Rec Fee’s Fitness Questioned

No taxation without recreation.

That’s the battle cry at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge as students revolt against a proposed fee increase for a recreation center at CSUN’s main campus.

Students at both campuses will vote next week on a measure that would increase fees by $75 per semester over the next three years to pay for a $20-million fitness facility.

But student leaders at the Ventura campus have launched a campaign to defeat the referendum, putting up posters and going classroom-to-classroom to convince fellow students that they shouldn’t be forced to pay for a facility they don’t want and won’t use.

“We cannot allow this increase to occur,” senior Christina Martinez told a group of psychology students Monday. Martinez is president of the Associated Students group at the Ventura campus and along with other leaders has been lobbying students to vote no.

“We have the responsibility to inform you of a major concern and also empower you to vote,” she added. “If 100% of CSUN Ventura campus students vote, we can overturn this election.”

The referendum asks students whether they would be willing to hike Associated Students fees $30 per semester next fall, $30 more in the fall of 2000 and an additional $15 in 2001. The $75 increase would stay in place indefinitely.

Most of the money would be used to pay for construction and operation of the recreation center, but some would be set aside to aid cash-strapped students.

William Foster, general manager for Associated Students at the Northridge campus, said the recreation complex is badly needed for students who participate in intramural sports and other athletic activities. Currently, intramural leagues cannot use the main gym on campus until every other organization on campus has finished using it.

As envisioned, the 100,000-square-foot facility would have a running track, rock-climbing wall and a host of other features, such as a weightlifting room and in-line skating area.

Students at the Ventura campus had asked to be exempt from the fee increase, reasoning that they wouldn’t have ready access to the new center, which is 50 miles away.

But Foster said the board of directors of the Associated Students--an independent association that governs nonacademic campus activities--decided that all CSUN students should share the financial burden.

“It was decided that every student who attends Northridge and receives a Northridge diploma is a Northridge student and should pay the same fee,” Foster said.

The issue has touched a raw nerve in Ventura, however, where many of the 1,650 full- and part-time students have long nursed resentments over the level of services they receive for the fees they pay. Although 25,500 students are registered at the main campus, local leaders are counting on low voter turnout in Northridge to enable them to defeat the ballot measure.

Students say they pay $60 a semester to Associated Students, but see only a fraction of that spent on services in Ventura.

Moreover, students say that if fees must be increased, they’d rather the extra money be used to establish a child-care center at the Ventura campus, where most students are working parents. The average age of the Ventura student body is 35.

“Students on our campus are really not going to travel all the way from Ventura just to use the gym,” said Tamara Murphree, a psychology major and member of the student senate at the local campus. “I think exercise for students is very important, but on the totem pole of priorities on our campus, it’s not high up there.”

Steve Lefevre, director of CSUN’s Ventura campus, said the proposed fee increase has had the salutary effect of pulling local students together and giving them a forum for identifying the kinds of services they want.

The issue takes on greater importance as the off-campus center prepares to shift operations this summer to the former Camarillo State Hospital complex, the first step in establishing Ventura County’s first, four-year public university at that site.

“I think one of the things that is coming out of this is that the students are bringing themselves more clarification with respect to what their needs are going to be at the new place,” Lefevre said. “The students here in Ventura just have to let the main campus know the kinds of things they want to see done.”