Northridge Studying Menu for a Meal Plan for Athletes : Financial aid: Permanent program to feed those in need could be implemented by the beginning of next year.

A program to feed needy athletes at Cal State Northridge could be in place as early as the first of next year, the head of a committee studying the feasibility of a meal plan said Thursday.

Mary Ann Cummins Prager, an assistant dean at Northridge and coordinator of a special five-person force formed by top university administrators, said the committee’s goal was to find “a permanent solution, not a Band-Aid.”

In the next three weeks, the committee plans to interview NCAA financial aid specialists and representatives from schools at which meal plans already are in place. “The goal is to do whatever we can within our finances and NCAA guidelines,” said university vice president Ronald R. Kopita, who will receive the study.

On Oct. 4, Northridge football players boycotted a practice, calling attention to the plight of some athletes who are said to be going hungry.

“We are looking for some sort of permanent resolution, not another mandate,” Kopita said. “We need a definitive no or a yes, and a plan on how to implement such a program.”

Cummins Prager said the study should be completed by the end of the school’s fall semester--about mid-December--and that a meal program might be in place “next semester, or, at the latest, next (school) year.”

She does not expect the probe to result in a “definitive no.”

“I’m confident we will be able to suggest options,” she said.

Kopita, who oversees the school’s athletic program, three weeks ago discounted the feasibility of a meal plan based on information he received from university food service experts.

The initial projection for a four-meal-per-day, unlimited food “training table” for all Northridge athletes was $80,000. Such a program, Kopita said, was “not logical or reasonable.”

“But there might be other options,” he said Thursday. “That’s what this process is all about. We need to seek out and review all the possibilities.”

The committee hopes to bring all the university’s options into focus, Cummins Prager said. Other members of the fact-finding force are Dr. Selase Williams, chairman of the university’s Pan African Studies Department; Audrey Moore, academic adviser to the Northridge athletic program; Gerald Ponder, a senior free safety on the Matador football team, and Leslie Small, president of the school’s Black Student Union.