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Daily Titan Issues Provide Portal to the Past
by Roy Rivenburg '81
Marty McFly had his time-traveling DeLorean. Sherman and Mr. Peabody had the Wayback Machine. Now, Cal State Fullerton has its own portal to the past, just in time to celebrate the first 50 years of its publication: www.titanyearbook.com/archives, a digital archive of the student newspaper, the Daily Titan, and its predecessors. Although it isn’t indexed by topic and some copies are missing, the site enables users to relive almost any episode in university history via photos, advertisements and articles. Here are some of the top dispatches from the newspaper’s first five decades:
The school’s debut brush with fame was the world’s first intercollegiate
pachyderm race, held on so-called Dumbo Downs
on the northwest portion of the campus. Amid considerable
media hoopla, thousands of spectators jammed the campus
as 15 animals competed in various events. Harvard’s entry
captured the sweepstakes, Santa Ana College was disqualified
(because its “elephant” was two students dressed in gray cloth
and a papier-mâché pachyderm head) and the home team
won two first-place awards with Indian-born student Ramesh
Mehra as rider.
Forget about civil rights and Vietnam. In the spring of 1964,
the burning issue of the day was a plan to change the school’s
name from Orange State College to California State College
at Fullerton. Waving picket signs and playing “We Shall
Overcome,” militant students denounced the new moniker as
“ridiculous” and a “mouthful of words.” But others supported
the switch, saying they were tired of being confused with
Orange Coast College.
Student misconduct was pretty G-rated during the school’s formative years. Administrators didn’t even notch their first suspension until 1964 – and the offense was tame by modern standards. Carleen Simonson, a 23-year-old grad student, was busted for possession of seven unopened miniature bottles of liquor in a residence hall. A dean later commuted the one-semester suspension.
Before text messages and Twitter, students relied on less sophisticated methods to spread breaking news. When President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, a Titan Times reporter grabbed a grease pencil and several sheets of cardboard, copied down radio bulletins and posted them in the main hallway. Once JFK’s death was confirmed, classes were dismissed as “tears ran down manly faces, and feminine sobs sounded unchecked,” according to the paper. Forty years later, the Daily Titan revisited the slaying under this math- and spelling-challenged headline: “20 Years After JFK’s Assasination.”
When Ronald Reagan spoke on campus as governor, in 1970,
scores of protesters booed, chanted and screamed obscenities.
Reagan finally yelled “Shut up!” and walked out. A few days
later, police arrested two students for disrupting the speech,
sparking a wave of violent demonstrations in late February
and early March. In contrast, Reagan’s 1988 visit, the first by
a U.S. president, drew marching bands, cheerleaders and
“deafening” applause from a crowd of 4,500. Barely two
dozen protesters showed up.
Two of the biggest stories in CSUF history – the July 1976 library shootings and the June 1979 baseball championship – get short shrift in the archive because they happened during summer break. Writing weeks after the fact, Daily Titan reporters tried to pick up where local and national media left off. For the library tragedy, in which a janitor killed seven employees and wounded two others, the paper offered articles on how campus police reacted that morning and how library staffers were coping in the aftermath. For the baseball team’s first national title, the paper recapped the College World Series games and analyzed the team’s prospects for 1980.
March Madness swept the campus as CSUF’s Cinderella basketball team earned its first NCAA berth and stunned fourth-ranked New Mexico and 20th-ranked University of San Francisco before falling to Arkansas, 61-58. Sportswriters and broadcasters couldn’t figure out what to call the school, variously referring to it as Fullerton State, UC Fullerton, Cal- Fullerton and – strangely – Cal-Furman.
Cannibalism classes, valet parking for students and
solving America’s energy crisis with a luxury car that runs on
Kahlua and vodka. Fake news ruled in Not The Daily Titan,
a rare satire edition of the paper. Most of the jokes now seem
dated (references to Jonestown, an escaped Lion Country Safari
hippo named Bubbles and an alleged “junta” takeover of
the Faculty Council), but some still amuse. Also, if you visit
the online archive, see if you can spot the two fake ads.
On the road to superstardom, six months before their debut album, CSUF’s semi-homegrown band No Doubt took the stage for a free noon concert. The performance was “like watching a cartoon,” said the Daily Titan review, referring to singer Gwen Stefani’s high-pitched voice, guitarist Tom Dumont’s crazy clothes and slam-dancing fans’ flying bodies.
Only one student journalist was embedded with U.S.
troops as they invaded Iraq in March 2003: Ron Larson, a
39-year-old graduate history student. A sampling of Larson’s
reports, covering everything from Scud missiles to military
haircuts, appeared in the semester’s final issue.
Produced by Strategic Communications
at California State University, Fullerton.