There was a moment at Cal State San Marcos 30 years ago when many people looked at the school’s inaugural building and asked, “Should we really being naming this after our founder, Bill Craven?”
“Sen. Craven did some amazing work that we are so thankful for, including me,” said Elizabeth Matthews, a political science professor. “I have this job because this campus is here ... [But] this was the decision that needed to be made.” In recent years, scores of schools have reexamined whether the words and deeds of the people whose names appeared on their buildings were socially acceptable. In many cases, the answer was no.
After that, he moved around, holding jobs that capitalized on his gift for communicating with people and remembering their names. He worked in radio, public relations, newspapers and sales. enough money to start a branch campus of San Diego State University in Vista. The satellite evolved into an independent school with its formal founding as Cal State San Marcos in 1989.The university’s first students enrolled in fall 1990, when the state’s unemployment rate was 6.1%. It would rise to 9.8% two years later.
“It seems rather strange that we go out of our way to take care of the rights of these individuals who are perhaps on the lower scale of our humanity for one reason or another, and we really spend a lot of time and, obviously, a lot of money to discommode the people who pick up the tab to care of the people that the law seems to favor. Is that correct? Well, maybe I should not ask that ...”
One of the comparatively few people to publicly come to Craven’s side in the past week was Tricia Craven Worley of San Diego, the late senator’s daughter.
GustavoArellano In this case not a revision, but the culmination of something that had been a sore point from when it was first proposed. Carving a name in stone isn't as indelible as one might think.
Of course. Just because he was instrumental in having the school built shouldn’t mean anything. It should be his politics that dictate if the school he had built should bear his name. Obviously. Duh