Graduation’s Double Feature

The crowd will be seeing double Friday when diplomas are handed out during Crenshaw High School’s commencement ceremonies.

Eight sets of twins are in the graduating class. And all 16 are headed for college--mostly in pairs.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Cassandra Roy, the school’s college counselor. “They wanted to go to the same college, especially the identical twins.”

The twin rate is about 50% higher than normal for a group the size of the 410-member senior class, according to figures from the National Center for Health Statistics.

But it’s no big deal for those in the class--most of whom have grown up together in Southwest Los Angeles.

Eighteen-year-old twins Ceret and Omosalewa Daramola like Crenshaw High so much that they drove themselves every day to class after their family moved to Lancaster. In the fall Ceret is headed for Northeastern University in Boston to study business education, and her brother is going to Notre Dame to study architecture.

“Some of us went to elementary and junior high together,” said Ersne Eromo, 17, as she walked across the campus Wednesday with her twin brother, Erdolo. “So we’re used to all of the twins here.”

Ersne plans to study biology in the fall at UCLA. Erdolo will enroll in computer science classes at the University of New Mexico.

Twins Erin and Erica Jordan, 18, are also splitting up. Erin is headed for Clark-Atlanta University in Georgia to study sociology, and Erica has enrolled in nursing classes at Santa Monica College.

The rest of Crenshaw’s graduating twins are sticking together.

Tanisha and Tamaya Davis, 18, will go to Prairie View University in Texas, where Tanisha will be a performing arts major and Tamaya will select her field of study later.

Grace and Darian Phillips, 17, will enroll at Master’s College in Santa Clarita, where she plans to study art and he is looking toward aerospace studies.

Nicole and Natalie Dawley, 17, will study mass media at Humboldt State University in Northern California.

Katina and Latina Belt, 17, plan to focus on sociology at Santa Monica College.

Jason and Jesse Alexander, 18, intend to study business administration and electrical engineering at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Both plan to play on the university’s baseball team. (Both are outfielders.)

“We were initially thinking about USC, but he got in and I didn’t,” Jason said. “He had a 3.95 grade point and I had a 3.5. I had tougher teachers here.”

Said Jesse: “I was upset. I didn’t want to go there without him.”

Twin Birth Rate Climbing

Jesse said he and his twin switched classes once in elementary school to fool classmates. “The teachers were in on it,” added Jason. “It took a while for the students to figure it out.”

The Eromo twins say splitting up will be tough because they have grown up looking out for each other.

“I won’t let her have a boyfriend,” said Erdolo, laughing.

“If he can do better with the girls he dates, I tell him,” said Ersne.

Teacher Andrea Mims said it was fun having the Belt twins in separate U.S. history classes. “They looked alike, but they couldn’t pull anything over on me. I could tell them apart,” she said.

Experts say educators had better get used to seeing double. That’s because the twin birth rate is increasing due to new fertility techniques for women and improved survivability of infants.

Lois Gallmeyer, executive secretary of the New Mexico-based National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs, said she has heard of a graduating class at a rural Wisconsin school that boasted four sets of twins in a class of 13.

“Numbers of twins are increasing,” she said Wednesday. “Schools better be ready.”