EARTHQUAKE: THE ROAD TO RECOVERY : Quake Damage at CSUN Chills Returning Students : Aftermath: Wreckage at the Oviatt Library--the university’s intellectual and physical center--draws stares amid opening day’s confusion.

Students filed past the main library in chatty groups of twos and threes Monday, seemingly caught up in the complaints about classes and schedules heard on the first day of most semesters at Cal State Northridge.

Then one by one, they looked--some with just a glance, others staring, like drivers passing a car wreck.

The sight is irresistible. CSUN’s Delmar T. Oviatt Library, the school’s physical and intellectual center, looks like it got hit by a truck.

Even among college students, calloused as they might be by age, circumstance or television violence, the earthquake’s damage has had a chilling effect. And nowhere in the city was the damage as concentrated as at CSUN, where students Monday finally saw the destruction firsthand.

“I cried when I got onto campus,” said Mitzi Albert, a senior psychology major. “The pictures on TV can’t really show the devastation that hit this campus. It’s like an emotional aftershock.”

The school’s new logo, created last year, is based on the library’s towering columns. “They chose the library for the logo because they wanted a symbol of strength and solidity,” said Rabbi Jerry Goldstein, director of the school’s Hillel Jewish student center. “It’s ironic.”

Now, pieces of the roof are missing, the columns have cracked and chain-link fencing keeps away all but the hard-hat workers trying to figure out how to salvage the structure.

CSUN officials, meanwhile, are crossing their fingers and hoping students will not be scared off by such sights, especially after a round-the-clock effort to begin the spring semester exactly four weeks after the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake.

Campus officials spent Monday pointing to the extraordinary work done to reopen the school during talks with local politicians, as well as TV and radio crews. They wore T-shirts emblazoned with CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson’s slogan for the rebuilding of the school: “Not Just Back . . . Better!”

Radio talk-show host Michael Jackson, broadcasting his telephone call-in show from the campus, declared the school’s opening was the day’s unrivaled national news story, “eclipsing even Tonya Harding.”

Then, as if to underscore the point, President Clinton called to give a best wishes-style greeting, which was heard by several hundred students who had gathered to listen.

Mayor Richard Riordan told the same crowd: “I see pride, I see hope, I see resilience.” State Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys) said he saw “great spirit, great rejuvenation.”

Many students caught that spirit, unwilling to complain much about the long lines or the mislabeled classrooms or the prospect of having to perform lab work at UCLA or at Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks, some of the many inconveniences they face.

Even those who have been put under the most trying of circumstances, such as history graduate student Richard Martindale, seemed willing to go along.

Martindale, who is blind, said the once-familiar campus layout has turned into strange territory, with walkways blocked and hundreds of temporary classrooms erected on formerly open fields. The sounds of construction--trucks, generators and power tools--have made it impossible to rely on familiar landmarks, such as the sound of a flapping flag or the hum of an air conditioner.

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Inside one of the new portable classrooms, chemistry teacher Frank Harris told a room packed with students, “As you can see, there are no blackboards. I also have no roster, so I don’t know if you’re supposed to be here or not. But congratulations on being here.”

Harris, like hundreds of other faculty, has been unable to retrieve anything from his office. So he must rely on notes that he kept at home, and a book from the campus bookstore, which is one of the few CSUN buildings operating normally.

Music teacher Joel Leach told his Introduction to Jazz class, meeting in one of five 70-foot-long tents erected on the campus, “I have an office. It’s a Honda Accord and it’s parked outside.”

But amid the self-congratulation and good-humored improvisation, there is also a sense of unease about the school’s future.

“Sure, there was an earthquake, but there were a lot of problems before,” said Joe Lester, 24, a third-year health education major from Sherman Oaks. “No one took notice of this school until the buildings came down. Then Riordan shows up in a Northridge T-shirt. It’s all politics.”

Lester’s comments, some of which were broadcast during Jackson’s show, underscores much of the school’s dilemma.

Still, there is no sense in worrying about all that now, said Kenyon S. Chan, chairman of CSUN’s Asian-American Studies Dept.

“There’s a lot of shock for people coming onto campus today,” said Chan. “Going into my office for the first time was an emotional experience, seeing everything turned over and trashed. Students are going through the same thing. So we have to be upbeat. Otherwise, we’d just sit around and cry.”