Learning From Experience : Students at CSUN present skits--some based on their own lives--designed to teach others multicultural sensitivity.

A student is raped on a first date. A young man discovers his new roommate is gay.

Another woman learns she is pregnant the same day her boyfriend tells her he has AIDS.

These scenarios may sound like the stuff of soap operas, but they are actually real-life dramas that occur on college and high school campuses.

For the past four years, Cal State Northridge has helped new students prepare for the issues confronting them with its “People Are People” multicultural sensitivity program. The six short skits, presented to transfer students, freshmen and parents during orientation week, show young people grappling with substance abuse, date rape, racism, sexism, homophobia and violence.

“For a lot of these students, this will be their first time moving out and leaving home. A lot of incoming students never had a chance to experience the diversity they will experience on campus,” said Karen Szabo, 23, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and one of the “People Are People” actors. “This gives them an introduction to college, so when they do encounter these issues, it won’t be such a shock.”

Szabo is one of 10 CSUN students, collectively known as Take 4, who write the “People Are People” skits and play the parts. But these performers aren’t trained actors. No one in the Take 4 group has ever enrolled in a drama class. In many cases they are acting out their own lives. Issues, plots and dialogues are based on the students’ intensely personal experiences.

“We look for our hot buttons and we push them,” said program director Patrick McFall, 25, a CSUN senior in sociology and Pan African Studies. “My hot button is nigger , so I make sure the word is used in the racist skit. That makes the skits more powerful, realistic and extreme.”

Laughter is the audience’s reaction to many of the serious issues dramatized on stage. When a rapist sneers, “The bitch wanted it!” male audience members fill the room with boisterous cheers and locker room guffaws, while women sit silent and stone-faced. There are more bursts of applause for the line suggesting that “a nice, strong young man” can “cure” a lesbian. A professor who comes on to female students similarly draws loud claps of approval, as does a white racist.

“Some of the issues are so strong that people laugh as a way of releasing the tension,” explained Kinard, a 22-year-old business major. “But once they find out we have actually experienced some of these things, it becomes much more painful.”

At the end of each skit, the audience is invited to ask questions while the actors stay in character. Several students accuse a character of “letting” herself get raped.

“Mark, you are a big, beefy guy,” says an audience member after one skit in which gay and lesbian students were taunted and attacked. “Why didn’t you beat the . . . out of him?”

“Because I would have to fight people every day of my life,” answered Mark Hollingsworth, a 32-year-old CSUN graduate who is gay.

“When it comes time to do the date rape skit, I really, really hate it because I have been raped,” Szabo said. “But every night two or three women come up to me to tell me they were raped. I am the first person they ever told. Knowing that I’m helping other women puts me on such a high.”

After the skits are over, cast members step out of character and talk about their experiences with racism, sexism and homophobia.

Rhoda Spaberg chokes back tears as she tells the audiences she was kicked out of her home when she dated someone of another race.

Hollingsworth breaks down as he talks about having to endure anti-gay jeers and graffiti.

Despite the program’s popularity, McFall looks forward to a time when such “sensitivity programming” won’t be necessary.

“I am hoping for the day when we could cut out many of the skits,” he said. “If society were accepting, we could get rid of this program.”

“People Are People” is available to schools and groups on video. Take 4 also conducts live presentations at high schools and colleges. Call CSUN’s Campus Activities Coordinator at (818) 885-2393.