CSUN Reopens Amid Confusion : Education: Officials celebrate. Meanwhile, linking students with instructors is chaotic. Some endure it with good humor, others don’t.

Cal State Northridge’s portable university began its spring semester Monday, two weeks late and plagued by unusable temporary classrooms and confusion as about 15,000 students struggled to find their way on the earthquake-wracked campus.

Students and teachers found that two of the 198 temporary buildings had burned down, and many others lacked electricity and furniture. The university sustained an estimated $350 million in damage from last month’s 6.8-magnitude quake, believed to be the most devastating natural disaster ever to strike an American college.

While there were many problems linking students with classrooms held in unlikely locations--”Political science, your class is meeting in front of a blue Dumpster,” a campus police officer shouted over a bullhorn--a number of state and local officials showed up to celebrate the campus’ reopening.

Speaking by phone to a rally attended by more than 100 students and campus officials, President Clinton praised the CSUN staff for getting the school back on its feet.

“I can’t believe . . . you’re back open a month later. It’s a real tribute to you. I’m glad to hear the California spirit is alive and well,” Clinton said to the cheers of students during a 15-minute phone interview on the Michael Jackson radio talk show.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan appeared in a CSUN T-shirt emblazoned with the campus’s post-earthquake motto--”Not Just Back . . . Better”--a slogan that was challenged by an unforgiving reality Monday.

Credited, and occasionally denounced, for the quick reopening was CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson, who made the decision shortly after the Jan. 17 quake to remake Cal State Northridge as a university in a box--or clusters of boxes. The revival of CSUN “has been the most extraordinary experience of my life,” she told the crowd.

In a brief reference to the chaos surrounding her, Wilson said, “Clearly, it will take us a couple days to get the bugs out of this new place.”

The semester was supposed to begin Jan. 31, but the Northridge quake put out of commission all nine major classroom buildings. Of the 53 major campus buildings, fewer than 15 were in use Monday morning. Among the most hard-hit is the Oviatt Library. Now, students who need to do research may be taken by bus to UCLA, an hour’s shuttle ride away.

To make up for the lost classroom time, the spring break will be eliminated and the semester will be extended a week.

There was so much confusion and difficulty getting the students together with their instructors that many teachers did little beyond promising their students that next class would be better. But some students seemed to take the problems in relatively good humor.

“It’s a comical situation,” Scott Mason Jr. said, laughing. Mason, a 34-year-old business major, arrived for his 7 a.m. finance class to find that his modular classroom had no desks, no chairs and no electrical power or heat. There were no stairs to the door three feet off the ground, forcing students to climb in, nor any sign marking the building’s number.

Other students were not so lighthearted.

Daniel Taub, 20, of North Hills arrived an hour before his 9 a.m. class to begin hunting for classroom 1326. Following a map, he wandered in one direction, then in another, looking among the maze of portable buildings set up in athletic fields and elsewhere.

After asking directions twice, he finally arrived, out of breath and just in time to answer “here!” when his name was called.

“This is . . . hell!” another lost student shouted. While the students and teachers wandered amid the clusters of buildings, workmen continued assembling electrical wiring to the buildings.

Adding to the anxiety was a 3.3-magnitude aftershock, which rolled through the campus at 12:32 p.m.

Kathleen Neumeyer, Taub’s teacher, shouted over the roar of a generator that she would be teaching concepts for the first three weeks because no writing could be done. “Welcome to a new adventure,” she said. “This is the computer center, but we don’t have computers. We don’t know when we will get computers, or if we will get computers at all this semester.”

Tom Ho, a 22-year-old business major, waited three hours for his 7 a.m. class. Finally, at 10 a.m., a man in a hard hat kicked him out of the trailer.

“I got up at 6 a.m. to get here and stood around for three hours. They should have waited until they set up everything before they tell us to come back.”

One much-anticipated problem--that traffic and parking would be a nightmare because of the collapse of the largest parking structure on campus--failed to materialize, partly because surrounding neighborhoods usually closed to parking were opened up. Some people had to wait as long as 30 minutes for a spot, but a shuttle system set up by the university appeared to work well in bringing students to campus from outlying areas.

Once at CSUN, attendants at 22 information booths told the students where to go on the 353-acre campus. More than 24,500 students, about 1,500 fewer than last spring, signed up for classes.

The classroom situation turned out to be much worse than anticipated. As late as Sunday, university officials were assuring people that all the portables would be in place when Monday morning arrived. But more continued arriving during the morning. And many of those that were already on campus were not ready for occupancy. Officials estimated that 120 classrooms, about a third of the total, were out of service Monday.

Wilson conceded that Monday’s session was “joyful chaos,” but did not regret pushing the deadline. If it had not been for the rain and then the high winds in recent weeks, all the portables would have been in place, she said.

Additionally, two of the portables burned down Sunday morning. Rolando Canche, 19, discovered this fact when he went looking for his Chicano Studies class and instead found his professor, Alberto Garcia, holding the class in an open field. The cause of fire is considered suspicious, said acting campus police chief Mark Hissong.

Hissong said the university has hired 10 private security guards to help the nine campus police officers protect the portable classrooms.

Of the general disarray Monday, the university’s chief spokesman, Bruce Erickson, said jokingly, “Problems? What problems? It looks like the typical first day after an earthquake to me.” Then, Erickson added, “It could have been much more chaotic than it is. It was a gamble. It was not a foregone conclusion that we were going to be able to open.”

To cope with the chaos, many students did what Angelenos have learned to do more and more since the quake hit--they improvised. Alison LaPietro, a 21-year-old senior music major, couldn’t find her class, so she wrote its name on a piece of cardboard and waved it at passersby. “It’s no one’s fault. I’m pretty amazed they’re even open today. They’re doing their best,” she said.

Dust from construction work blew into the faces of students waiting more than two hours in line at the Student Union, which had been converted into the university’s temporary administration offices, for their financial aid checks. The checks were retrieved from the administration building, where more than $8 million in financial aid had been trapped since the quake.

Meanwhile, at the Cal State Northridge Ventura Campus, college officials are expecting student numbers to swell because of the high volume of calls they received from main campus students.

“We had numerous calls from students from the San Fernando Valley and Thousand Oaks areas just after the earthquake asking if classes were available,” said Joyce M. Kennedy, the director of the Ventura campus.

“We hope to be able to overenroll in a few classes to accommodate the people who have been disrupted by the earthquake,” Kennedy said.

Of the 110 classes offered at the Ventura campus, 40 are already full and 15 are nearly full, she said.

The plan to re-create CSUN was kicked off Jan. 27, when Wilson gave the go-ahead to bring in hundreds of portable buildings from as far away as Northern California and Nevada. Construction teams worked around the clock anchoring the buildings in place, and Gov. Pete Wilson waived state regulations so that the extra-wide portable buildings could be hauled at night to make the Valentine’s Day reopening deadline.

Some, however, felt that the deadline should have been extended.

When Sharon Eisenberg, a 20-year-old junior communications studies major, began her search for her 8 a.m. psychology class, she was in good spirits. But that mood wore away, along with the soles of her shoes. “Boy, I’m really late for my class and I might be dropped. I’m really nervous,” she groused to one of the campus’ guides, who was unable to help her.

That was enough.

“This school is insane. You can quote me on that. I should have transferred to San Diego State when I had a chance.”

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Chau Lam, Teresa Ann Willis, John Schwada and Christina Lima.

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