Fresno State's Associated Students president is scheduled today in Long Beach to implore trustees of California State University not to raise student fees an additional 30%.

The proposed increase would add to a 10% fee boost imposed by trustees in December in reaction to a midyear budget cut by the state.

The state faces a projected $38 billion budget shortfall.

Even as student president Neil Gibson and student senator Chris Rusca traveled to Long Beach on Tuesday, there were fears of even greater financial pain for the CSU system.

Cuts of an additional $137 million from the already reduced CSU budget for this fiscal year are pending in the state Legislature. They raise concern in the budget office at California State University, Fresno.

John R. Waayers, Fresno State budget officer, likened the possibility of additional cuts to films about sharks menacing beaches. You don't know when and whether it will strike.

"It could be huge, or it could be smaller," Waayers said.

An additional $100 million in CSU budget cuts would equate to a loss to Fresno State between $5 million and $6 million, Waayers said.

Fresno State has avoided mass reductions in class offerings so far, and university officials have not said what additional CSU budget reductions would do to the programs on campus.

The proposed 30% fee increase would be bad enough, students and others said Tuesday on campus.

Although he gets a grant and considers himself an exception, student Bill Barron said many students "are pushing the envelope."

The proposed fee increases would add $474 to annual fees for undergraduates and $522 for graduates.

"An increase of $500 could take students right out of class," Barron said.

Fresno State undergraduates would pay $2,046 plus the campus fee of $368, or an annual total of $2,414. Graduate students would pay $2,624, including the campus fee.

For Gibson, Rusca and other students, the focus is more immediately on student costs, not scholarship costs. The student body officers explained their objections to higher fees as a pass-through of legislators' and Gov. Davis' failure to balance the state budget.

"Students are already working their tails off, trying to make ends meet," Gibson said. "This is a tax hike on students."

He plans to tell trustees that "when you vote to raise fees, it is the easy way out" of legislators' budget failure. "It is saying, 'We agree with your cuts' " in support for the CSU system.

Rusca said, "We don't mind taking a hit as long as it doesn't knock us out. Everyone is going to get hit by California's budget problem. Fresno State is not just another number. This is about lives of real people."

Bill Fasse, interim dean of Fresno State's College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology and recent president of the Academic Senate, doubts that new fees would cut enrollment. They may even increase the number of full-time students and state compensation tied to that number. Students likely will take more units per semester "so they can get out of here" sooner, he said.

An agricultural economist, Fasse said it is impossible to predict all outcomes of a 30% fee increase.

"No one has ever seen a 30% increase that I know of," he said. "We have no models, nothing to compare this to."