Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : EDUCATION : Hardman Back as Volunteer, Not Football Coach

Former All-Pro football player Cedrick W. Hardman is back on the practice field, instructing--not coaching--Laguna Beach High School’s team on the nuances and subtleties of the game.

The school district’s board of trustees decided that the one-time National Football League star, who had been suspended as the team’s coach following his arrest for cocaine possession, could return. But only as a “volunteer.”

Hardman, 38, can attend practices and assist football coaches, but cannot participate in games as a coach and cannot communicate with coaches and players on the field during a game. He remains suspended without pay.

Hardman was hired in 1985 as the team’s head coach after having done some volunteer coaching. His contract paid him $1,700 for two to three hours of work a day for five months of the year. He had no other school duties.

In the predawn hours of Sept. 20, Hardman was arrested after he allegedly struggled with two Laguna Beach police office who tried to arrest him on suspicion of having 5.5 grams of cocaine.

A judge ordered him to attend a drug rehabilitation program in lieu of being tried on the cocaine charge.

At last week’s school board hearing, nearly 300 students and parents turned out to speak for and against Hardman, whose playing career included stints with the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders. After hearing more than an hour of testimony and then adjourning behind closed doors, the district trustees voted, 4 to 1, to allow Hardman to return.

Student Editors Stay on Job in Wake of Editorial

It’s apparently not all over but the shouting in the offices of Cal State Fullerton’s student newspaper. In fact, there may still be a great deal of shouting to be heard in the wake of the editor’s decision to endorse a candidate for governor, which violates a state law.

The Daily Titan’s endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appeared in the form of an unsigned editorial, which violates a state law that prohibits state-subsidized publications from making just such unsigned endorsements.

Within days, similar unsigned political endorsements had been published in the student newspapers at Humboldt State in Arcata and Cal State Long Beach.

The Humboldt editors endorsed Bradley, incumbent U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston and California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and took positions on a number of local and statewide ballot issues. The Long Beach editors backed Cranston and Bird and recommended votes on ballot propositions.

Joyce Garcia, editor of the Titan, said the student editorial board was aware of the prohibition and decided to risk making the political endorsement. “We did it for First Amendment (freedom of the press) rights, pure and simple,” Garcia said.

But Edgar P. Trotter, head of the Cal State Fullerton communications department, said freedom of the press has limitations when government funding is involved.

“The reasoning is that government-subsidized publications shouldn’t get into things like this, and I agree with that reasoning,” said Trotter, who supervises the school’s journalism program.

The editors remained on the job after publication of the endorsement. University President Jewel Plummer Cobb said the administration will make “an appropriate response” after a decision is handed down in a lawsuit over a nearly identical case at Humboldt State where an editor was suspended.

Times staff writers Gary Jarlson and Marcida Dodson compiled the Week in Review stories.