NORTHRIDGE : Students Organize to Protect Orange Grove

For the second time, it’s fallen to students at Cal State Northridge to preserve the campus’ historic orange grove, one of the last of the dozens that once carpeted the Valley.

Students first mobilized to rescue the eight-acre grove two years ago, when the university administration proposed plowing it under to build a parking garage. This time the threat comes not from bulldozers but old age.

Seniors studying public relations have launched a drive to raise $10,000 to purchase a new irrigation system for the languishing orange trees. They have organized a series of fund-raisers, including a campus festival May 3, a poster contest and a benefit concert.

“We want to raise awareness that the grove is still in danger,” said Julia Maglione, a senior in journalism who heads the class project.

The students are confident that, as in the past, the CSUN student body will rally to support the grove.

“There’s not a lot about CSUN that is beautiful,” said Maureen Rubin, who teaches the public relations class and proposed the project. “When you walk through Harvard you see beauty. When you walk through CSUN you see concrete and a lot of rather cheap government buildings. The one thing that we all agree has tradition and loveliness is the orange grove.”

Class members have already secured a donation of young trees from Sunkist Growers Inc., to replace the estimated 150 trees in the 600-tree grove that are dead or dying.

There is no money in the university’s strapped budget to maintain the grove, said Terry Dawson, manager of grounds at CSUN.

The result is visible in the grove on the corner of Nordhoff Street and Zelzah Avenue. Although many of the 60-year-old trees are green and dripping with Valencia oranges for neighborhood children to pick, each row includes a few trees that are little more than brown skeletons.

The trees are watered from faucets at the top of each furrow. The system wastes a lot of water and trees at the end of the row receive less water than those near the faucets, said Robert Gohstand, CSUN geography professor and chairman of the Historic Orange Grove Committee of the Faculty Senate.

Elliott Mininberg, CSUN vice president of administration and finance, said that for now the university has no plans to tear up the grove. But he acknowledged that the long-term future of the grove is in doubt.

The students’ “Feeling Grovey” fund-raising festival is scheduled for May 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Sierra Quad at CSUN. Food booths, carnival games and entertainment will be featured.