a 2001 report completed by SF State for reaccreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Asbestos remains a major factor in the closure of the Science Building, according to Whalen.
“It could be easy to dismiss SFSU’s deferred maintenance backlog by blaming it on poor leadership in the past, lack of funding, and insufficient attention to the problem,” the WASC document said.
The WASC document added that facilities on campus were often built with materials and systems secured at the lowest paid bid, without attention to their worth in SF State’s harsh climate of fog and salt.
In January, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a 2014-15 year budget for CSUs that would provide $815 million in funds for deferred maintenance, which would lessen the current $1.8 billion amount in maintenance due across the CSU system.
Alongside expansive renovation backlogs, safety failures have negatively impacted university reviews in recent years, according to several CSU system-wide risk assessments, including the 2007 audit of Occupational Health and Safety and the 2013 Hazardous Waste Management audit.
The Office of the University Auditor recommended alongside other suggestions in the 2007 report that SF State review its Injury and Illness Prevention Program and OHS policies, health and safety inspection procedures and practices and student health and safety training.
The auditor reviewed several departments, including the chemistry department, which offered its lab for the examination of poisonous artifacts from the Science Building in 2001, but recommendations were expanded to include the entire campus, according to the report.
In 2000, Caldararo and his colleagues established a testing facility in a chemistry laboratory on campus to examine suspected pesticides on cultural items from the Hoopa Tribe of California.
The tribe had contacted SF State Professor Lee Davis after the Peabody Museum at Harvard returned regalia to them, along with a warning that they were likely contaminated with years of preservatives and pesticides.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, of 1990 requires federally funded museums to return ceremonial artifacts to tribes.
Before they examined the Hoopa Tribe’s artifacts, the team of colleagues began preliminary testing at SF State on objects from the Treganza Anthropology Museum. The results affirmed their suspicions — the collection and the materials that touched them were riddled with not only pesticides but arsenic and mercury, according to a research paper on the results written by SF State’s Caldararo, Davis, Pete Palmer and others.
“The testing results, we gave to the tribes, and then we gave them to health and safety here,” said Caldararo. He added that the head of health and safety then apparently had the building tested and hazards mitigated.
Named after the anthropology department founder in 1968, the Treganza Anthropology Museum in Science 395 held Native American collections from archeological sites from 1996 to 1998, and again in 2000, according to NAGPRA records. During 1996, five other rooms on campus also held native artifacts.
By the late 1950s, SF State had become a storage site for archeological artifacts in California, according to a NAGPRA document. For years, the University received archeological finds like Egyptian mummies from private collections or government institutions.
