More Debate on Cal State Campus

One would hardly know it from your coverage of Handel Evans’ crowing, but the CSU trustees have not committed to convert the Camarillo State site into CSU Channel Islands. They have wisely decided only to move the CSU Northridge Extension facility to a portion of the former hospital’s grounds.

Perhaps their caution is due to their recognition that there is no “crisis” of access to college for Ventura County residents.

The study of access commissioned by Evans shows combined UC and CSU attendance in Ventura County slightly higher than in two comparable Southern California counties, Riverside and San Bernardino. Due to the high enrollment at our local community colleges, overall rates of admission to public post-secondary institutions is actually higher in this county than in the state as a whole.

Neither Evans nor The Times seems to think that independent colleges and universities exist at all. At least, they speak as though access to them isn’t, somehow, access. Independent colleges enroll more students than the entire University of California system, but the taxpayer-funded study ignores them altogether.

When Evans makes his “crisis” pitch to local residents, he consciously ignores these facts. He should consider that integrity and truth-telling are the first duties of a scholar. They even have some place in journalism.

DAVID QUACKENBUSH, Oak View

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Talking with friends and other people throughout the county, I find they have virtually no information about the proposed CSU Channel Islands campus or curriculum.

I think we cannot assume the lack of a strong opposition is tacit approval. If we have public indifference, it is from ignorance and ignorance only.

These organizers have said for six months that the community must approve of this college before plans go forward, but the organizers have not announced their “mission statement,” as CSU Monterey Bay does on its Web site (www.monterey.edu).

The entire California State University system has turned itself into a left-wing operation. Its latest campus at Monterey Bay is left-wing, top to bottom--a politically correct joke, full of educational fads and dedicated to anti-education.

Why would CSUCI be any different? It is promoted by the same people who once arrived in Monterey Bay with the same goal.

Several CSU “officials” came to town six months ago, passed out CSUCI business cards and have been working to secure the property with the approval of various governmental agencies. They haven’t bothered to secure the approval of 99% of Ventura County taxpayers who pay their salaries and most of the CSU budget.

We all have a right to know what the curriculum will be. Local businesses in the Monterey Bay area have been called upon to help bail out the cash-strapped CSU campus. Will Ventura County businesses be called upon to do the same? As long as no one has answered such basic questions as these, how can Handel Evans honestly say the general public is either for or against the campus?

Students must be taught to think, not embrace fads they are spoon-fed. Ventura County does not need another left-wing political operation masquerading as a university.

JAN EDWARDS, Camarillo