Notes

¹ In the words of the team that prepared a 1994 needs assessment of the new campus for the CSU system, "Of the hundreds of military bases that have been targeted for closure across the country in the last several years, Fort Ord is one of the four selected by the Federal Government to be a model for conversion to peacetime use. . . . The State of California, by responding to this opportunity, will be on the cutting edge of `converting swords to plowshares' as the impact of the Cold War begins to affect the nation." Gonzales, Lehner and Gonzales, "The 21st Campus for the 21st Century" (Tomas Rivera Center, February 1994), p. i.

² "The California Master Plan of 1960 for Higher Education: an Ex Ante View," in The OECD, the Master Plan and the California Dream, edited by Sheldon Rothblatt (Berkeley: UC Press, 1992), p. 50. Dr. Kerr also described the problems, in addition to "immense growth," that higher education in California was facing, in the following terms:

Some of the state colleges wanted to become full-fledged universities. Some of the community colleges wanted to become four-year colleges. The private colleges felt threatened by what they considered to be the insensitive expansion of the public sectors. Would the university continue to be the sole provider of Ph.D. and high level professional training (medicine, law, engineering, architecture and other professions) and of basic research among the public sectors; or would it share these responsibilities? Would the university continue to have undergraduate teaching, and particularly in the lower division? How many new campuses would there be and in which of the public sectors and where located? What would be the admission requirements in each sector? How would the public sectors be coordinated--by the State of California or by themselves? . . . What plans could each of us make separately; or would the State of California tell us what to do? (p. 49).

³ Several who were interviewed suggested that only someone who is very naive would believe the rational-comprehensive model ever applies in campus-siting decisions in California. The following comment is typical: "Anyone who imagines that campus-building in California ever follows a plan is misinformed. There is no long-term, carefully scripted process, and politics is never fully out of the picture."

⁴ An advisory committee composed of Drs. Lyman A. Glenny, Arturo Madrid and Virginia B. Smith graciously and helpfully reviewed drafts of this report and provided excellent advice. Their assistance is gratefully acknowledged, although responsibility for the content is entirely and exclusively the author's.

The report is focused on the decisions that led to the new campus; there was never any interest in "looking over the shoulders" of campus administrators as they proceeded with the difficult tasks of implementing these decisions by preparing the campus to receive students in a highly compressed time frame. Thus, by agreement with them, the report does not delve into the educational planning that constitutes the present phase of the implementation process. For the most part, the chain of events examined here ends with the arrival of President Peter Smith in January 1995.

⁵ This arrangement is loosely patterned on John W. Kingdom's description of the three processes by which agendas are set and alternatives specified, from his book Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984). Kingdom speaks of problem recognition, the accumulation of knowledge and perspectives, and the political as the three processes involved. All of these are in some measure relevant, but in the present case the issue extends beyond agenda formation, and the third and fourth stages--alternative selection and implementation--are also pertinent.

⁶ A CSU official who was interviewed noted that UC Santa Cruz and UC Irvine took ten years to plan (but he also criticized certain aspects of UC planning).

⁷ Some parts of this phase (e.g., community relations and understandings with area institutions) occurred as part of the proposal development process via the interim administration during 1994.

⁸ The task force was composed of "county supervisors, mayors, and community members with special knowledge of military issues." "Summary of Task Force's Report on Fort Ord Issue," Monterey County Herald, March 25, 1990.

⁹ The "21st Campus for the 21st Century" needs assessment described the effects of the base closure on the community as follows: "Various community and governmental organizations indicate that the total population loss as a result of the closure of Fort Ord is 47,950 military personnel, their dependents, and civilians affected by the closure. The Fort Ord Reuse Group estimates that as much as $526.5 million will be lost to the local economy on an annual basis." Gonzales, Lehner and Gonzales, "21st Campus," p. iv.

¹⁰ In its report Breaking Camp--Building a Campus, the Commission on Postsecondary Education (CPEC) draws an interesting comparison between BRAC and itself: "Congress assigned the job of base closure to a Commission [BRAC] because it realized that the infighting over military bases among its own members would create a process that would probably be unfair, and ultimately, unmanageable. The California State Legislature assigned the responsibility for making recommendations concerning public higher education expansion to [CPEC] for exactly the same reason, to make the process as fair and objective as possible." CPEC, Breaking Camp--Building a Campus (Sacramento: 1994) p. 25.

¹¹ "Plans Aplenty for Fort Ord If Army Leaves," San Francisco Chronicle, July 3, 1991.

¹² During interviews, others suggested that the thought originated with State Senator Henry Mello; at the time Fort Ord appeared on the base-closure list, San Jose State was opening its off-campus center in Salinas. The boundaries of the tri-county region were 100 miles in any direction from a four-year institution; the off-campus center offered a convenient access point. Senator Mello reportedly contacted the main campus and asked if they would be interested in serving Fort Ord; the response was affirmative, but the prospect was envisaged either as another off-campus center or as a relocation of the present center from Salinas to Fort Ord.

At least one critic of the CSU approach to the decision to establish a university campus at Fort Ord stated that he did "not think the federal government came to San Jose State or to CSU's GHQ [general headquarters] in Long Beach and said, `We're going to close Fort Ord; would you consider putting a college in?' The whole affair was initiated by people in higher education here."

¹³ "University at Ord?" Monterey County Herald, July 28, 1991.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ In a September 30, 1991, letter to Warren Fox, executive director of CPEC, University System Institutional Director David Leveille stated:

Among the ideas put forth by San Jose State University and Chancellor's Office personnel are the relocation of the Monterey County off-campus center of San Jose State University (currently located in Salinas in leased facilities, serving approximately 500 students) and possible future expansion into a full-service campus to serve the region.

In addition to local officials, discussions are moving forward with state and federal officials to convey the ideas put forward. The concepts under discussion include 700-1,000 acres of the 28,000-acre base for future use by the university.

¹⁷ References to these events are contained in the chronology in Appendix B of the CPEC report, Breaking Camp. A similar chronology is presented in the CSU paper, "Planning for a New CSU Campus at Fort Ord" (January 25-26, 1994). See also the appendix of this report, which provides a chronology.

¹⁸ CPEC, Breaking Camp.

¹⁹ "Schools Consider Ord for Complex," Monterey County Herald, March 14, 1992. The subcommittee report is "Strength on Strength! A Proposal for an Education, Research and Commerce Center at Fort Ord, California," Education Task Force of the Fort Ord Community Task Force (March 1992).

²⁰ CPEC, Creating a Campus for the 21st Century (Sacramento: October 1993), p. 32.

²¹ Ibid., p. 33.

²² A comment on references to the value of the CSU conveyance may be appropriate here. The general assumption that its value was in the neighborhood of $1 billion operated throughout the decision process. A lesser estimate, however, appeared in a San Francisco Chronicle article on April 25, 1994: "The Army makes no bones about its desire to get out quickly, but officials note that the agencies wrestling over future uses are getting a tremendous deal. The value of the property that will be handed over to CSU, UC Santa Cruz and others has been estimated at as high as $400 million." Cited in CPEC, Creating a Campus, p. 33.

²³ With respect to San Jose State's future involvement, San Jose State administrators reported during interviews conducted early in 1995, that they were assisting the new campus in every way possible. At the appropriate time, the library and other equipment located on the Salinas campus would be transferred to Cal State Monterey Bay. The center's faculty, however, were to return to the home (San Jose) campus. They also noted that there has been no final resolution of how Salinas higher education needs will be met in the future. This cannot be resolved until there is a program "out of" Cal State Monterey Bay. Most of the present Salinas students either will complete their program in the near future or, if that is not possible, will complete it at the home San Jose State campus or soon on-site at the new Monterey Bay campus. The Salinas off-campus center offers liberal studies, a social science major, a business program, and graduate teaching and social work programs. The center's head count varies between 500 and 600 (300 FTE) students. Some 40 to 50 students graduate each year.

²⁴ "Housing" now referred to more than the vacant troop barracks, which could be converted into dormitories and other forms of student housing. The term also included the civilian-style family dwellings that constituted the base's Schoonover and Frederick Park housing areas.

²⁵ "CSU Calls Housing Key to Plan at Ord," Monterey County Herald, September 12, 1992. In fact, other institutions in the CSU system offered graduate programs in the areas referred to in President Evans' speech; these, therefore, would not be "unique" to the new university.

²⁶ William Trombley, Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1992.

²⁷ This remark was made during Provost Arvizu's presentation as a member of the panel on new and expanding institutions at the 1995 conference. It was taken from a tape recording of the panel meeting.

²⁸ Conversation with officials at the CSU Board office, March 1995.

²⁹ Letter from David Leveille to Warren Fox, November 4, 1992.

³⁰ CPEC, Creating a Campus, p. 35.

³¹ Ibid.

³² A straw poll of past and some current coordinating board directors elicited generally negative reactions to a question about the propriety of an agency accepting funds from an institution or segment with a new campus or program proposal coming up for review. One said that his board would fire him on the spot if he even considered it. Others felt they might not be fired but considered the acceptance of any such contribution inappropriate. The consensus was that such an offer would be declined. There also was general agreement with the following statement on coordinating board roles from Patrick Callan's chapter of the Sheldon Rothblatt book:

The role of these types of organizations is thought to be particularly important in times of unusually tight budgets and of growth and expansion. When confronted with such issues, states will often turn to an impartial, knowledgeable body to lessen unproductive institutional competition; to develop even-handed solutions to difficult issues; to depoliticize controversial questions, such as the location of new campuses; and to insulate political leaders from decisions that often have more negative than positive political fallout. (In Rothblatt, ed., The OECD, pp. 84-85).

³³ These goals and the CSU planning and vision statement are described in CPEC, Creating a Campus, pp. 38+.

³⁴ The paper ("Renewing the Region: Vision and Strategies for Shaping the Monterey Bay Region's Economic Future") was prepared by DRI/McGraw-Hill, under sponsorship of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

³⁵ CPEC, Creating A Campus, p. 44. The report maintains that military base conversions were not anticipated. The Guidelines are dated August 1992, yet the initial Pentagon list designating Fort Ord as a candidate for closure was dated January 1990, and the BRAC list was released in April 1991.

³⁶ "California Educator's Proposal Reshaping Universities from Scratch," San Francisco Chronicle, February 5, 1993.

³⁷ Gonzales, Lehner and Gonzales, "21st Campus," pp. 56-58.

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 102-103.

³⁹ Perhaps because of the nearness of its opening, the San Marcos experience was mentioned at some point by every CSU official who was interviewed for the present paper. Many seem to feel the state university system was burned by the experience, and it should not be allowed to happen again. Either San Marcos directly influenced thinking about doing things differently at Cal State Monterey Bay, or it served as a convenient example people did not wish to repeat. In either case, San Marcos was a factor in the Cal State Monterey Bay process.

The experience at Cal State Bakersfield was also brought up from time to time in the interviews, although with less frequency. One institutional official said that "if history is any gauge, a different institution at Fort Ord is unlikely. Cal State at Bakersfield was to be completely different from the other 18, but it had to abandon these plans pretty early because they did not meet the expectations of its clientele [e.g., its students and the community]." He continued, "Also, you can't have an aberration in a system for long before the rest of the system forces it to change. The students also will demand something like what exists elsewhere. Santa Cruz has changed. They now have `boards' [departments], and the teaching emphasis has been lost to research."

⁴⁰ Gonzales, Lehner and Gonzales, "21st Campus," pp. 105-106.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 106.

⁴² California State University, "CSU Monterey Bay--Planning for a New University at Fort Ord" (Long Beach: March 1994), pp. 1-2.

⁴³ California Legislative Analyst, Analysis of the Budget Bill, 1994-95, as cited in CPEC, Breaking Camp, p. 21.

⁴⁴ "CSU Ord Campus: `Quality over Quantity,' " Monterey County Herald, April 10, 1994.

⁴⁵ "Bill Sets Up Fort Ord Conversion," San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 1994. Succeeding paragraphs in the article stated:

At the same time, however, a congressional committee that was meeting in Seaside was warned that it will take time and millions of dollars to dispose of the tons of unexploded bombs and shells still littering firing ranges on the Monterey Peninsula base. . . .

Surrounded by rolls of concertina wire, Fort Ord's "impact range" contains tons of unexploded mortar rounds, grenades, rockets, and artillery shells, some dating back to 1917. There have been at least four recorded maimings of children who trespassed onto the site.

⁴⁶ CPEC, Breaking Camp, p. 26. For the CPEC reviewers, equally as daunting as the magnitude of the gift was the magnitude of interest in the proposal:

The Fort Ord proposal is the most complex [CPEC] has ever considered. The nuances and subtleties of various policy options seem endless, and the number of people involved, virtually all of whom have large stakes in the outcome, is impressive. It is the first proposal the Commission has ever considered where virtually every conceivable level of government is involved, and with several subsets of each level. These include the Governor and the Legislature, several federal agencies, several State agencies, the University of California and the local community colleges, numerous constituencies within the State University, every city and county government in the region, all elected representatives in the region (and some adjacent to it), plus a host of independent colleges and universities, private corporations, public interest organizations, and activist groups. Many of these organizations have contradictory [i.e., opposing] agendas or purposes that lead them to desire the same property. Needless to say, there is no course of action open to the state university that will satisfy everyone.

⁴⁷ CPEC, Breaking Camp, pp. 51-52.

⁴⁸ The recommendation to approve is multifaceted and conditioned on the inclusion of specified housing and dormitories, federal responsibility for cleanup of toxic wastes (nothing is said about the cleanup of firing ranges and unexploded ordnance) and federal responsibility for renovation and retrofitting. Continued pursuit of inter-institutional collaborative agreements, resolution of lower-division instruction responsibilities, progress reports of an academic plan, and resolution of student-transportation and road-access problems are other features of the recommendation.

⁴⁹ CPEC, Breaking Camp, p. I-3.

⁵⁰ This institution experienced the most direct effects of the base closure of the four. According to the people who were interviewed at MPC, "They [MPC] knew Fort Ord was going to close and entered into a strategic planning effort in anticipation of that." Officials at MPC predicted a 30 percent drop in FTE students between fall 1992 and fall 1993. The college had offered courses on the base, and their students were about one-third military, one-third dependents, and one-third civilians. MPC had become dependent on that revenue. The college tried to continue offering courses for the public on the base, but this did not work. Overall, they lost about 1,300 students. Although they report that they have tried not to cut staff too much in anticipation of the base's development, they have cut staff about 15 percent. On balance, they feel the transition has gone well.

These officials are still the most reserved among the representatives of the local community colleges. Their attitude toward Cal State Monterey Bay was described as "cautiously optimistic." Their underlying concern continues to center on the development of lower-division courses at the new campus.

As an aside, all the community colleges reported enrollment drops because of the state's requirement of a $50 surcharge for students who had already completed a degree; although MPC officials cited this effect, they reported greater cuts because of the base closure.

⁵¹ This information and the accompanying quotations are contained in materials concerning Cal State Monterey Bay distributed at the Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA) meeting on January 26, 1995.

⁵² "Monterey Campus in a Hurry," San Jose Mercury News, August 7, 1995.

⁵³ "Water Limits Enrollment at Monterey," San Jose Mercury News, January 22, 1996.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Of the 3,000 applicants--2,000 of whom were first-time freshmen--who listed Cal State Monterey Bay as their first choice, 70 percent were from outside the tri-county region and 30 percent were from within it. Student diversity was apparent in the applications (50 percent Anglo, 30 percent Hispanic, 5 percent African-American, and 10 percent Native American and Asian-American). These figures were provided by campus administrators during a visit to the campus in March 1995.

⁵⁶ "From War to Peace: As Army Sounds Retreat from Ft. Ord, Base Finds New Life as CSU Campus," Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1994.

⁵⁷ People recognize and accept this. As one CSU official stated, "It would have taken years and bucks to build the infrastructure to build a university. Fort Ord was an opportunity. People in California had rejected the last higher education [construction] bond. If we had stayed on track, it would be well into the next century before we could add a campus. We had to take advantage of a unique opportunity. We talk about roles and missions and planning, but life is different."

⁵⁸ Eleven other military base closures involving facility transfers were on the list with Fort Ord: Castle AFB (Merced), the Presidio (San Francisco), Moffett NAS, Sacramento Army Depot, Mather AFB (Sacramento), Hunter's Point Annex (San Francisco), Hamilton Army Air Field (Novato), Long Beach NAS, Norton AFB (San Bernardino), George AFB (Victor Valley), and Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.

⁵⁹ Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board, 1989-90 Education Cost Study (Seattle: November 1990). These are the latest published figures. The coordinating board is presently updating the series; draft versions of the report, which are not official, substantiate continuation of the pattern.

⁶⁰ A reference to this possibility appeared in the Los Angeles Times article "From War to Peace":

[Chancellor] Munitz acknowledged that students at other campuses where classes have been cut back are worried that money will be diverted to pay for Monterey Bay. But the chancellor pledged that he will "do everything possible" to keep that from happening. One proposal is to charge higher tuition at the new campus, he said. CSU is considering a two-tier system where higher fees would be charged at popular campuses, such as Humboldt State, Sonoma State, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Monterey Bay may also create a service component, with students providing construction labor in exchange for tuition credits. "The hope is that the campus will pay for itself," he said.

⁶¹ "Report: Universities to Anchor County's Growth," Monterey County Herald, July 21, 1995.