Students Denounce EOP Moves at CSUN : Protest: In latest flare-up of ethnic tension, Latinos march and picket against the reorganization of program that serves minorities.

In the latest episode of ethnic unrest at Cal State Northridge, more than 100 Latinos marched through campus and picketed the president’s office Wednesday to protest the reorganization of a 25-year-old program that serves disadvantaged minority students.

As part of broader changes in student services, CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson last spring reassigned the staff of the campus’ centralized Educational Opportunity Program into a handful of other non-EOP offices where they, administrators say, will continue to serve the same disadvantaged students.

Campus administrators maintain the change will actually improve the level of services to the campus’ nearly 3,500 EOP students, about two thirds of whom are Latino.

But protesting students, faculty and staff members claimed the change has dismantled the program and instead lessened key services.

Two weeks ago, a crowd of black students marched on campus to protest the hiring of a white part-time instructor who is now the only non-black faculty member in CSUN’s Pan-African studies department. Those protesters demanded that Wilson, who is black, remove the teacher, but she refused.

Under the EOP program, mandated by a 1969 state law, low-income and mostly minority students who may not meet the Cal State system’s normal academic admissions requirements are admitted and given special support services such as tutoring, counseling and financial aid grants.

“For most of us, EOP has been the link between the family environment and our transition into college,” said Juana Mora, chair of CSUN’s Chicano studies department. “Many of us would not be here if it weren’t for this program,” she told the crowd at a rally prior to the march.

An aide to Richard Alarcon, an EOP alumni at CSUN and the first Latino in modern times to represent the Valley on the Los Angeles City Council, read a statement in which he said he was “appalled” by the changes and recalled fighting EOP cutbacks as a student 20 years ago.

Protesters demanded that the now-vacant position of EOP director be filled and that the program be returned to its former unified status. They also demanded a halt to what they claim has been the use of some of CSUN’s $1.6-million EOP budget for other purposes.

CSUN Provost Louanne Kennedy, in an interview, rejected the protesters’ demands for immediate action and denied any diversion of funds. A campus task force will be formed to study the issues of the director and unification, and report back next spring, she said.

Most of the 20 campuses of the Cal State system still serve EOP students through a centralized office and staff. But now that CSUN’s EOP central unit has been dismantled, protesters said students no longer get the same special attention and are confused about where to go on campus.

Some charged the university dismantled the program to make the suburban campus--which now has a more than 50% total minority enrollment and a more than 70% minority freshman class--less hospitable to minority students. University officials denied the charge.

Kennedy said the reallocation of EOP staff, said to be about 40 people, was aimed at making the entire campus community, not just the EOP office, responsible for supporting minority students. She also said that the old system was not effective enough in keeping and graduating minority students.

Citing the dramatic growth in CSUN’s minority population, Kennedy said, “We really needed to refocus the entire university to dealing with students at risk. It seemed inappropriate to continue to have a separate unit dealing with a majority of minorities.”