CSUN Excursions Run Into a Liability Insurance Roadblock

They’ll soon take the skis off the racks in the University Student Union at California State University, Northridge. They’ll clean the shelves of ski boots and gather all the poles.

Then they’ll move it all to a dark storage room in the basement.

Rising liability insurance costs prompted the student union this month to suspend the rental of ski equipment indefinitely and cancel a variety of outdoor trips and excursions.

“All the outings are gone,” said Tom Mercadante, leisure programs coordinator at the student union, raising his hands in disbelief as he reviewed a brochure of planned events that are not to be. “Canoeing, backpacking, camping, hiking.”

Insurance coverage for “off-premises” activities, such as ski and canoe trips, bike rides and even museum visits, would have cost $50,000, said Kristine McGowan, director of administrative and personnel services for the student union.

“The cost for that component of our liability is just too high,” she said.

The student union already faces a $80,000 premium for its liability package, excluding the off-premises events, well up from last year’s $47,200 premium, which covered everything, McGowan said. Run by a separate corporation affiliated with the university, the student union has a $3.3 million budget this year, funded in part by student fees.

Although the student union still hopes to find less expensive insurance, McGowan said, administrators are not optimistic. The 15-seat van that had been used to cart students on trips all over the Southland now sits in a little-used parking lot, its battery removed and its keys locked in a safe.

“It’s pretty depressing,” said Shahriar Sadeghi, 25, a graduate engineering student who recently participated in a student union-sponsored canoe trip through the Owens River Valley, near Bishop.

Sadeghi said he would not have tried canoeing if not for the convenience and relatively low cost.

Most of the weekend trips offered by the “leisure activities center,” a small shop in the student union, cost between $45 and $65.

Student union operations director Dick Scott said that 300 to 400 CSUN students either rent ski equipment or participate in an outing in a given school year. Many of them, especially novice skiers without their own transportation, will have to turn to more expensive private tours or rental shops--or stay at home, he said.

Scott said the suspension of the outdoors programs erodes the sense of campus life there is for some students at CSUN, a school of nearly 30,000, many of them commuters.

“Part of the college experience is meeting new people,” Scott said. “Secondly, what we were trying to do was experience some leisure time activity, learn something about it and perhaps pick it up as a lifetime pursuit. The purpose of college is not just classroom education.”

Student union outing programs now remain in at least three California State University system schools: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, San Diego State and Chico State.

The CSUN outings join a long list of programs canceled or curtailed nationwide, in both the public and private sectors, because of rising liability costs.

Adrienne Mack, a 42-year-old English student, said she understands that the insurance industry is “in a pendulum swing . . . on the high side of the problem,” but that she is disturbed by the trend.

“It’s the same as nobody skateboarding on campus because somebody might sue,” she said, referring to this fall’s stepped-up enforcement of a skateboard ban on the CSUN campus. “Maybe bicycle riding is next. It’s sad that our lives are controlled to such a great extent by the field of litigation.”

Campus officials said the skateboarding crackdown, announced last month, was prompted mostly by a general safety concern.

Mack and four others had signed up for a one-day canoe trip to Pyramid Lake, which had been scheduled for the weekend.

“Grab your suit, fishing pole and cooler, and let’s spend the day in the sun,” the brochure for the event had said. “You can’t find a better way to spend a Saturday than canoeing, fishing, swimming and relaxing.”

Mack said she spent the day working on an English paper.