VENTURA : Reception Honors CSUN President

Ventura County’s educational and political elite turned out at a reception Wednesday to honor Blenda J. Wilson, the newly appointed president of Cal State Northridge.

About 150 people crowded a conference room in CSUN’s Ventura campus for Wilson’s first official visit to the county. Earlier in the day, Wilson told reporters that although the budget at CSUN’s main campus in Northridge has been slashed in recent years, the Ventura campus deserves high funding priority.

She said the satellite campus is a model for the changing role of higher education because it largely serves working women and older students.

Wilson, former chancellor of the University of Michigan, Dearborn, said she supports continued efforts to build Ventura County’s first four-year university on a 260-acre lemon grove west of Camarillo. University officials have recently obtained agreements from the county and the cities of Oxnard and Camarillo to cooperate in supplying the site with water, sewer and road improvements.

University officials are moving forward with condemnation and purchase of the property. Wilson said that the short-term outlook for funding operation of the future campus is grim, but that she remains committed to seeing it become reality as the state’s budget crisis eases.

“People are beginning to understand that the quality of life and the infrastructure for a healthy economy are dependent on educated people,” Wilson said.

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who attended the reception for Wilson, said funds for continued planning and construction of the campus are dependent on passage of a $900-million bond measure for higher education that should come before voters in June or November, 1994.