COBB COUNTY —Southern Polytechnic State University students, faculty and administrators say they will not sit back and watch the Georgia Legislature damage the state’s colleges and universities through budget cuts.

On Friday, Dr. Zvi Szafran, SPSU’s vice president of student affairs, conducted a student budget forum in response to a meeting University System of Georgia’s Chancellor Erroll Davis had with the joint House-Senate budget committee last week.

The USG could face an additional $300 million cut on top of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s slash of $265 million in his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. The state legislature asked the USG to deliver its plan for cutting the $300 million on Monday. The USG oversees 35 schools.

For Southern Polytechnic, this would mean a cut of $6.4 million in state funding if the legislature approves the latest proposal. In his speech Friday, Szafran said the additional cut would amount to a 20 percent reduction in state funding, which is about 10 percent of the university’s operating budget.

Szafran urged students to get involved in fighting for the University System of Georgia by contacting their legislators, asking families and friends to do the same, writing petitions, and joining a Facebook group to support the state’s universities. The vice president said a cut of this magnitude could not be made without doing serious damage to the university’s academic programs.

“There is a technical term for a cut of this size, and the term is decimate, from the Latin, meaning to kill 10 percent,” Szafran said on Friday. “This additional cut will decimate our budget and decimate our ability to operate.”

Friday’s noon forum was held at the theater in the university’s student center. Of SPSU’s nearly 5,200 students, 750 attended the meeting.

Szafran said students were clearly upset about the proposed cuts and many wanted to know if there were any alternatives and how they could help.

“A lot of students are obviously concerned,” Szafran said. “They’re organizing to petition the legislature and to actually go down there and make their voices heard.”

In his speech, he told students to join the Facebook page, “USG Students for Quality Education,” a group created by the SPSU Student Government Association President, Andy Coen. As of Monday afternoon, the group had more than 4,400 members.

If the budget cut does pass, Szafran said the university would be forced to eliminate 20 full time faculty members, in addition to almost its entire part-time faculty. Those are drastic, unwanted cuts, Szafran said, that would equate to fewer and more crowded classes as well as less of a variety to curriculum and major options.

“Our argument is that cutting the university systems’ budget is cutting the future,” Szafran said. “If you cut that then you’re burning your seed corn, so to speak. When you do that, that’s the sign of the end. That’s the last thing anybody should do.”

Szafran said he hopes the student-led initiatives at SPSU will help the legislature realize the gravity of the cuts.

“I hope that what we’ll do is we’ll convince our colleagues in the legislature that there are other choices,” the vice president said. “Cutting the future is def the wrong choices.”

According to a memo Kennesaw State University President Dr. Dan Papp sent to his students, faculty and staff, the $300 million budget reduction would mean more than $14 million in cuts for KSU.

“A reduction of this magnitude would be an immense setback, even a disaster, for the university,” Papp said in the statement.

He went on to speculate that it would mean a cap and maybe even a cutback in student enrollment, a reduction in faculty and staff, program elimination, and other drastic cuts.

Kennesaw State will be holding a town hall meeting today at 10 a.m. for students, faculty and staff in the University Rooms of the Carmichael Student Center.