College Bunnies Multiply Charms of Campus Life

Spring break is a busy time for Myron Burton, a security officer at Long Beach City College.

There are rounds to be made and grounds to be watched. With students and staffers away, the potential for mischief is real.

And, of course, there is the important job of looking out for the campus bunnies. “They’re like our students,” Burton says of the furry animals that loll on the lawn, sit on the sidewalks and bite at the bushes. “We protect our little rabbits.”

In fact, the bunnies of LBCC are a local legend that, in recent years, has figured into petition drives, editorials, skits and even a political campaign.

Nobody knows exactly how they got there. As long as anyone can remember, say longtime staffers, the college’s Liberal Arts Campus on Carson Street--which used to be a bean field--has had its share of wild jack rabbits. But about five years ago, they say, the wild rabbits began disappearing, to be gradually replaced by the fluffy, tame, domesticated kind in white, black, brown, gold and gray.

The most popular theory on the origin of the LBCC bunny population is that nearby residents inexplicably began abandoning their pet rabbits on the campus. Intrigued, the theory goes, students and staffers began feeding the cuddly animals and, of course, there was lots of grass to graze on.

As the bunnies proliferated, says George Segerstrom, grounds and transportation manager, the jack rabbits couldn’t compete and gradually moved on. Today, Segerstrom estimates, there are 50 to 75 domestic bunnies living on the 68-acre campus, proliferating at a rate of about four new bunnies a month.

“They’re cute,” Segerstrom says. “The best we can do is go along with them.”

That wasn’t always his position. Last year, in fact, concerned about the potential damage to campus vegetation, Segerstrom had the temerity to suggest relocating some of the bunnies.

The reaction was swift and severe: Editorials in the campus newspaper railed against the idea, students staged demonstrations in support of the bunnies and a petition to keep them on campus garnered an astounding 1,100 signatures.

So Segerstrom backed off. And today the bunnies are a big part of life at the college.

“They bring a very warm touch to the campus,” said Beverly O’Neill, vice president of student services and acting president during spring break. “When students walk by the bunnies, they smile.”

Said Bob Spivey, a staffer in the academic services department: “I think they’re great. We enjoy them every day.”

Workers in Spivey’s department, in fact, frequently share their lunches with three especially favorite bunnies that they have named Wella, Flopsy and Smoky. And Spivey himself once donned a bunny suit to participate with other administrators in a series of skits honoring the bunnies during the college’s annual Colleague Capers variety show.

Involved in Politics

But it was only recently that the rabbits got involved in electoral politics. E. Gerrie Schipske, a candidate for the LBCC board of trustees in the April 12 election, noticed a small group of them while campaigning on campus. “I was just astonished to see them sitting there,” the candidate said. “At first I thought they were ceramic.”

Nonetheless, Schipske said, she approached the animals and “although they wouldn’t take the literature I was distributing because it wasn’t edible, they did listen to me tell them my qualifications.”

Using the Latin word for the rabbit family, Schipske claimed the endorsement of the “Bipartisan Leporidae Political Action Committee--a small but active group on campus.” In addition, she persuaded a handful of supporters to appear at a candidates’ forum in bunny suits. The campaign, she said, “is hopping.”

Despite their seemingly idyllic existence, security officer Burton said, the animals face some real perils.

One is in the form of people who routinely visit the campus with an eye toward catching a bunny for a rabbit stew. Another is in the form of parents looking to nab their children’s temporary Easter pet, which in most cases, Burton says, will be returned to the campus after the holiday in considerably worse condition than when it left.

“These are our bunnies and we get mad when people mistreat them,” said Burton, who patrols the campus in a Toyota Landcruiser to prevent just such abuse.

And, of course, there is the opposite problem: the continuing tendency of people who have acquired Easter bunnies elsewhere to abandon them on campus after the holiday hoopla.

“We don’t encourage that,” O’Neill said. “It isn’t that we have problems; we just don’t want too much of a good thing.”