Cal Poly’s Letter P Target of Backlash

The landmark letter P on the hill above Cal Poly here has long been a focal point for school and community pride. In recent days, it also was supposed to be transformed into a symbol of gay pride--painted a rainbow of colors to symbolize diversity and gay solidarity.

But no sooner had the rainbow palate been applied than others on campus--including a group of 15 to 20 students caught one night with “John Deere green” paint on their hands--began to cover over the gay pride symbol. Again and again.

The painting by gay activists was authorized by the campus booster group. The subsequent paint-overs were not.

That has many gay and minority students concerned about a campus they increasingly describe as intolerant. The case is being investigated by campus police, with officers exploring charges ranging from simple vandalism to a possible hate crime.

“It’s so much more than a prank,” said Mike Sullivan, a computer engineering major who is the president of Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals United. “They want to shut us up.”

Sullivan said club members often report being shocked upon arrival at conservative Cal Poly to find so much anger directed against gays and lesbians.

That’s why his 80-member club sought and received permission to paint the 50-foot-tall P in the colors of the rainbow to promote Community Pride, a 10-day series of events for and about gay students that concluded Thursday.

As the rainbow controversy reached a peak last week, a group of minority students and professors held a march from the college to the city’s popular downtown farmer’s market to protest Cal Poly’s lack of ethnic diversity and tolerance.

“This certainly has touched a nerve with all individuals and groups who are concerned about respect and diversity on campus,” said Paul Zingg, provost and vice president of academic affairs. Cal Poly is 72% white, in a county that is 76% white. That compares to Cal State campuses that, as a whole, are 47% white.

Zingg admits that minorities come to the campus and San Luis Obispo “and they don’t feel a strong comfort level.... There is a possible flip side to that,” he said, “where other students feel empowered to object to any diversity agenda for the university. But a university should be an open marketplace for people and ideas.”

He said the university will do its own investigation, which could lead to anything from suspension to expulsion for the unauthorized P painters.

The series of events started May12, after Running Thunder, the Cal Poly Mustang booster club and keepers of the concrete letter P, gave permission for the rainbow paint job. Typically the letter is white.

In the four days after the initial painting was completed, the P was painted white with the word “HOMO” spelled out nearby in sheets, then painted rainbow again, then green, rainbow again, then white, and finally rainbow again.

The tit-for-tat paint jobs stopped with increased campus police patrol of the hillside trail to the P. The letter was expected to remain rainbow-colored until the gay club repainted it white, which it was set to do over the past weekend.

Located on the Central Coast at a midway point between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Cal Poly is the most selective of the public universities that make up the California State University system.

As a California State Polytechnic University, where engineering and agriculture are the two largest majors, it defies trends seen at many other college campuses. Men outnumber women among the 17,000 undergraduates, and campus polls find the student population skews more conservative and affluent than the state as a whole.

“I’m used to it really because I came from a white community,” said Nikki Manalo, an 18-year-old freshman who is African American and Filipino. “But it would be really hard for somebody coming in from a multicultural inner-city area.”

She sympathizes with the message the gay students were sending. “Most minority groups here don’t get criticized as badly as gays do,” Manalo said.

Other students describe a wellspring of resentment about painting the P rainbow colors in the first place. “I don’t care, but I’m on the football team, so a lot of those guys are complaining about it,” said Joey Warren, 19, a freshman from Los Gatos.

A number of students agreed to be interviewed but feared having their names tied to negative comments, for fear of being called homophobic.

“The P represents me too up there. And everyone else, so I don’t really appreciate the rainbow,” said Monte Soto, 20, an agricultural engineering major.

Campus police are continuing their investigation to determine whether the paintings constitute a hate crime or something else.

“There was no violence, but we do have something here which was targeted against a particular protected group,” said campus police Cmdr. Bill Watton. His department would not identify the students involved, because no charges have been filed.

Members of the school booster club caught the students at the P on the second night. “They were caught with what looked like John Deere green paint on their hands, literally,” Running Thunder President Travis Ervin said, referring to the familiar shade of farm equipment used in and around the agricultural school. The paint-covered students returned to their dorm, where they were turned in to police by the resident advisor.

The brouhaha surrounds a symbol that has seen its share of irreverent incarnations in the past, often with the help of sheets and props.

As recently as the April 20 campus open house, for example, the school initial had been used to form “420,” a street term for marijuana. The booster club quickly restored the standard white P.

At various times, it has been used to spell out “GOP,” “POT,” “SPRINGSTEEN,” “BUSH” and even “MARRY ME.”

Ervin said it had never been used in a mean-spirited manner. He added: “It definitely says something sad about the amount of fear and hate that is still on our campus.”