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Prankster alumni Russ Cohen and Roy Rivenburg run Gumby and Pokey for AS president and vice president in 1981. |
Unlike the typical reminiscences of a college undergraduate, it wasn’t academic life or campus socializing that I remember with delight, instead, it was the college pranks and my fellow pranksters that I remember most from those days at CSUF between 1979 and 1982.
I remember helping to put together at least one issue of the Daily Titanic, a spoof of the campus newspaper, the Daily Titan. Fellow communications major Roy Rivenburg started the Daily Titanic a few semesters before I got involved. Together we also published the Not The National Enquirer. The articles lampooned campus events and personalities. Roy was the editor-in-chief; I helped put the page layouts together and did some illustrations. Both Roy and I and many of the contributors were staffers on the real campus paper too. Roy was managing editor of the Daily Titan as I recall, and I was its editorial cartoonist.
For example, the May 1980 issue of the Daily Titanic poked fun at then CSUF President L. Donald Shields, saying the “L” stood for Lucifer. The same issue likened the Dean of Student Services to Alfred E. Newman and lampooned the Associated Student body.
Student government was an easy target. I fondly recall walking around campus with Roy during one election cycle promoting Gumby and Pokey for student body president and vice president. We both wore sandwich board signs and handed out flyers. The Orange County Register came to campus and ran a story about what we were doing and never covered the real student elections. Gumby for President? That’s funny. Getting more press coverage than the legitimate candidates? That’s even funnier.
Today, Roy Rivenburg recently retired as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and writes the OffKilter.org website.
I create award-winning advertising campaigns for companies like Apple, Visa, Glendale Federal Bank and others. I was elected to the city council in Burlingame in 2005 and will serve as its mayor in 2010. Now that’s funny.
I began attending CSUF in September 1972 – when the bookstore was in a portable building near where the Fullerton Marriott is today, the current bookstore housed the cafeteria, the Student Union was in the basement of the science building (I think), and there were no food options on campus, so we all went to Rutabegorz. Sometimes we even went when weren’t supposed to be in class.
Education was a bit more touchy-feely in those days. I had a class through the Interdisciplinary Center, in the dome, called The Nature of Love. We sat for three hours and talked about love, sex, religion, relationships, philosophy and whatever popped into our heads. It was part psychology class, part English class and part group therapy. I learned a great deal, particularly that college professors spoke about things, and in ways, that high school teachers never did. A very broadening experience!
It seems that today’s students are so focused, that there is no time for classes that simply broaden horizons. I’m glad I attended when I did, even if I couldn’t get a Famous Star or Starbucks on campus.
But that just made cutting class seem so much more justified.
