Dominguez Hills Opens Campus Pub to Carson’s Surprise

Fourteen months ago, the Carson City Council, confronted with teetotaling ministers and 200 of their followers, told California State University, Dominguez Hills, not to open a pub serving beer and wine on campus.

Without telling the city, the state university--a commuter school where students have long pushed for a bar to enliven the lackluster social atmosphere--went ahead anyway.

The Bullseye Cantina opened this week, and small groups of students now can be found in an area just off the main cafeteria, socializing over beer, wine coolers and pizza.

A jukebox playing thumping rock music is in the background, a television above the bar shows sports and, on the wall, neon signs advertise Miller and Budweiser and a large poster urges students, tongue-in-cheek, to “Take the Bar Exam.”

Some patrons recently said the campus watering hole is welcome.

“It’s long overdue,” Mitch Gold, 29, of San Pedro, an education student, said to approving nods at his table. “The Lakers game is on. The beer is cold.”

As for last year’s controversy over a bar on campus, Jim Nieto, 28, said: “This place is tame compared to the one in (Cal State) Long Beach.”

But the news came as a shock to city officials.

‘Total Surprise’

“You’re kidding,” said Mayor Kay Calas. “They have a pub up there? On campus?”

“It is a total surprise,” said Councilwoman Vera Robles DeWitt.

Dennis Fusi, Cal State associate vice president of business affairs, acknowledged that “there was never any announcement about it.”

As for notifying the city, he said, “it would be like us operating a new academic program here. We wouldn’t have to.”

City officials thought they had settled the issue on Feb. 2, 1987, when the council, overruling staff and Planning Commission recommendations, denied the university’s application for a permit for beer and wine sales.

Evils of Alcohol

At the meeting, the Carson-Wilmington Ministerial Assn. and members of the churches it represents inveighed against the evils of alcohol, warned that a bar would cause more traffic accidents and asserted that drinking was incompatible with higher education.

The city clerk received about 350 letters, more than on any other topic in memory. All opposed the pub.

“Beer is just another way of making the moral degradation of America that much easier,” wrote T. L. Wilson, pastor of the Greater Pearl of Faith Baptist Church.

Fusi recalled the uproar.

“I tried to tell everyone that it was a much ado about nothing,” he said. “Somehow it got blown way out of perspective. I don’t know how or why. It is something that exists on most campuses.”

Ultimately, Fusi said, university officials decided that they had brought the issue before the Carson council “inadvertently.”

“It should never have happened,” he said.

Regulations Don’t Apply

The university’s position is that Carson zoning regulations, which the council invoked in denying the application, do not apply since the campus is a state facility.

Cal State Dominguez Hills renewed its application for a beer and wine license from the Alcoholic Beverage Control board.

On July 29, a hearing was held to consider the claim of a professor that a pub would aggravate campus crimes such as rapes, auto thefts and armed robberies.

A university security officer testified that the incidence of crime at Cal State Dominguez Hills was the lowest among state university campuses in Southern California. An administrative law judge agreed with the university Aug. 6.

Lawyers for the Alcoholic Beverage Control board also researched the zoning issue.

“The cases seemed to be in favor of the university’s position,” said Alcoholic Beverage Control counsel Dave Wainstein. “We didn’t have sufficient reason to recommend denial.”

The permit was issued Jan. 25.

Early Closing Time

In a move intended to limit the possibility of intoxicated students driving home late at night, the university insisted that the pub close at 10 p.m., when most evening classes end.

Service America Corp., which runs the cafeteria and the pub, is planning to expand operations, putting tables outside on a patio, installing a satellite antenna dish for sports programs, putting up a dart board and opening the pub for parties on Saturday nights and bringing in live entertainment one night a week.

At this point, said manager Brad Wood, the only campus reaction against the pub has come from people who want to use the International Room, a meeting area adjacent to the bar.

Linda Corbin-Roberts, a part-time teacher, said she found the loud music from the pub disturbing.

“I spent a lot of time in the International Room. You can’t do that any more,” she said. “There was only one decent place to have a dinner meeting and now we can’t. There are too few places on that campus where one can sit quietly.”

But reaction from outside has yet to be heard.

DeWitt said the city administration will look into its options.

And the Rev. Glenn Westerberg, pastor of the First Christian Church of Wilmington and one of the group that opposed the pub last year, said: “We have some very interested people in the community who are ready to do battle. . . . Sometimes, I think we don’t let ourselves be heard enough. That is going to change.”