Project at UCSD Stirs Controversy

For UC San Diego undergraduates, their school’s image as an academic powerhouse fails to compensate fully for a lack of recreation and social facilities on the sprawling La Jolla campus.

Intramural sports contests often last well past midnight because of insufficient courts and playing fields, and big-name bands and speakers cannot be booked on campus because the largest indoor facility--the gym--seats only 2,000 and has bad acoustics.

To solve these woes, UCSD administrators have in mind the so-called Rimac center, a huge complex of indoor courts for basketball, handball, volleyball and other sports; weight training, dance, and aerobic rooms; lockers and saunas; and a 5,000-seat arena for concerts and other special presentations.

With more than 200,000 square feet, including parking, the 6-acre recreation, intramural, athletic and event center would become the largest structure at UCSD.

But, before it is built, Rimac could become one of the more argued-about structures ever considered on the 25-year-old campus, given the complexity of its $28 million in funding, its possible locations, and its potential traffic and noise effects on nearby high-rent La Jolla neighborhoods.

“It is a major facility, there is a diversity of opinion at this point, but I hope once we come to a conclusion, all major segments of the campus will support the choice as the best possible alternative,” said Joseph Watson, UCSD’s vice chancellor for undergraduate affairs who plays a pivotal role in the project.

With final selection of a site and architect contemplated by late July for approval by Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson and the UC Board of Regents, debate continues to swirl around two major issues:

* Location. The year-old UCSD master plan calls for a 4-acre recreational building next to the university supercomputer center. But, after undergraduates successfully pressed for the 5,000-seat arena during preliminary planning last year, the size grew to 6 acres, and a larger site will be needed in an area that had been set aside for academic and/or research uses.

That prospect concerns some faculty members.

Planners concede that La Jolla-area residents also might raise objections, primarily about traffic and noise at nighttime events, just as residents have in the vicinity of San Diego State University’s planned $41-million recreation-events center in the former Aztec Bowl. UCSD hopes to sit down with residents and discuss concerns before a required environmental impact report is prepared.

* Funding. UCSD students narrowly approved a referendum in February to tax students $70 a quarter, or $210 a year, after Rimac’s planned completion in 1994, as a way to improve chances for passage. That means few, if any, students who voted for the complex will pay a cent towards it. The UCSD Graduate Student Assn. believes the election was unfair because it was conducted under conditions more likely to result in undergraduates voting. Undergraduates outnumber graduate students 15,000 to 2,700.

The association believes graduate students have less need both for the sports and events portions because they concentrate more on study and research, and therefore should have been allowed to vote as a separate group and not lumped with undergraduates.

Graduate students also question the longstanding state rule that student fees and/or other individual donations, not state tax dollars, must pay for non-academic buildings at UC campuses. UCSD student fees, already among the highest in the UC system at $189 a year, would more than double to just under $400 a year by 1994 with Rimac’s completion. (Student fees, which are approved by students, are separate from educational and other fees levied by the state.)

“For graduate students in general, I think we felt Rimac would be too expensive for us,” said Norman Tien, immediate past president of the graduate association. “Many of us are independent, living off scholarships or fellowships.”

Tien said the voting procedure, which used polling places on campus instead of a mail ballot normally used for graduate students, indicates the second-class status of graduate students at UCSD. Graduate students are not necessarily on campus regularly, because of the individual nature of their research.

“There’s always been a split between interests of graduates and undergraduates on the campus, and there’s a feeling that graduate students are always under-represented on committees,” he said.

But Watson and undergraduate student representatives reject the graduate arguments.

“I think the approach on this campus is, and should be, that all students have facilities available to them and will use them,” Watson said. “You can’t assume that, as a distinct group, graduate students should be exempted.”.

Although Watson is sympathetic to ears about escalating student fees, he says that the hands of individual campuses are tied.

“If the Legislature feels that these facilities should be not be paid for directly (through state funds), yet feels they are important for campuses to have, then we have to have these student fee referendums. There is no other way.”

Watson is more concerned about the debate over Rimac’s location.

“I don’t want any major segments of the campus unhappy over an incorrect decision,” he said. Arguments over the location could make it more difficult for Atkinson to fulfill his commitment to raise $6 million from private donors to pay for part of Rimac’s construction.

The faculty supports having more recreational facilities on campus but wants the master plan followed, especially since it was adopted only last year, said Professor Ted Groves, chair of the Academic Senate.

Biology Professor David Woodruff, chairman of a faculty committee that advises Atkinson on building design and location matters, said the key issue is whether Rimac’s need for 6 acres will preclude planning for a sixth UCSD college and other research institutions targeted for North Campus.

“It could sail through (various committees) or there could be problems, depending on how that issue is answered,” Woodruff said. “Faculty fears about the size can be addressed through trade-offs, perhaps by downsizing a bit or looking at specific engineering requirements.

“My guess is that it will end up on North Campus close to its (planned) scale but with fine-tuning as needed.”

Campus planner Patricia Collum said adherence to the master plan is “not a black-and-white issue . . . rather, some sites are more in conformance with others. It’s a matter of degree.”

Collum also expects strong community concerns during preparation of an environmental impact report and a request for the required California Coastal Commission permit. The tony neighborhoods around UCSD--La Jolla Farms, Blackhorse Farms and La Jolla Shores--have complained in the past about noise and traffic from outdoor student music festivals, which as a result have been circumscribed or moved to less desirable locations elsewhere on campus.