CAMPUS CULTURE

There's a self-contained, parklike, very lively community not too far from where you live.

When you go there, you can see a full evening of original short films or stand-up comedy for free, and a ticket to see an internationally known band costs just $10.

The full, formal name of the place is Sonoma State University, but to the people who live and work there, it's simply "The Campus."

The university's academic, arts and athletic departments produce hundreds of events, open to both students and the general public. But off-campus fun-seekers also should watch out for the eclectic happenings -- some 80 every school year -- offered by an organization called Associated Students Productions, or ASP.

Over the past few decades, ASP has brought a widely varied array of talent to the campus, from author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., to stand-up comedian, actor and musician Dane Cook.

This weekend is a good example. On Friday, ASP presents nearly 40 short films made by Sonoma State students as part of the ongoing worldwide Campus MovieFest competition.

And on Sunday, the reggae fusion band Groundation, founded by four graduates of the university's jazz program, plays its first gig on the campus since the musicians' student days there nearly a decade ago.

"This will be our first time back at Sonoma State since we played on the quad when we first started, in '98," said Harrison Stafford, 29, Groundations's lead singer and guitarist.

Since college, the band has grown to nine members and has toured extensively in Europe and South America. Their fan base is particularly strong in France, where the group's most recent album, "Upon the Bridge" has sold 20,000 copies. But Stafford hasn't forgotten the group's birthplace.

"That's when we first started playing in jazz combos," he said, "and that was the beginning of Groundation."

Aspiring filmmaker Joe Harris, 22, of Sonora, a senior at SSU, hopes that college days will lead to bigger things for him and the other student co-founders of Mojok Studios -- director and writer John Finger, 21, and actor Ryan Murray, 22.

During last year's Campus MovieFest, Mojok produced a five-minute film titled "Inner Turmoil," which placed among the top 16 student-produced movies made in California during the competition. This year's Mojok production is untitled so far.

"We decided to get really ambitious," Harris said. "We decided to develop a science fiction script."

In the mini-movie, filmed in and around Rohnert Park, Murray stars as a pizza delivery driver kidnapped by secret agents and caught up in a plot involving a weapon that could destroy the world.

Winning films at Sonoma State go on to the regional level, to be shown at the Bay Area grand finale Oct. 19 at the California Theatre in San Jose.

This weekend's shows are just a sample of the steady stream of events ASP puts on at campus venues every year, said Bruce Berkowitz, ASP program coordinator since 1980.

Berkowitz supervises and trains a paid, part-time staff of seven students. The organization is funded by part of the $62 fee SSU enrollees pay every semester for a variety of campus services.

"ASP is an arm of the Associated Students, which is the student government here," Berkowitz explained. "Our mission is to put on events and programs that give students something to do and to learn about outside the classroom."

As result, his student programmers seek diversity in their productions, ranging from a free pizza and comedy night next week, to a lecture next month about the treatment of America's prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

"A lot of our stuff is very diverse in its content, but wouldn't be well-known by many. It'll be everything from something on Islam to a hip-hop slam poetry contest," Berkowitz said.

"Our primary target is the students who go to school here, but everything we do is open to everybody. For some of our concerts, 20 percent of the audience will be nonstudents," he added.

But once the word gets out about some of these events, that percentage could go up, Berkowitz believes.

"On a cost basis, it's the best deal in town. Most of our stuff is free," he said. "It really is the last of the great bargains."

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.