Authors: By Nina Bernstein. STAFF WRITER

Pagination: 07

Personal Names: Kirnon, Cassundra (Copyright Newsday Inc., 1992)

City College officials launched disciplinary action yesterday against the two Evening Student Government officers who organized Saturday's fatal celebrity basketball game, charging that they deliberately deceived and defied the administration to obtain free use of the gym for rap promoters. "You allowed the Evening Student Government to be used as a front for outside groups who . . . put public security at risk," officials wrote to Cassundra Kirnon, president of the Evening Student Government, and Jose Frazier, the treasurer, in a letter from the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs, parts of which were read by a reporter for New York Newsday. "You secured the gymnasium by misrepresenting the events."

Disciplinary action could result in suspension or expulsion of the two night students. Both were virtually unknown to university officials last June when they won an election with 53 votes out of 70 cast, gaining automatic control of a $46,000-a-year student government budget and easy access to university space. Kirnon, a 39-year-old mother of four who works days as a secretary for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, has not been at work or answered the telephone at her Edgecombe Avenue apartment since the basketball game that left eight dead and 29 injured.

Jean Charles, the director of the office of Co-Curricular Life, who approved Kirnon's application for the use of the gym, said she was "in trauma" when he last saw her Saturday night after the event had turned to tragedy. He said he demanded a copy of her contract with a promoter for the celebrity basketball game, and followed her back to the Evening Student Government office across the street to get it. Only then, he said, did he learn the name of the promoter, Sean Combs, better known by his rap name, "Puff Daddy." Based on a bare-bones application form for a "celebrity basketball game" filled out and signed by Kirnon, the City College Security Office had assessed the Evening Student Government only $305 for security - five guards and a supervisor - according to official records. More guards were added belatedly, officials said, after the security office learned from printed fliers that the event was being heavily promoted as a rap star-studded event.

The athletics department charged $200 for one staff member's overtime, and Buildings and Grounds assessed the group $488.75 for clean-up, for a total of $993.75 in expenses, according to the original reservation document for the event, which took in thousands of dollars. Charles said he discussed plans for the event with Kirnon for two hours before approving the gym reservation, flatly rejecting a request to have tap-dancing and rap stars present. "They were clever enough to never bring those posters and fliers onto the campus," added Charles, who took over the $50,000 directorship of the Finley Student Center last April. Officials concede that in the past the center, which has a professional staff of 11 and some 50 student aides, has provided little oversight or financial accountability for the 100 student organizations on campus. "Last year, student organizations were fronting for outside groups and promoters," said Charles. "Big, huge groups of people were coming here and abusing our space." In an effort to crack down on such abuses, Charles said he used student aides to monitor publicity surrounding student benefit dances and staff members to control ticket sales at the door. But he said as a member of the student government, Kirnon was allowed more leeway.

Unlike other student organizations sponsoring benefit dances in the cafeteria or ballroom, for example, the student government had not been required to sell tickets issued by the Finley Student Center's Business office. Two neighbors in Kirnon's Edgecombe Avenue apartment building described her as "a beautiful person" with three daughters ages 2 to 8 and a son between 18 and 20 who loves rap music. On lower Edgecombe Avenue a few blocks from Kirnon's home, a woman in African dress who identified herself as "Sister Zakia" described Kirnon as "a good person" who had made costumes for neighborhood children and in other ways helped a neighborhood community organization. Newsday Photo by Jon Naso-City cop guards CCNY gym doorway where jam-up left eight dead Saturday. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.