Review of Grants Begets More Funds : Emergency: Eighteen CSUN athletes receive additional aid; others in line for student loans.

An emergency review of grant packages for about four dozen Cal State Northridge athletes resulted in additional funding for 18 of them and possible loans for several others.

Of the 51 students who had their financial aid files studied in the past two weeks, four received need-based Pell grants ranging from $950 to $2,300; 14 received other need-based grants of about $500 each; six applied for federal loans between $750 and $5,000, and eight received counseling on how to complete aid application documents.

Nineteen were not eligible to receive extra financial assistance, but several indicated they would apply for federal loans, according to a report by Vu Tran, the school official who administered the review.

“Are the numbers tremendous? No, I don’t think so,” said Ronald R. Kopita, Northridge’s vice president of student affairs. “But we will be able to assist some students, and we are hopeful that they will take that money and use it wisely.”

The vast majority of the students reviewed were members of Northridge athletic teams, Kopita said.

Earlier this month, members of the football team boycotted a practice after their demands for a meal plan were rejected by the school.

Initial cost projections for instituting a one-meal-per-day “training table” were too high, school officials said. But in the fallout of that decision, administrators decided an extensive review of financial aid packages and procedures was in order.

In a two-week period that ended last Friday, Tran pored over as many aid packages as possible, also meeting with 48 students on an individual basis.

Northridge coaches were told to encourage their athletes to be reviewed, and when the response was slow, Kopita ordered Tran to begin studying packages on his own. As a result, 23 athletes were contacted--through their coaches--and told they might be eligible for further assistance.

Of the 23, only eight had responded by the end of last week.

“That leaves me with a few questions in my mind about how extensive the problem is,” Kopita said. “The problem does not appear to be particularly widespread in athletics or specifically on the football team.”

Robert Crosby, a defensive back on the football team, was eligible for an additional “couple of hundred” dollars in need-based aid.

But more than helping ease his personal budget crunch, Crosby said, the review was welcomed as a sign that school administrators are becoming more sensitive to the plight of needy athletes.

Kopita is in the process of organizing an in-house task force to study procedures in the financial aid office and he expected to submit a preliminary list of recommendations to school president Blenda J. Wilson today.