There’s Strength in Conviction

Sometimes universities teach their most powerful lessons in unintended ways.

What are students at the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge supposed to conclude from the university’s attempt to increase student fees to pay for a $20-million recreation center at CSUN’s main campus? Students at the Ventura campus would have to pay the higher fee even though it’s unlikely they would get much use out of a fitness facility located in Northridge--50 miles away.

The measure, to be voted on this week by students at both campuses, asks 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. Most of the money would be used to build and operate the 100,000-square-foot recreation center, which would include a running track, rock-climbing wall, weightlifting room and in-line skating area, among other features.

Student leaders on 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.

Students say they pay $60 a semester to Associated Students--an independent association that governs nonacademic campus activities-- but see only a fraction of that spent on services in Ventura. If fees must be increased, some Ventura students would prefer that the extra money be used to establish a child-care center at the Ventura campus, where most students are working parents.

One lesson here is that the morphing of CSUN’s Ventura Campus into the new Cal State Channel Islands--a years-long transition that is just beginning--is happening none too soon. The controversy has helped clarify what sort of facilities need to be prioritized as CSUN moves to the former Camarillo State Hospital grounds and begins to evolve into CSUCI.

Another lesson is that combined outrage can be a formidable force.

To block the increase, Ventura students would have to overcome huge odds: There are only 1,650 full- and part-time students registered here, compared to 25,500 at the main campus. But stranger things have happened.

When angry people channel their energy into a loud and unanimous message, it has the power to prevail over larger numbers who don’t care as passionately. There’s a lesson in that for all voters--student or otherwise.