Northridge : CSUN Student Drops Suit, Pays $60 Fee

A Cal State Northridge student has dropped his lawsuit against the university’s Associated Students and will be allowed to “resign” from the student organization while still paying fees, it was announced Tuesday.

Dean Batha, a 36-year-old mathematics undergraduate, filed the small claims suit Oct. 6, asking that his $60 membership fee be refunded. Batha said he was angry after the per-semester fee was raised in March from $33 to $60 to pay for CSUN athletics.

But after contacting the college’s first student body president and poring over microfilm copies of the campus newspaper, Batha learned that a May 5, 1958, student election satisfied the legal requirement for CSUN to make the fee mandatory, he announced at the weekly Associated Students Senate meeting.

“I have accepted Mr. Batha’s resignation from Associated Students and he, in turn, has indicated his willingness to continue to pay the . . . fee as an enrolled student,” Associated Students Secretary and Treasurer William R. Foster wrote in a Nov. 2 memo distributed to board members.

“I guess I feel kind of like a pioneer,” Batha said outside Tuesday’s meeting. “I’m not entirely sure what it means.”