"Grounds" for a Conspiracy?

I read several on line news sites each day and noticed that school grounds are now referred to as the school "campus". When I was a kid, school grounds were called school grounds or school property and never a "campus". I'm not sure when they became the school "campus". When I was in college and graduate school, the grounds were and are referred to the campus. I thought only colleges were authorized to use campus.

Even hospital areas are now called the hospital "campus". Here again, when I was a kid the hospital area was collectively called "the hospital".

Oh, hey, wait! I just looked up "campus" in the New American Dictionary (on line, of course), and I now quote the definition, "The grounds of a school, college, university, or hospital". Well, there you have it. I stand corrected, or do I? Hmmm, I wonder how an older dictionary defined "campus". I will have to check and see if there has been some kind of conspiracy that changed the definition of "campus" to include school and hospital grounds. I seem to find conspiracies in most things these days. Now and then, I am indeed proved to be correct. I shall continue my investigation and post the definitive results. Meanwhile, I will continue to refer to every school and hospital area as "grounds" until I am shown to be incorrect. (OK, maybe this time of year I will admit I have too much time on my hands)(However, this gives me more time to exhaustively study and expose conspiracies).

MiKe {;-]