CSUN Stadium Poll

Re “Two-Thirds of Valley Residents Back Stadium at CSUN, Poll Finds,” April 21.

The Cal State Northridge administration has had a hard time pushing division I, big-time football. Students voted against it twice, and only with the benefit of low voter turnout did the students capitulate to a student fee hike the third time around. The faculty is not crazy about the idea either. Those mossback professors would rather spend the money on the library and the academic program. But who needs books?

To bolster enthusiasm for what really matters, the CSUN administration surveyed 750 people in the far-flung “San Fernando Valley area” to solicit consent for a multimillion dollar campus stadium. After detailed “explanations” to those polled, a whopping 67% of them expressed no opposition.

For sure. Why should the surveyed residents of Simi Valley and Glendale mind a rock-concert-football stadium traffic magnet in Northridge? But hey, if they’re willing to go that far away, the CSUN administration could have had an even more triumphant percentage if they’d only surveyed the residents of Alaska as well.

EDIE PISTOLESI, Northridge

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Failing to get the results they wanted from the stadium committee (even though it was stacked nine against two in their favor), President [Blenda] Wilson and Sam Jankovich [CSUN interim athletic director] decided to conduct a bogus poll to try to hoodwink the public into thinking that everyone is in favor of building an $8.5-million stadium on campus.

It’s a well-known fact that CSUN is a commuter campus and students don’t attend the games. Attendance figures show a dismal lack of interest. Even the alumni don’t attend and are not opening their checkbooks to CSUN athletics.

Just last month, according to the university newspaper, the students voted down a $25-million, 120,000-square-foot student recreation center with an adjoining 240,000-square-foot artificial turf sports field at CSUN. Somehow, that proposed project did not come up at the stadium committee meetings, and neither did it appear on any of the drawings showing land use--quite a coincidence!

After leasing most of the land on the North Campus, (with additional acres promised to Alfred Mann), it would certainly be interesting to know how these grandiose facilities can be jammed onto this small and already overcrowded campus. There cannot possibly be any buffer zones for noise, and traffic and crime will continue to increase, but that won’t bother the people polled because they don’t live anywhere near the vicinity!

It would probably be just too practical to form a joint coalition between CSUN and Pierce College and share the cost to upgrade and maintain their stadium. The university has a history of poor decisions and white elephant facilities. Let’s face it, fiscal practicality has never been one of the strong points at CSUN.

Why not specifically poll the most important group--CSUN students? Will they support football?

HANS and PAULA PHILLIPS, Northridge