2: Of Death and Life
A hospital dies, a university is born.
After 61 years as a preeminent mental institution, Camarillo State Hospital closed its doors June 30, leaving behind a ghostly silence and a skeleton crew to look after the buildings where 7,000 patients once lived.
But six months after Camarillo State finally gave in to a slow death ordered by Gov. Pete Wilson in a money-saving move, the stately old campus has begun to assume its new role as a hall of higher learning.
Two weeks ago, a band of educators bent on building Ventura County’s first four-year public university moved onto the campus, plugged in their computers and went to work.
Now, if all goes well and Wilson puts the $6.5 million recommended by Cal State University trustees into his budget, this county will finally have the beginnings of a university planned for three decades.
About 1,400 students--currently sequestered at the Cal State Northridge extension in Ventura--may start the commute down to the campus at the edge of the Oxnard Plain by next January.
The new university could become a full-fledged Cal State campus--the system’s 23rd--a few years later. Officials hope for 15,000 students by 2010.
“I think we are inventing a university for the next millennium,” campus President J. Handel Evans said.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
