SAN MARCOS ---- Just a year ago, university students were being turned away as they looked to set up house in the first on-campus apartments at Cal State San Marcos. Now, filling those rooms has become a hard sell.

And with only days to go before final exams are over and students scatter for the summer, more than half the space at the year-old, 460-bed University Village off Barham Road is un-booked for the coming year. In spring 2003, as the village prepared for its August opening, demand was running so high that more than two dozen people who'd already put down $240 deposits were being sent their money back for lack of space.

As of Thursday, said village director Brian Dawson, 217 of the 460 spaces were booked, with 132 spots reclaimed by current residents returning for another year of college after the summer break. The numbers translate to a vacancy rate of 53 percent.

With the high vacancy comes an even higher level of frustration among staff and administrators on campus, the drive toward the creation of a vibrant 24-hour world at what had for so long been a strictly commuter campus seems to have sputtered and stalled.

State pulls a reverse

Looking for culprits?

Try the California economy, said Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard, and how budget jitters led to curbing admissions not only at San Marcos but also at all the other 22 campuses in the CSU system. Chancellor Charles B. Reed's latest assessment is that the 9 percent budget cut proposed in January by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will mean turning away some 23,000 students across the state, most of whom would have been entering freshmen. On top of that, there's a 10 percent tuition hike looming for the fall.

At San Marcos, some 250 otherwise fully qualified freshmen applicants will not be getting in for the fall term. The new freshmen, the class of 2009, will start with 25 percent fewer members than the class of 2008.

And faced with having to turn away its share, Cal State San Marcos leaned local: Preference goes to those from North County and southwest Riverside.

Besides, the edict to curb enrollment began to be put into force only this spring. It set off a scramble. The University Village began sending room deposits back to students from outside the region who'd been fully confident their stellar high school records would get them on the CSUSM rolls. "Certainly," said Marti Gray, the executive director of the Cal State San Marcos Foundation, "the state did a reversal."

So with most of the new freshmen coming from close by and with student budgets perpetually tight, more of this incoming class appears to be choosing to live at home. Poullard said students ask themselves why live on campus ---- and pay the $5,150 to $6,200 for University Village rent, albeit well below market ---- when they can stay home, commute and save the money, especially when a 10 percent fee increase looms?

Access is larger question

The decision to admit locals first has caused what Cal State spokesman Rick Moore called an "unintended consequence": Enrollment policy has eclipsed a stated purpose to foster residential life on San Marcos' hillside campus.

If those who live farther away could have gotten in, said the village's Dawson, lots more of the rooms would already be booked for 2004-05. In fact, he said, University Village already turned away 142 people who planned on attending San Marcos, only to be turned down for reasons of geography. Fifty had put their money down, Dawson said.

Those potential campus residents came from what Cal State calls Tier 3, south Orange County and all but the Temecula and Murrieta areas of Riverside County. Cal State counts 937 applicants from Tier 3, of whom zero were admitted. An additional 1,835 from the farther flung areas of the state and the nation applied. In those cases, too, none got in.

Said Dean of Students Poullard, "I think what should be derived from this (residence hall vacancy rate) is that our state budget woes are directly impacting access, and we need to do what we can to make sure legislators know that the well-being of the state itself is being threatened by the way they propose to cut the budget."

Now the village is doing a push for tenants. Student resident hall assistants were giving tours Tuesday at a special open house. An hour into the three-hour event, they'd taken 75 people on tours. Some 10,000 e-mails and hundreds of direct mailings had gone out to tout the open house, said housing director Dawson.

A community thing

Connie O'Brien has been helping Dawson. Selected by a panel of students, staff and faculty to be president of the residence hall next year, O'Brien has lived at home and in the village. Now, she said Tuesday, she is there to stay, which would be two more years after which she expects to have earned a degree in sociology en route to a career as a lawyer. Commuting from home as a freshman, she said, could be compared to just continuing to be in high school.

"You meet people in your classes," she said. "There's at least one person in your classes who lives in the village and that leads to study groups and peer support. I had no connection to the campus before (as a commuting freshman). It's the whole friendship atmosphere (that's important)."

O'Brien said the village evolved in its first year from a set of warrens occupied by students who stayed in their rooms to a community. The change got prodded by dances, dinners and other events ---- some built around raising awareness about the issues surrounding the use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. With 21-year-olds in residence, drinking has legal status at University Village.

"Last semester," she said, "you didn't see people outside of their rooms. Now we get together. It (University Village) should be about the community. It should be a fun place to live."

Meanwhile, the payments continue to come due every quarter on the $30 million in 30-year bonds that financed the complex. The payments are to be derived from the rent receipts. The bonds were issued through a nonprofit corporation, the San Marcos University Corp. It contracted with a university housing firm called Allen & O'Hara Education Services LLC of Memphis, Tenn., to build and manage the complex.

The next step

The 189,000-square-foot village sits on about 8 acres of a 17-acre parcel at East Barham Drive and La Moree Road on land owned by the trustees of the California State University system. The other acreage may be targeted for more student housing.

A university panel on housing circulated a memo around the campus looking for input on how to fill the village back up. Ideas in the air include opening it up to students from Palomar College and to faculty members and staff members from the university itself. The 1,100-square-foot apartments come furnished, and complete with paid high-speed Web access and cable TV.

The potential effects of much of the village being vacant in 2004-05, the memo states, include falling short of the revenue for debt service (a notion that the foundation's Gray said is more than remote at this juncture); a drop in the amount of money devoted to programs for the live-in students; a tough time refinancing the bonds in light of the track record on occupancy; and long-term "irreparable damage" to Cal State's credibility with the chancellor's office that could lead to roadblocks in building a second phase of student housing.

The memo states that the trustees and the Cal State University leadership in Long Beach wanted only 150 beds for the San Marcos campus in the first place. "It is essential that the university reconsider its enrollment plan for 2004 to make the University Village program an integral part of the educational experience at Cal State San Marcos," the memo reads. "How would you like to proceed?"