CSUN Reluctantly Moves to Rehire Fired Professor

Cal State Northridge is moving to reinstate a Pan-African studies professor fired last year for allegedly offering students “A” grades in exchange for selling raffle tickets, a university spokeswoman said Tuesday.

But CSUN is continuing efforts to fire Eleazu S. Obinna, a tenured 17-year professor, who was partially exonerated in June when the California Personnel Board ordered the university to give him his job back, said CSUN spokesman Gloria Welles.

The university’s appeal of the ruling will not be heard until late September or early November, and a decision “might not come down until some time after that,” Welles said.

“In adherence to the current ruling of the state personnel board, we are discussing with Dr. Obinna his return to the classroom this fall,” Welles said. “We really have no choice.”

‘No Choice’

“They certainly have no choice,” said Obinna’s attorney, Charles B. Johnson.

“And Dr. Obinna wants most of all to be back in the classroom.”

Welles said that if the university wins the appeal, Obinna will be allowed to continue teaching until the end of the semester in January.

“We won’t make him stop in the middle of a semester,” she said.

Obinna could not be reached for comment and has previously declined to comment on his attorney’s advice.

In June, the personnel board voted to suspend Obinna for 90 days but ordered the school to rehire him, saying there was insufficient evidence to uphold the university’s most serious accusation against him.

After a campus investigation, CSUN President James Cleary in May, 1988, fired Obinna on grounds that he had offered students A’s for selling $100 worth of raffle tickets to benefit the United Crusade Foundation, a nonprofit organization headed by Obinna that is seeking to open a community center in Pacoima.

Student Testimony

At a hearing before the state board, four students testified that they were told by Obinna and part-time CSUN instructor Wilie J. Bellamy that the only work required for the three-unit course, Field Work in the African-American Community, was the sale of 20 $5 raffle tickets.

Obinna and Bellamy, who was fired but did not appeal, denied the allegations, saying that they merely encouraged students to sell the tickets.

The two said that to earn their grades, students were required to go on field trips, perform community service and write a term paper.

At the hearing, four other students backed the teachers’ version of how the class was conducted.

The board concluded that Obinna acted unprofessionally in “selling tickets in connection with a class” but dismissed the charge that ticket sales were a condition of an “A” grade.

The board also dismissed the university’s accusation that Obinna lied to superiors about the class requirements.