CSUN President Backs EOP Changes : Education: Answering critics, Blenda J. Wilson says the program for minority students will not be dismantled.

NORTHRIDGE — Seeking to quell ethnic unrest that erupted last week over the reorganization of a program for minority students, Cal State Northridge President Blenda J. Wilson said Saturday she has no intention of dismantling the program, as some faculty and students have charged.

Instead, Wilson said in an interview, controversial changes to the Educational Opportunity Program were intended to “assure that larger numbers of our minority and disadvantaged students receive a college degree.”

Over the summer, the EOP was decentralized. Its director and staff were reassigned to a handful of other non-EOP offices that will continue to serve the same disadvantaged students.

The reorganization was part of broader changes made in student services, she said.

Wilson also expanded Saturday on several points she made in a memo to faculty and staff members Friday addressing the recent unrest.

In the memo, Wilson cited problems with the program’s previous structure as one reason that graduation rates among minority students at CSUN are “unacceptably low.”

On average, just 36% of Latino students graduate within seven years and 28% graduate within six years, Wilson said. The figures are even lower for black students, 28% of whom graduate in seven years and 22% in six years.

By comparison, graduation rates for non-minority students at CSUN are “in the 40% to 50% range,” Wilson said.

But while the university’s total enrollment declined 7% this year as a result of the January earthquake and fee increases, EOP enrollment rose. A total of 3,498 students now participate in the program, up from the 3,478 enrolled last year.

Campus administrators said revamping the program would make it more effective.

But students, faculty and staff members who staged last week’s protest contend the changes are already harming minority students--even though the school year has just begun and a new EOP director has yet to be named.

Two weeks ago, a crowd of black students marched in protest over the hiring of a white part-time instructor in CSUN’s Pan-African studies department. The rest of the department’s faculty is black.

Protesters demanded that Wilson, who is also black, remove the white instructor, but she refused.

Wilson said she wasn’t dismayed by the protest, calling it well-organized and quiet as protests go.

“Whenever there is change, in lots of institutions, either in organization or personnel, I think it makes people both insecure and nervous about where the change will lead,” she said Saturday.

Wilson added that plans to decentralize EOP began a year ago but were disrupted by January’s earthquake, which devastated the campus.

Had the plans not been interrupted by the earthquake, the changes made over the summer might not have caused this much controversy, Wilson said.

“Students came back to a partial reorganization of the EOP program instead of one where all the pieces are in place,” she said.

In view of the disquiet over the issue, however, Wilson said she plans to ask a faculty task force that was appointed to define the new role of the EOP director to step up its work. She added that she hopes to fill the post before the end of the semester.

Wilson had initially asked the task force to deliver its recommendations to her by March.