Cal State L.A., Its Alumni Mark 50 Years of Diversity

Garland Burrell became the first black federal judge to be appointed in California’s eastern district and recently presided over the trial of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. Jaime Escalante’s calculus classes for disadvantaged East Los Angeles kids, dramatized in the film “Stand and Deliver,” made him the world’s most famous high school math teacher. Billie Jean King’s tennis exploits made her the reigning uber-woman of sports.

There also is a legion of politicians, from U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters and Esteban Edward Torres to county Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

All are among the diverse alumni of California State University Los Angeles, which celebrated its 50th anniversary Tuesday. Although the rollback of affirmative action has sharply reduced the number of Latinos and blacks in the UC system, Cal State L.A. proudly touts its student body as America’s most diverse.

“We are not a minority institution, but a university whose diversity brings us closer to the elusive ideals this country was founded on,” President James Rosser said at the school’s commemorative celebration Tuesday.

“In large measure, this country was founded by a very diverse group of people, as was Los Angeles,” Rosser said. “We’re the West Coast, 21st century model of the City University of New York.”

Today, the student population at Cal State L.A. is 48% Latino, 24.4% Asian American, 9.6% black and 17% non-Latino white.

Although internationally renowned schools like UC Berkeley like to think they leave their imprint on students, it is the students who have built the reputation of Cal State L.A. On Tuesday, graduates returned to celebrate the chances the university gave them and to pledge their own commitment to future generations.

There was Florence LaRue, who became a singer with the Grammy Award-winning group the Fifth Dimension. The daughter of a divorced working mother of four, La Rue juggled six Cal State classes at once while working eight hours a day as a solderer at the Hughes Aircraft factory in Culver City. Like many students, she was the first in her family to graduate from college.

“I still use the things I learn here every single day,” said LaRue, who came to the ceremony on her way to Frank Sinatra’s wake and funeral. “To me, teachers are so important, they should be paid more than athletes and entertainers.”

There was Fermin Cuza, who has risen to senior vice president for international trade at Mattel Inc. without forgetting his hard-working immigrant roots--or the school that launched him. Cuza has created a Mattel internship program at his alma mater and considers it prime headhunting grounds.

“I get very excited about the diversity at this campus, because companies like Mattel need that diversity,” he said. “Only 3% of the children in the world are in the United States, and we need people who can deal with the global markets around the world that are our future.

“I tell kids, ‘Don’t be ashamed of being different, of speaking another language; be proud of it and use it as your secret weapon, because we’re looking for kids just like them,’ ” Cuza said.

Cuza’s parents came from Cuba in 1954, when he was 5. His mother was a garment worker, and his father toiled in construction. Cal State L.A. was Cuza’s chance, and he seized it.

“I got a first-rate education at $35 a quarter,” he said. “The alumni of this university should never forget how they benefited, and they should try to take advantage of this special talent pool.”

Few schools of Cal State L.A.’s stature can boast the same leadership-to-tax dollar ratio.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block is a graduate. So is developer Donald Sterling, owner of the Clippers. Astronaut Samuel Durrance took the university president’s medallion with him when he orbited Earth for 16 days in 1995.

Politicians abound. Among them are Latina Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, state Sens. Charles M. Calderon and Diane Watson, and former state assemblywoman Gwen Moore.

Felix Gutierrez, the senior vice president and executive director of the Freedom Forum’s Pacific Coast Center, ran against L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich for student body president in 1965. Gutierrez won, but Antonovich “went on to win other political battles,” he said.

City Councilman Richard Alatorre was also in Gutierrez’s graduating class.

“All of us worked, lived at home and were from ethnically diverse backgrounds,” Gutierrez said. “It was a great investment for taxpayers, and it really paid off. Most of us would not have been able to go to college if there was not a Cal State L.A.”

Gutierrez said he worries that California’s cuts in education today will deny the children of the new wave of immigrants of the same opportunities.

“They’re not going to get the chance we got in the 1960s,” Gutierrez said. “The investment in higher ed versus prisons is out of whack. Dollars in education come back to you in taxes and a more educated work force. If you cut off an avenue of hope, people are less prone to dream.”

Cal State L.A. was an early beneficiary of America’s demographic changes, according to Rosser. Since 1970, the majority of students have been women, and since 1972 non-whites.

The school created the first Chicano Studies program in the nation in 1969, and established the first child-care center in the state school system, school spokesmen said.

Bolivian-born Escalante graduated in 1973. In those days, his teachers were still mostly non-Latino whites. Once, he said, he was thrown out of a class for saying the teacher misinterpreted Spanish literature.

“I worked my way through. Everybody else did too, “ said Escalante, 68, now a schoolteacher in Sacramento. “I had no money, not even enough to rent a cap and gown, so I didn’t even go to the graduation ceremony.”

The actor who played Escalante, Edward James Olmos, also attended the university briefly, though he did not graduate, spokeswoman Carole Selkin said.

Novelist Joseph Wambaugh received a master’s degree there in 1968.

And Frank Romero, one of “Los Four,” a group of artists that grew out of the Chicano student movement and rose to prominence in a landmark exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1973.

Romero’s images of skeletons, palm trees, hearts and cars continue to reflect his deep East Los Angeles roots.

Science careers are increasingly popular today. In 1995, the Engineering Work Force Commission deemed the school the California public university that awarded the highest proportion of engineering degrees to black and Latino students. And a 1997 National Science Foundation report put it in the top 20 schools whose graduates go on to receive doctoral degrees in science and engineering.

Freshman Jorge Cruz, 19, wants to become a civil engineer.

The son of Mexican immigrants, he is the first in his family to attend college. He lives with his parents in Lynwood. His mother works at a credit card factory and his father is a meat cutter.

Eventually, he wants to get a master’s degree and a doctorate. For now, with his long hair, beads, beard and backpack, he’s just an ordinary college student. But his parents remind him almost daily that they are struggling so he can be more.

“My parents say, ‘Study hard, be dedicated,’ ” Cruz said. “They say it’s my future, not theirs, so don’t screw it up.”