Fee Hike for CSUN Gym Is Rejected by Students

By a margin of 55 votes, Cal State Northridge students rejected a proposed $20-million recreation center that would have been financed by an increase in student fees.

The center was billed as a means of providing more activities on a campus often criticized for lacking collegiate life outside the classroom. But to be built, students would have had to tax themselves with a $75 fee increase phased in over three years.

The vote in balloting this week was 852 against the fee hike, 797 in favor, student leaders announced Thursday.

Opposition to the fee increase was especially strong at CSUN’s satellite campus in Ventura, where 387 students--20% of the student body--cast ballots.

By comparison, just 5% of the student body, or 1,262 students, cast ballots at the Northridge campus.

Student leaders in Ventura said they played a pivotal role in the measure’s defeat by launching an aggressive campaign against the measure over the last few weeks. They urged Ventura students to refuse to pay for a facility they didn’t want and wouldn’t use.

“Our students did it,” said Christina Martinez, president of the Associated Students group at the Ventura campus. “One vote here and there did it. It’s a feat to be proud of.”

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

Most of the extra money would have been used for construction and operation of the recreation center, while some would have gone toward increasing financial aid.

Students at the Ventura campus had asked to be exempt from the fee increase, reasoning that they would not have ready access to the new center 50 miles away.

But the Associated Students organization at the main campus--which governs nonacademic campus activities--decided that all CSUN students should have to share the financial burden.

Officials with the Associated Students in Northridge did not return repeated phone calls Thursday.

Leisure studies professor Veda Ward said she was disappointed about the defeated recreation center proposal. She said it would have been an academic resource and boon for campus life.

“Most students at Northridge don’t really investigate the issues,” she said. “They tend to just vote with their pocketbook. I’m disappointed but not surprised.”

At Ventura, students have long nursed resentments over the services they receive for the fees they pay.

Students are assessed $60 a semester by Associated Students but see only a fraction of that spent in Ventura.

Martinez and other student leaders said now that the referendum has been defeated, they will turn their attention to increasing the Associated Students budget for the Ventura campus. There is currently a proposal there to increase that budget from $5,000 to $56,530 next year.

About $22,000 of that would be earmarked for child-care services. “I think we need to do everything we can to take this example, learn from it and apply it to other things,” said Tamara Murphree, a member of the student senate at the Ventura campus.