THE CAMPUS CROWD : Rites of Spring : Students take a break from classes, some to retreat, some to party, some to work and care for their children.

Spring break! The college student antics of Fort Lauderdale and Palm Springs have become a part of American lore. It’s the time to escape from responsibility and proper decorum. It’s time to break loose and run wild.

And for some Ventura County students, it’s time for a religious retreat.

“The school traditionally holds a retreat during break and a lot of us stay on campus and attend meetings and meditate upon Christ,” said Mark Douglass of Thomas Aquinas college in Santa Paula. “I’m a junior and I’ve never even heard of anyone here going to Palm Springs or anything like that. Going to the beach is about as crazy as we get. This is a Catholic school so the environment isn’t really conducive to a party animal atmosphere.”

In fact, none of the college communities in Ventura County seem to live up to the stereotypical image of being overrun by drunken, party-crazed youth on vacation. Many of the students at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, who were off two weeks ago, seemed more interested in riding their mountain bikes into the wilderness or camping on the beach.

Last week marked spring break for students at Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark community colleges. With median ages in the mid- and upper-20s on these campuses, partying, drinking and other raucous behavior weren’t part of the game plan. Neither, for that matter, was spring break. “Break? Most people around here had to go to work and watch their kids,” said Linda Breton of Ventura College.

Along with camping and relaxing, the other big attractions this year have been: skiing in Tahoe, gambling in Las Vegas and taking a road trip to Ensenada.

Although police crackdowns have caused a slump in Palm Springs’ popularity, it’s still a hot spot for the die-hards.

“Some of my friends here have gotten four or five traffic tickets in one night driving down the strip (Palm Canyon),” said Troy Hendrix, a Cal Lutheran student who grew up in Palm Springs and sometimes returns for vacations. “The police will pull you over and try to ticket you for as many things as they can--your radio’s on too loud, people are sticking their heads out the window, something’s wrong with your headlight--anything.

“But I think as far as kids are concerned, the more controversial it is and the more trouble they can get into, the more they like it. They’ll have better stories to tell.”

In past years, the big controversy in Palm Springs resulted from girls clad only in thong bikinis, riding down the strips on the backs of motorcycles while young males howled from the sidelines. It was a tradition that was short-lived, it seems--thongs have been banned and the helmet law has gone into effect.

Bikinis and helmets may be the fashion combination when far from home, but back on campus, jeans and T-shirts are still the staples. A popular T-shirt design these days is of Ren and Stimpy, TV’s strangest cartoon characters.

Broadcast on both Nickelodeon and trendy MTV, Ren, a cantankerous Chihuahua who talks like Peter Lorre and his obtuse, feline friend Stimpy, are hooking the college crowd.

Dustin Thomas of Ventura College recently bought a T-shirt featuring “Stimpy puking on Ren. It’s a lime-green kind of puke,” he explained.

When Thomas turned 21 earlier this month, he and a few buddies gathered to watch an “R & S” show. Thomas said he has talked to high school friends who are at different colleges, and it seems that “R & S” viewing parties are a national trend--no small accomplishment considering Nickelodeon airs the latest episode on Sunday mornings at 11.

Mark Douglass over at Thomas Aquinas College said he’s never even heard of the cartoon duo. “There’s maybe two or three TV sets on campus--we’re living in about a 2 1/2-year pop culture gap.”

While “R & S” is gluing some to the television, “Wayne’s World” is pulling them to the theater in droves. By far the most popular movie on local campuses, the flick is about two young men who film a public access TV show in their basement.

Surprisingly, representatives at all three area cable companies say that the hit hasn’t inspired copycats. But a few members of the Video Club at Oxnard College are considering doing a parody of the movie. Ramior Hernandez, the club’s president, said that first he and his partner need to finish up their current project: a parody of old Kung Fu flicks.

Thanks to “Wayne’s World,” and the earlier “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” the word “excellent” is now pronounced with the first “e” drawn out, and definite breaks between syllables.

Also, the words “groovy” and “nifty” are being resurrected. According to Dana Larson at Moorpark College, the proper usage of the term is, “That guy is really nifty.”

* THE PREMISE: The Campus Crowd is a new feature about local colleges.