Killings Thrust Marymount Into Spotlight : Education: Small, close-knit college tries to cope after slayings of Ito and Matsuura. Some students express concern about safety, lack of on-campus housing.

For college officials, it’s the stuff of nightmares: Just as high school seniors are mailing in their applications, two current students are fatally shot in a case that sparks international notoriety.

That is what happened two weeks ago to Marymount College, a small, two-year liberal arts school on a picturesque hilltop campus on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

One day after Marymount’s annual open house for prospective students, two first-year students from Japan were gunned down in an apparent carjacking in a San Pedro supermarket parking lot.

The college was thrust onto center stage of an international incident. Marymount’s name appeared on front pages of newspapers around the world. News crews stood vigil at the campus gate, and 17 television cameras were on hand for a college press conference a few days after the shooting.

The tragedy hit especially hard at Marymount because of the college’s small, close-knit character, faculty and students said.

“We are devastated by this event. Our students are devastated by it,” Marymount College President Thomas M. McFadden told reporters at the press conference.

Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura were declared dead two days after being shot March 25 outside a Ralphs supermarket where many Marymount students shop. The two men, who came to the United States to study film, were 19.

Last Friday, an 18-year-old San Pedro man, Raymond Oscar Butler, was charged in the case with two counts of murder, two counts of robbery and two counts of carjacking. Alberto Vasquez Reygoza, 20, of Long Beach, was charged with being an accessory and receiving stolen property.

Amid the mourning on campus last week, college administrators had to deal daily with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Japanese Consulate, the press corps, the grieving families, worried parents of other students and distraught classmates.

Marymount officials stressed to reporters that the shootings did not occur on the Rancho Palos Verdes campus.

“Nothing the college could have done would have prevented that event, in that spot,” McFadden said this week.

But the tragedy did underscore the absence of on-campus dormitories at Marymount, which houses about 280 students in four apartment buildings in San Pedro. Some students said they are newly wary of crime in the San Pedro area.

“I’d much rather be in Palos Verdes,” said Danielle Salice, a 19-year-old student from Oahu who lived in the same San Pedro residence hall as Ito. Her father telephoned Marymount officials last week to express concern about security, Salice said. “He was scared for me to come back to school.”

The harbor area encompassing San Pedro, Harbor City and Wilmington saw a 14% decrease in crime between 1992 and 1993, and was one of the lowest crime areas in the city, said Officer Jeff Hamilton, a Los Angeles Police Department patrol supervisor in the San Pedro area.

Marymount sent a letter March 30 to parents, reassuring them “that the College has done, and is doing, everything possible for the safety of its students.” Parents were told that locks have been replaced at college residences and garages. An LAPD officer has been talking to students about safety.

Some administrators said they would prefer to house students on campus but they doubt Rancho Palos Verdes would grant permission for dormitory construction.

In 1990, the college had to agree to limit its enrollment in exchange for city approval of plans to expand campus buildings. The city also ordered the college to change its outdoor lighting after neighbors complained about glare.

On-campus housing would not have prevented the shootings of Ito and Matsuura, officials said, noting that the Ralphs is one of the closest supermarkets to the school. They added many students enjoy living in San Pedro.

Heightening the emotional turmoil at Marymount was the wave of international interest, as many news outlets portrayed the shooting as emblematic of violent crime in America. Japanese newspapers printed editorials with headlines such as, “We’re Fed Up with Tragedies in the Society of Guns.” It was the type of publicity that no college enjoys, especially when 24% of the 750 full-time students come from foreign countries, including 70 from Japan.

Images of carjackings and guns are at odds with a Marymount catalogue showing bucolic views of oceanside cliffs, flower-filled meadows, soaring sea gulls and, on the cover, a young couple walking hand in hand in the surf at sunset.

Admissions officials said they will not know until early summer whether the publicity has affected the number of applicants, but this week they were cautiously optimistic. Kevin O’Connor, assistant director of admissions, said he knows of no applicant who has withdrawn specifically because of the killings.

Plans are under way for four separate campus memorials for the slain students.

Ito and Matsuura will be designated honorary graduates of Marymount at graduation ceremonies in May. The college will renovate a classroom in their honor and two trees will be planted in their memory.

An endowed lecture series on film will be launched during the next school year in honor of the students, paid for with memorial contributions. The school has so far received $4,000.

McFadden said he suggested to the students’ parents that the series be devoted to classical Japanese films.

“ ‘They said, ‘Oh, no, don’t do that. Have it on American films,’ ” McFadden said. After all, it was American movies such as the work of Steven Spielberg that so fascinated the two young men and brought them to America.

Marymount College

The fatal shootings of two Marymount College students in San Pedro on March 25 focused international attention on the small, two-year liberal arts college in Rancho Palos Verdes:

Enrollment: 750 full time, 325 in separate weekend program.

Faculty: 53 full time, 28 part time.

Campus: 26 acres at Palos Verdes Drive East and Crest Road.

History: Founded 1932 in Los Angeles as two-year college for women. Began admitting men in 1972. Moved to present campus in 1973.