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The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
Monday, May 8, 2023
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Volume 113 Issue 15
University envisions a residential campus NOLLYANNE DELACRUZ Editor
ROSE MENDEZ SIMON MERCADER GABRIELA PEREZ-ORTA ANDREW TORRES Staff Writers
Despite Cal State Fullerton’s long-standing reputation as a commuter campus, the university is looking to transition toward becoming a residential campus over the next 16 years to encourage student engagement. Two years into the Physical Master Plan, which is set to be completed in 2039, projects have begun to create a campus setting where there are more residential amenities, academic spaces, transportation options and student life. One of the plan’s explicit goals is to convert the university from a commuter to a residential campus by providing more housing and improving amenities. In the master plan, Virjee wrote that increasing on-campus residential options and improving amenities, as well as the construction of an Innovation Hub and an Event Center, were intended to advance students’ academic success and support the entire campus community. According to the master plan in 2020, about 25,000 full-time students are enrolled in CSUF. Enrollment is expected to increase by 1% every year; by 2039, the number of full-time students is expected to grow to 32,000. CSUF will construct over 1
GABRIELA PEREZ-ORTA / DAILY TITAN
President Framroze Virjee said he wanted to create a campus community that serves as students' second home.
million square feet of student housing and over 500,000 square feet of faculty housing to encourage residential campus culture, costing more than $600 million. President Framroze Virjee said his goal was to create a campus community that thinks CSUF is their home,
rather than a transactional place where students take classes, pay tuition, get a degree then leave. “I would actually take issue and say the plan is to move us from a commuter campus to a destination campus and say we already are a destination,” Virjee said.
City council looks to narrow Associated Road
It currently costs between $16,000 to $18,000 to live in on-campus housing. Claudia Baeza, a junior kinesiology major who commutes from West Covina, said that, if the cost were cheaper, she would be open to living on campus. “Personally, I’d rather spend $60 a
Asst. Editor
JEREMY JIMENEZ / DAILY TITAN
ANDREW TORRES Staff Writer
Fullerton City Council is considering reducing Associated Road to a one-lane road in each direction instead of two lanes this fall. Fullerton’s interim public works director, Raul Godinez, said the recommendation from
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Steven Bise, the city engineer, to reduce the lane is an attempt to slow down traffic. Godinez also said the reduction of travel lanes will also reduce maintenance costs since less lanes will need to be maintained. “We do expect traffic will slow down a little SEE LANE 3
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Student government no longer manages student fee funding MELANIE NGUYEN
Fullerton residents share mixed feelings about Associated Road repairs in last week's city council meeting.
week on gas than spend a few thousand just living here,” Baeza said. CSUF is the only CSU located in Orange County. According to its website, CSUF was designed to serve a mostly commuting student body. Colin Costigan, a freshman communications major who lives on campus, said that walking over to the main campus from the resident halls felt like a whole other world. “I always forget that it's a commuter school, because I live on campus. To me, it's always been a more residential type of school, but that's just in this community area,” Costigan said. Several units of new housing were proposed in the master plan, including the recently-built housing suites in fall 2022. The construction of two new sections of student housing and one section of faculty housing has yet to begin. A portion of the new student housing will replace the former Cobb residence halls, and the rest will be adjacent to the Student Recreation Center. The new housing plans will provide students with an additional 2,400 beds and faculty with 350 units. Each student housing unit will cost an estimated $87,928, totaling to $52.75 million per building. Overall, student housing is projected to cost $506.46 million since cost projections are inflated by 5% each year to account for rising costs of labor and resources.
The Associated Students announced that Cal State Fullerton’s Academic Affairs Department will now distribute the money for programs related to classes and travel expenses in an attempt to simplify and streamline the funding process. Instructionally Related Activity funds, also known as IRA, are used for co-curricular activities to enhance students’ learning experiences in conjunction with a course, such as studying abroad. Dave Edwards, the executive director of ASI, said IRA funding has been under ASI’s supervision since its inception. The policy change was announced at an April 20 ASI meeting. Alyssa Adamson, the executive director of academic resources at the Office of Academic Affairs, said the department would oversee the funding and ensure its compliance with state-regulated fees. Adamson said this change was due to an audit that showed IRA Fees should be run through the university rather than ASI. After discussing this change in recent years, Edwards said this was the perfect time for change. “I don’t think there was a desperate need. This was more of a decision based on efficiency, how
can we make things smoother,” Edwards said. Hazel Kelly, the public affairs manager of the CSU Chancellor’s Office, said in an email to the Daily Titan it is at the discretion of each CSU campus to distribute IRA funds. CSUF joins 17 other CSU campuses in which Academic Affairs manages the IRA funding. The other six campuses use Associated Students to manage these funds. Erika Thomas, an associate professor in Human Communication and a co-director of the Speech and Debate team of the Forensic program since 2010, said she thinks this change is the right choice. “Recently, I think that IRA has become very convoluted in their processes and it just feels like since I’ve been here the workload, the paperwork has multiplied,” Thomas said. Jon Bruschke, the chair of the CSUF’s Planning, Resource and Budget Committee, said IRA funding can be an enormous additional burden on faculty. Although it is only his first year on campus, Randall Goldberg, the director of the College of Music, said the process was opaque to faculty sometimes. SEE STATE
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