Long Beach Students Start Year With Course in Chaos : Education: The semester begins with record enrollment for the music department and little room to move. A recital hall where roof collapsed and five other buildings remain closed.

At the Cal State Long Beach music department, where a recital hall came crashing down this summer and five more buildings have been declared unsafe, the fall semester that began Tuesday sounded something like this:

“Why can’t I be in A-100?”

“Because that’s the building where the roof fell down.”

Students paced in confusion, there was no place to store their instruments, the wind symphony was relegated to a local church and the walk to Music Appreciation was a two-mile trek, uphill.

Why the 120-ton roof of the empty Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall collapsed July 2 remains under investigation. Vital lecture and rehearsal areas in the $6.3-million complex are off limits for the semester.

But classes began anyway. And if there is such a thing as managed chaos, this was it.

At 11 a.m., Francisco Garcia, a 25-year-old senior, sat in the shade behind a metal desk, “The Planets” by Gustav Holst booming from a tape player next to his left foot. A line of befuddled students, eyes glazed, stretched before him.

Garcia’s job was to direct students to the classroom space found by faculty working frantically through the summer.

“Most people are a little displeased,” he said as a sophomore with an armload of books walked toward the opposite end of campus, cursing.

It was going to be a long semester.

A team of structural engineers hired to investigate the collapse had, at one time, shut down the collapsed hall and seven other buildings, while flagging six others as possibly unsafe. Shortly before school began, two of the closed buildings reopened--hardly enough to accommodate a record enrollment of more than 2,000 music students.

Rehearsal space was rented from a nearby church for about $9,000, an added burden for a university already facing a $5-million shortage in state money this year, officials said. A student union and theater were converted to classrooms and at least one Mozart opera--scheduled in the collapsed recital hall--will be held aboard the Queen Mary (the one decided plus in the whole ordeal, faculty members said.)

“You want some insight into how lousy this place is built?” asked a senior who declined to give his name, plucking a tune on a borrowed guitar while awaiting his clarinet class. “The roof leaked horribly in the recital hall. You could see light in between the seams of the locker room walls. And look at these beams,” he said, glowering upward. “I’m just a humble music major, but it’s pretty obvious they didn’t do a very good job.”

There were rumors that the beams covering a concrete walkway were held together by Elmer’s glue. But by the day’s end, there seemed to be a place for everyone, however inconvenient. The students held limited faith that the buildings declared safe really were.

“We’ve practiced in these rooms for a long time,” Garcia said. “We’ve dealt with rain leaking through the roof, thinking it was just that--rain. Looking back, any of those rooms could have given way. It’s really scary.”