1991 La Voz de Aztlan

              California State University, Fresno
Tuesday February 19,1991
Volume XXIII
Issue No.l
La
Voz de Aztlan
Group wants
presidential
search stopped
By Christopher Heredia
La Voz Staff Writer
As far as the Committee for
Hispanic Educational Equity is concerned, the fight to stop the CSUF
presidential search has only begun.
In addition to demanding that
the entire search be aborted,
members of the committee have
asked three members ofthe Presidential Selection Advisory Committee to resign from their posts.
Meanwhile members of the
search committee are remaining
quiet about the process and the
hasty addition of two Latinostothe
committee.
In a Feb. 13 memorandum to
the CSUF community, Marian
Bagdasarian, chair of the presidential search committee, said
"The addition of [CSU] Trustee
[Ralph] Pesqueira and Dr. [Manual] Lopez will benefit the Committee and the campus."
"That's what they should have
had from the beginning," said William Flores, chair of the Committee for Hispanic Educational Equity. "We think the whole process
stinks."
Flores, who is aiso chair of the
CSUF Chicano and Latin American studies department, said the
committee is attacking the search
from two angles — through the
CSUtrustees and throughthe state
Legislature.
The committee has already had
two victories with the appointment
of Pesqueira and Lopez, a dentist
from Hanford who has served on
the CSUF Foundation Board of
Governors since 1986.
"Obviously we've made some
unprecedented gains. Thefactthat
they've given in doesn't reflect their
weakness. It reflects the power of
Chicanos statewide," said Flores.
The committee has charged that
the search process has been
"tainted" from the start because
the search committee failed to
recruit Latinos to the search committee from the onset and because
one applicant for the CSUF president position, Tomans Arciniega,
did not make the first round of finalists. Arciniega is the president of
California State University, Bak-
ersfield.
cee SELECTION, Page 7
MEChA booth
destroyed in
dump area
By Virginia Adame
La Voz Staff Writer
The MEChA booth that normally stands in the Free
Speech area was removed
and destroyed over winter
break.
The destruction of the
booth, which had just been
painted in the fall by MEChA
member Ralph Avitia, was
discovered the first week of
school when, according to
MEChA member Matthew
Polanco, he and another
MEChista went to see about
moving the booth out of storage and back into the Free
Speech Area. When they arrived at the "dump" they discovered that the booth was
collapsed. "It looked like
toothpicks," said Polanco.
MEChA President Irma Serrano said it appeared that
someone had taken a
sledgehammer to the
booth.
Dave Hernandez of Plant
Operations said they move
the booths out to the ag
area if they are not removed from the Free
Speech area at the beginning of break.
This is a policy applied
to all student organization
booths, said Hernandez.
Hernandez said the
booths have two weeks to
be removed from the dump
area. "If they're not removed within that time,
then you're on your own,"
said Hernandez.
At this point MEChA
members can only speculate as to who destroyed
the booth, but they do plan
on rebuilding the booth as
soon as time permits.
In memory
One week before his death, President Allende called Dr. Fernando Alegria
to write his biography.
Writer pays tribute to friend
By Virginia Adame
La Voz Staff Writer
Fernando Alegria, who was a close friend of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, spoke
on campus Feb. 15, about the novel he wrote about the president.
Alegria's novel, "Mi Vecino, El Presidente" (My Neighbor, The President) is being translated into
English and his visit to campus was arranged to celebrate the translated version.
President Allende asked Alegria to write his biography, but such would not be the case, for on a
fateful day in 1973, President Allende was assassinated in the presidential palace and the military
coup began. And so, Alegria would write his book as a tribute to his fallen friend and to the
memory of what he stood for.
The lecture, which included CLS professors Lea Ybarra, Manuel Figueroa and Juan Felipe
Herrera, was titled "The Era of Change, idealism and Despair" and was sponsored by the Chicano
and Latin American studies department and the School of Social Sciences.
Herrera, Ybarra, and Figueroa spoke about the struggles of Chicanos and Latinos in the United
States and how they related to the struggles of Latinos in Chile and throughout the world.
Alegria opened his lecture with a comment on the current situation in the Persian Gulf. "I'm very
 see ALEGRIA, Page 7