Guest commentary: Access — Coming Home

Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805.

By Rodolfo F. Acuña / Guest contributor

I would like to thank the Cal State LA history department especially Enrique Ochoa for inviting me. I am always reluctant to accept awards because I am alive and grateful to still be teaching at the age 81. Why should a person be honored for doing what s/he is supposed to do? It is like getting a senior citizen’s discount. The truth be told, LA State laid the foundation for my tumultuous career.

Forty-five years ago I put together the curriculum for a Chicana/o studies department at San Fernando Valley State College (I was not the founder of the department, the students were). Today we offer 172 sections in CHS per semester employing nearly 70 full time and part time instructors. We are larger than the history or political science departments that often resent our presence because they think we stole FTES from them.

The period that I attended LA State College was a special time, and without this experience I doubt whether I would be here in this capacity. It was a very trying time in my life; I had just returned from the army and was worried about how I would continue my education and support a family. Loyola University and USC were no longer options, too expensive.  UCLA was too far, an hour away on the surface streets, and UCLA’s hours were not worker friendly. LA State was a gift that I would never have considered when I graduated from Loyola High – but as it turned out it was perfect. Five dollars a semester and near my employment.

It was not much of a campus at the time. When I enrolled, my classes were in bungalows at Los Angeles City College. Within a semester we moved to the muddy hills just north of where I was born in Boyle Heights. I did not expect much – what I wanted was a degree, a teacher’s credential and to get the hell out of there. However, I stayed in school because of the history department that at the time had professors who were research university wannabes but as a group was the best teachers I had encountered either at Loyola or USC. To be frank I did not care much about my other classes; it was history that kept me from missing school.  I did not care if I earned a “C” or even a “D” in English or some other discipline; I just wanted to listen to the stories of the characters teaching history.

They were a collection of people who by themselves were not distinguished but as a group were outstanding. They never made us feel that we were inferior because we were not attending USC or UCLA. To name a few I remember Emmett Greenwalt; he taught the History of the West. He looked like and sounded like Pa Kettle and spoke in that slow drawl. He was not politically correct and today would be out of character. He once spent three classes describing the Gunfight at the OK Corral. The lecture ended abruptly when one of the students asked him if it was true that in Alaska someone had slapped Wyatt Earp and that he had backed down. Greewalt backed into the chalk board, in semi-shock, and  he kept repeating “Not Wyatt, not Wyatt.”

There were other professors: Guerrant who I would go to class to look at his nasal hairs that like a mustache he would twirl. Professor Tipple would commute three times a week from Santa Barbara in an MG, taught European history, and was rumored to have married Santa Barbara money. He would arrive five minutes late and leave class ten minutes before the hour. Fantastic lecturer.  Lindsey was boring but you knew he cared and could talk to him. And finally Louis deArmand who nurtured my love for Latin American history with his stories about Pisco Sours.

Marvin G. Pursinger was not formally a member of the LA State history department but he supervised my student teaching at San Fernando Valley State that was at the time an annex of LA State.  Pursinger was the great imposter. He said that he had a PhD from Oregon in Russian History. He also doubled in Education where he supervised teacher cadets. Fortunately he took me in when no other professor would because I would arrive 10 minutes late for the methods class. I would drive to his home on Saturdays and help him clean his pool. We would talk about the TV series “Rawhide” and how the weather unsettled the cows who were sensitive to climate changes. I always remember his telling me that when there was a stampede to get to the front of it or I would be trampled. Unfortunately it was discovered that he did not have the union card and was dismissed, leading to the first large scale student protests of the time.

But it was not only the professors at LA State. While the student body was overwhelmingly white, it was different. Many students were veterans, unlike the students at Loyola and USC. It was more like the army – a bunch of misfits. I would arrive at 7 a.m. for an 8 a.m. class after working all night as a janitor. I would snooze for 15 minutes and go to the make shift cafeteria and buy a giant cup a coffee and a hot cinnamon roll. Breakfast and lunch. There I met people like Ray. He was a Chicano who would tell me about his life and how he had always felt dirty. He was, according to him, a bastard child, and at the age of 10 began working to help his single mother and his siblings. He worked for an old man picking up trash starting at 3 in the morning. The good part of the job was that he accumulated a library stocked with discarded books that he rescued. One of these books was the Communist Manifest which he read and reread, concluding that Marx was talking about him. He was ashamed to go to school because he did have time to bathe and, according to him, smelled.

The years that I attended LA State were different. They were special. Not enough Mexicans, but we did have access. Today students are being denied what I got and it is not uncommon for them to work two jobs paying $3200 a semester in tuition.  Classes are difficult to get into, and the characters are just not there. Instead of welcoming change many professors blame the victim. “Students are not what they used to be.” Racist code words. Today there is less faculty governance than there was then so faculty turns on students although they pay 75-80 percent of the costs of instruction. Gone are the characters. However, the wisdom of Marvin G. Pursinger has stayed with me over the years; it has kept me alert to the changes; it has kept me from getting trampled — I always try to get in front of the stampede.

 

For those who have an extra $5 a month for scholarship