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Going to Church in Quest for Students

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Times Staff Writer

Declaring that the number of African Americans enrolled at California State University campuses is far too low, the system’s chancellor and other top officials barnstormed South Los Angeles churches Sunday seeking more students.

“I say to you, we have a crisis in education for our children,” Herb Carter, a trustee of the California State University system, told the congregation at West Angeles Church of God in Christ. It is time to “try and change it,” he said.

As part of a concerted strategy that will be repeated in Northern California later this year, ministers and university officials used the pulpits at seven black churches to exhort parents and grandparents to begin planning and pushing children, while they are still in elementary school, to go to college.

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Speakers included Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the 23-campus system, along with the presidents of Cal State Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, L.A. and Northridge.

Following services, university officials passed out posters that detailed a year-by-year planning guide to getting into college starting in the sixth grade, postcards that students could fill out to link up with college mentors and information about a website, www.csumentor.com, that helps students apply.

“In the past, college might have been optional,” Reed told the congregation at West Angeles Church. “But these days a college degree is the minimum requirement for getting a good job.”

In a statement, Reed said the number of African Americans at Cal State was “deplorably low.”

Of the more than 405,000 students enrolled at Cal State campuses, fewer than 20,000 are African American. And only 7,200 African American men are enrolled in the system.

To change that, officials said, they wanted to form partnerships with congregants in the state’s black churches.

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Efforts began last year with meetings and a breakfast organized by Bishop Charles Blake of West Angeles and culminated in the blitz that officials termed “Super Sunday.”

Similar outreach efforts are underway in the state’s Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Latin American and Native American communities.

In each case, Reed said, officials are trying to find the best ways to reach members of targeted communities.

Among African Americans, Reed said, the obvious place to go is church.

“This is where the African American community is,” he said. “This is where we need to engage.”

Reed said he was delighted at the response.

At West Angeles, so many parents, grandparents and students mobbed the tables seeking information that officials had to hurry back to the CSU headquarters in Long Beach for more pamphlets, eventually handing out more than 2,500.

Many of the adults told officials that they had not gone to college themselves but were desperate for their children to have the chance they did not.

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Mary Hilson Young and her daughter, Shelby, 14, walked out of the 8 a.m. service at West Angeles clutching posters titled “How to Get to College.”

Young said she has tried to do everything possible to give her daughter a good education.

She sent Shelby to private elementary school, then enrolled her in a charter school because she did not think any of the public high schools in South Los Angeles were appropriate for her. She was delighted to find college information in her church lobby.

“I want her to be the first in our family to go to college,” Young said.

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