CSUN Weighs Stricter Limits on Parties : College life: Administrators are looking at new crowd controls in the wake of two shootings after a fraternity gathering.

After a rowdy weekend fraternity dance and post-party shooting on campus, Cal State Northridge administrators are considering tightening restrictions on admission to large-scale social events or banning such functions altogether.

CSUN officials were forced to take a second look at new crowd-control procedures used for the first time at Friday night’s fraternity dance after campus and Los Angeles police closed it because of unruly crowds outside the entrance. It was the first large event at the University Student Union since a February dance attracted 1,000 people and ended in an outbreak of fighting.

“We need to look at whether we should try to limit the number of people, and are they just our students--those are the questions,” Fred Strache, CSUN’s associate vice president for student programs, said Tuesday. “And the broader question is whether we should even have these events.”

Friday night’s Phi Beta Sigma fraternity dance, shut down less than two hours after it began, was followed early Saturday by two separate shootings in a dormitory parking lot across campus, where about 200 of the 600 party-goers had gathered. No one was injured in the shootings.

A Pasadena man who is not a CSUN student was arrested in connection with the first shooting, campus police said. There are no suspects in the second shooting.

Strache said the school’s new security procedures, which limit admission to college students and one guest each and require that party-goers be searched with metal-detecting wands, were adequate for the dance but not enough for the subsequent parking lot gathering.

“Even if the dance had not been canceled, you still have the problem of spillover after the event where people congregate,” he said.

Strache, who plans to meet with campus housing and security officials throughout the week, refused to rule out the possibility that dances might be banned. But he added that it was too early to speculate what actions the university would take.

Limits being considered would restrict admission to dances to CSUN students or to members of the sponsoring fraternity, including members from chapters at other colleges.

Members of Phi Beta Sigma said that the violence occurred after the dance and that further restrictions--or an outright ban--would unfairly penalize organizations such as theirs that rely on the functions as their primary fund-raisers.

“I don’t know what we can do. We can’t control what people do after the dance,” said Phi Beta Sigma chapter President Robert Charles Hubbard, a CSUN junior.

David Weiss, 21, president of CSUN’s Associated Students, said the Student Senate will form a committee consisting of administrators, students and faculty members to address the questions raised by Friday’s disturbance. He said the solution lies in improving crowd control rather than eliminating dances and concerts.

“The administration needs to realize that we’re not in a vacuum anymore,” he said. “The problems that are happening in society--the crime--are going to happen on this campus. . . . CSUN is a growing university, in its diversity and in its population, and we’re having to deal with city problems.”

To control the number of people who congregate after major events, CSUN is planning to erect gates to prevent unwanted access to dormitory parking lots, said school official Cindy Derrico.

“That wouldn’t be a foolproof method, but it’ll be a start,” she said.