Autonomous San Marcos University Campus Backed

Trustees of the California State University system voted, 13-4, Wednesday to formally establish an autonomous university in San Marcos, despite impassioned pleas from its local boosters that the fledgling campus remain under the wings of its parent, San Diego State University, until 1995.

The matter now moves to the state Legislature, where Sen. Bill Craven (R-Carlsbad) said he may continue his battle to keep the San Marcos campus linked to SDSU for the next seven years.

But trustees, meeting Wednesday in Long Beach, said they were ready to move ahead in forming a new university administration that will report not to SDSU President Tom Day, but directly to them and to Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds.

Officials said they hoped a nationwide search for a president of the new university will be completed within 12 months, giving the executive time to establish a staff and a core faculty before the campus opens in the fall of 1992 to upper-division and graduate students.

The university would become a full-service, four-year school beginning in 1995.

The new campus evolves out of a thriving upper-division and graduate off-campus center that San Diego State has operated since 1979, first in a Vista middle school and later in leased offices in a San Marcos business park.

A host of San Diego County civic and business leaders, politicians and SDSU student leaders had argued that the new school would fare better in recruiting new faculty, winning state funding and building student credibility if it could continue to draw on SDSU’s prestige as arguably the flagship of the state university system.

But trustees voted to accept the recommendation of an ad-hoc trustee committee that advised that the San Marcos campus become autonomous immediately so the new university could recruit its own staff, win its own funding and forge its own mission, independent of SDSU.

“We have an opportunity to create a university,” said Trustee William Campbell, who lives in Orange County but is vice president of a furniture manufacturer headquartered in Carlsbad.

“I do not think the people at San Diego State should be involved in any level in what will be a $150-million project ultimately,” he said, saying that problems trying to disengage the new campus from SDSU in 1995 would be “overwhelming.”

Supporters of Link

Voting to keep the San Marcos campus linked to SDSU were Trustees Lee Grissom, president of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce; Ralph Pesqueira, a San Diego restaurant owner, and Dale Wrid and Dixon Harwin, both from the Los Angeles area.

San Diego County Supervisor John MacDonald, who retired in 1982 after 18 years as president of MiraCosta College in Oceanside, said he was upset but reconciled to the trustees’ vote.

Appearing before the trustees, MacDonald said he feared that students who will be enrolling over the next year or two in the SDSU North County center on a part-time basis will choose to complete their degrees at the main SDSU campus after 1992, rather than switch over to the new university, out of the belief it would protect the integrity of their degree.

“I’m very disappointed, but the decision was made on the basis of a recommendation by the chancellor, and it’s very difficult to oppose that,” MacDonald said afterward.

Craven, who had shepherded preliminary legislation authorizing the study for a new campus and the resulting purchase of its 300-acre campus site, was less willing to walk away from the issue.

“There’s no question in my mind that we would have been better off to stay under the umbrella of San Diego State University,” he said. “But I don’t know if all is lost. There may be another avenue to pursue,” referring to the state Legislature.

He likened authorization of a university autonomous from SDSU to giving birth to a handicapped child and said it was financially imprudent to authorize the recruiting of an executive staff since SDSU President Day had offered to oversee the campus through 1995.

Power Struggle

Much of the debate over the San Marcos campus focused on a generally recognized power struggle between Day and W. Ann Reynolds, chancellor of the CSU system. Some interpreted Wednesday’s vote as a sign of support for Reynolds as much as a decision on the merits of the issue itself.

Day didn’t make himself available for comment after Wednesday’s vote, dodging reporters several times after the meeting.

But several speakers alluded in their remarks to trustees that they believed the panel already had made up its mind prior to Wednesday’s hourlong airing and vote.

“It was clearly a stacked deck,” Ken Lounsbery, one of several speakers appearing in Long Beach on behalf of the SDSU-San Marcos linkage, complained after the meeting. Lounsbery served as spokesman for the SDSU North County Advisory Council, a committee of civic, business and education executives who unanimously had favored SDSU’s retention of the campus for another seven years.

‘Evolutionary Process’

“We believe the creation of a new campus in San Marcos must be the result of an evolutionary process,” Lounsbery told trustees. “ . . . In our opinion, there’s nothing to recommend a contrary course. There is no justification for a cold-turkey approach to the formation of a new university. It just isn’t necessary.”

Craven told the trustees he was concerned that they already had made up their minds on the issue. “We have no objection to the separation of this campus in an eventual sense,” he said. Slamming his hand on the table, he added, “It isn’t a question of separation, but when you separate.”

That break shouldn’t come before the new campus has a chance to recruit a faculty while still operating “under the bosom” of SDSU, he advised.

When trustees began their own discussion, Grissom was the first to speak.

“Here we have an opportunity to build a campus in one of the most dynamic regions in this nation, one that will serve students throughout our state with distinction. It is truly a very rare opportunity,” he said.

“The issue before us is not the independence of the San Marcos site; that is inevitable. What’s before us is the timing of that independence. I believe it should be cut loose when it has the best chance to be successful--when it has a running start. I believe that will occur with the admission of freshmen in 1995.”

But Campbell said there was little question that the campuses should be separated at the get-go because to not separate them would create large problems in the future.

Questions Raised

“What academic plans do you want this university to incorporate?” the trustee asked. “What mission and goals do you want this university to take? It is imperative that the state focus its resources . . . and we as a board . . . find an individual . . . who will be the founding president of that university. That is the proper way growth should occur.”

The SDSU off-campus center in San Marcos currently serves nearly 2,000 upper-division and graduate students. University officials previously had decided to open the new campus in the fall of 1992, regardless of whether it was independent or an extension of SDSU. After admission of lower-division students begins in 1995, enrollment is projected to reach 5,000 full-time students by the year 2000, and 15,000 to 20,000 full-time students by the year 2020.

The San Marcos site had been selected because of incredible growth in North San Diego County and the overcrowding of SDSU, which, with more than 35,000 students, is the largest in the Cal State system. But university officials say they expect that a third of the students attending the new campus will come from southern Orange County.

The San Marcos campus would be the first to open since Cal State Bakersfield in 1965. Trustees are still studying plans for a new campus in Ventura County.