CSUN Anniversary

* I was delighted to see my alma mater, Cal State Northridge, in a separate special report (“CSUN at 40,” Sept 21). As an undergraduate on the six-year plan, I took my time graduating and experienced much of the seventies within the (mostly) friendly confines of the campus. After graduation in 1980, a temporary job at the student government office turned into a 12-year mini-career as a publicist and editor / publisher of the Sunburst yearbook.

In your timeline, I did want to point out that the date of CSUN’s Hollywood Bowl graduation was May 1989, not 1984. Graduations were held en masse on the Oviatt Library lawn until 1988 when construction of the science annex forced the graduation committee to use the soccer field north of the physical education building.

To preserve the tradition of one ceremony for the university’s burgeoning graduation classes, the bowl was considered a more attractive alternative. The traffic jam that delayed former President James Cleary, among hundreds of carloads of graduating seniors and their entourages, turned the ceremony into a fiasco for university administrators. In ensuing years, graduation ceremonies have returned to campus in ceremonies that separate various academic school classes and take up less space.

RICK CHILDS

Santa Clarita