Housing Plan Giving CSUN Small-City Feel : Education: The Northridge campus will soon boast nearly 3,000 dormitory rooms--a more than fourfold increase over just four years ago. But problems also come with that growth.

Cal State Northridge is nearing the end of an ambitious plan to build thousands of dorm rooms and transform itself from a commuter school into a more traditional campus where students live and play as well as study. The new housing is completed. As soon as an older building is renovated, the university will have grown from 700 spaces to nearly 3,000 in just four years.

Such hectic expansion has brought more than its share of problems, among them construction delays, increased crime on campus and a management fiasco that resulted in hundreds of students skipping rent. The recession and an unexpected dip in freshman enrollment have left a third of the spaces vacant this year.

All this comes at a time when the university’s leadership is in flux. James W. Cleary, who served as president for 23 years, will retire in July. The dean of students, who had been on campus 24 years, retired in September. The director of student housing has been at his job only a month.

“It’s a new game for a lot of people,” said Stanley D. Friedman, the school’s chief of police for seven years. “There has been a metamorphosis of this campus.”

Cleary said, “The person who comes in as the next president will have to be someone who is sensitive to these changes and certainly must be patient.”

Meanwhile, CSUN’s transformation appears to be succeeding at perhaps the most important level--with students. On a recent Thursday evening at University Park, a new campus complex of two-bedroom apartments, clusters of young men and women chatted in the parking lot. Others played pick-up basketball. A volleyball game was in progress on one of the complexes’ sand volleyball courts.

“People around here are pretty social,” said Greg Field, a 21-year-old transfer student. “It’s easy to get to know people and we have a lot of fun.”

Raymond Johnson, a 19-year-old sophomore, said, “I used to live at home in Pasadena. The commute and the gas bills were killing me. I love it here.”

CSUN built its first dormitory in 1969 and added an enclave of apartments in the early 1980s. But with less than 1,000 spaces nestled at the northern edge of campus, near Lassen Street and Zelzah Avenue, the university would be left nearly empty after classes ended.

Susan Stoutenburgh moved in as a freshman five years ago, and lived with a relative handful of resident students who she calls the “Forgotten 500.”

“No one at the university paid attention to us,” she said.

But as demand for student housing increased in the late 1980s, construction began on the $30-million, 10-building University Park across the street from existing dormitories. As soon as the original dormitory is renovated, probably within a year, a full 10% of the 30,000-person student body will be able to live on campus and a small city will have emerged.

The effects of this burgeoning population are already being felt. Drama department plays are drawing larger audiences, school officials say. The volleyball and football teams attracted record crowds last year, in part because more students could simply walk over from the dorms.

“There is no question that the climate and the environment of the university have changed,” said Bob Hiegert, CSUN’s director of athletics.

Administrators can no longer afford to ignore their resident students. Next week the Student Union will open an annex near the dorms, offering dining halls, meeting rooms, computer labs and a video game arcade. The union’s satellite will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

“That finally gives us a space where people from the residence halls can hang out,” said Fred Strache, the acting dean of students. “Word gets around that people can drift in.”

Student groups already show movies on campus several nights a week. Cleary hopes to get professors to trek to University Park to give lectures and seminars.

And, beginning this semester, an adviser is assigned to each residence hall floor to oversee concerns and social functions. “The floor I’m on is planning a ski trip,” Stoutenburgh said. “Building 3 might go out and have a barbecue with Building 5.”

The students want more. The apartments at University Park have their own kitchens and are luxurious by dorm standards, but “it’s not as social as a normal dorm,” said Shannon Feeback, a 19-year-old sophomore. “Lots of people stay in their rooms.”

“We need to put on even more programs,” Stoutenburgh said.

Increased socializing presents headaches of its own. At an open forum last year, neighboring residents complained that they had been besieged by the byproducts of youthful high jinks: excessive noise, empty alcohol bottles, food wrappers and even discarded underwear.

More recently, the partying has turned violent. In the early morning of Aug. 31, campus police had to spray tear gas to shut down a dance at the Student Union. Later, that night, there were two shooting incidents outside the dorms, both involving non-students. No one was injured. In late September, several non-students walked into a dorm party and ended up kicking a female student to the ground.

The university has plans to install security gates across the driveways that lead to residence-hall parking lots. School police walk foot patrols through the area. Cleary will ask the state university system to augment his security force--CSUN employs 20 officers while UCLA, with roughly the same enrollment, employs 70. He also hopes to build fences with security gates around University Park.

But outsiders aren’t the only problem. Students have also been breaking the law.

“Any kind of increase in population is going to bring with it attendant problems,” Friedman said. “What compounds the problems is that we’re dealing with an age group of 18 to 22.”

So far this year, crime and related incidents have increased 22% over 1990. Even larger increases have occurred in previous years since the resident population began to increase. Thefts and robberies at campus apartments account for much of the problem.

“We have to make the students feel safe here,” said Roger Frichette, the director of student housing and one of the new administrators who have inherited a changing university.

Frichette sees the next five years as crucial.

The university, however, must maintain 90% occupancy to break even on the costs of housing. With only 64% of the beds now filled, Frichette needs to do some salesmanship. CSUN will mail thousands of flyers to high schools, letting potential students know about on-campus housing.

The university must also do a better job of retaining its residents from year to year. Eighty percent of last year’s renters moved--either to home or to nearby private apartments--over the summer. Frichette, whose office has recouped much of the $2.8-million rent that previous students didn’t pay, would like to retain half his residents each year.

That’s where increased security and improvements such as the new Student Union annex come in. And, for the first time, students with similar interests are being assigned to the same room. “They try to get us to know each other,” said Kimberly Kimble, a 19-year-old freshman. “There have been movies and pool parties and building get-togethers.”

Cleary and others on campus hope that these social activities will nourish more than just profitable occupancy and college friendships. CSUN is trying to improve its image. Existing in the shadow of USC and UCLA, the university wants to be known as more than what Cleary calls a “day school.”

“A university of our size should be both intellectually attractive and socially attractive,” the president said. “Theories get discussed over cups of coffee in students’ apartments. As much learning goes on outside the classroom as inside the classroom.”

So administrators are trying to be patient with the changes.

“It’s much more exciting,” saidStrache, the acting dean of students. “There are days I could do without all the excitement.”

Living on Campus

California State 1991 Residential Current University campus Enrollment Capacity Occupancy San Luis Obispo 7,400 2,795 2,595 San Diego 35,000 2,500 2,300 San Jose 30,000 2,010 1,780 Northridge 30,441 2,601* 1,666 Long Beach 32,000 1,844 1,637

* CSUN will have 2,941 spaces when the renovation of the University Tower Apartments is completed.