Getting Acquainted : Open House Gives Families Chance to Tour New Cal State Campus

When Sharyn Landau of Agoura last toured these red-tile-roofed buildings, she was walking the halls of Camarillo State Hospital. Little did she know that one day she would be happily walking those same halls with her son.

But, there she was, with 20-year-old Jeffrey, taking a student’s view of a very different kind of institution from the one she visited as a psychology student--one that could someday officially become Cal State Channel Islands.

“I toured here in its heyday as a mental hospital,” said Landau, who studied abnormal psychology at UCLA. “It’s wonderful to see the growth here.”

The public university’s officials seconded that emotion by cutting the ribbon on a university campus decades in the making. In a kind of public unveiling, the university sponsored an open house for what is now Cal State Northridge’s Ventura County campus and in 2002, if certain conditions are met, will be its own entity--Cal State Channel Islands.

On Sunday, local politicians and donors toured the campus. Folklorico dancers and a jazz band celebrated with music.

The open house--called “Celebrate the Move”--is one rung higher on the ladder to full university status, said Barbara Thorpe, the head of academic planning for the future university.

“This is just one of a long series of steps,” she said. “[CSUN] is sowing the seeds, and when we’re ready, they’ll hand it over. Their students will be our students.”

The university is still focusing on finding money--for library books and scholarships--through local partnerships and student outreach.

“We have a lot of money to raise,” said Elizabeth Stacey, the university’s director of development. “And because we don’t have any alums, we’re relying on community volunteers.”

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Fund-raisers did get a great boost from a $5-million donation earlier this month from Oxnard rancher John S. Broome.

Among the primary goals is to design the curriculum, and to find a student body to fill the halls.

Prospective students took Sunday’s opportunity to tour the pastoral campus, a virtual island of green amid the brown agricultural fields of fall. At a table hawking sweatshirts for the new school, academic debates already raged--evidence of the school’s certain search for a scholarly identity.

Just how do you pronounce CSUCI anyway? C-Sushi?

“C-Sucky . . . It’s not good, but it’s cute,” argued Mary McDonnell, of Camarillo, whose husband is a prospective student.

“Yeah, that’s classy,” joked her friend, who declined to give her name.

Camarillo City Councilwoman Debbie Rodgers took a tactful approach to the hot-button issue.

“I think the adults call it “C-Sushi” and the kids call it “C-Sucky,” she said. “Politically, I think I’ll remain in the middle.”

Regardless of such controversy, most students’ focus seemed to be on the campus itself.

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Julianne Platt, 19, a second-year student at Ventura College, brought her mother, Louise, along for the visit. Both Camarillo residents agreed the bucolic campus has a leg up on the hustle and bustle of some city institutions.

“Ventura County is different from L.A., and the school needs to be, too,” Louise Platt said. “We moved here--and stayed here--for a reason. We like the strawberry fields.”

For a woman who had to leave the county for her education, the fact that her daughter likely won’t have to was good news.

“This is a dream come true,” she said.

“Birth of a University: Countdown to a Cal State Campus” is an occasional series chronicling the creation of the Channel Islands campus at the former Camarillo State Hospital complex. This installment focuses on the celebration marking the grand opening of the budding campus.