Thursday February 28, 2019
The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
Volume 105 Issue 18
Titans Students honor Black Excellence welcome Stanford President Virjee invites speaker Gwendolyn Alexis to highlight black success. HOSAM ELATTAR Daily Titan
CSUF baseball will play their home opener after six consecutive away games. MATTHEW MENDOZA Daily Titan
Cal State Fullerton baseball is set to host Stanford for a threeday weekend series on Friday for the Titans’ home opener. The two teams will face off for the first time since the Titans defeated the Cardinal in the NCAA Stanford Regional last year. Stanford is ranked No. 11 in the D1Baseball.com national rankings and CSUF ranks No. 24. The Titans won both games against the Cardinal in the regional that included a dramatic walkoff home run in the first game between the two west coast rivals. CSUF opened last season at Stanford and were swept by the Cardinal. Fullerton was outscored 16-9 during the opening series last year. CSUF goes into the home opener with a 4-2 record as they’ve outscored their opponents 3430. Stanford enters the series 7-1 overall while outscoring opponents 45-22. SEE FIRST 8
The Titan Student Union Pavilion was filled with students, faculty, and staff enjoying food and listening to a performance of poetry, speeches and song in celebration of black excellence on Wednesday. Gwendolyn Alexis, an African American studies professor, gave a keynote address about black excellence at the Black History Month reception hosted by President Framroze Virjee and Mrs. Virjee. Alexis said black excellence is about being a human being. “We are an excellent people. We struggle, and we came through so much, all the way from slavery to the civil rights movement, through Jim Crow, to now,” Alexis said. “We have pride, strength, integrity, and so many other attributes that people don’t see in us just because of the color of our skin.” Alexis credits the start of black excellence to the emergence of civilizations and leaders in Africa like Timbuktu whose library has housed manuscripts on philosophy, science, and medicine as well as the kings and queens who ruled wealthy empires on the continent like Mansa Musa and Nefertiti. President Virjee thanked the community and stressed the significance of black history and added that CSUF did not do enough to celebrate the event in the past, but
HOSAM ELATTAR / DAILY TITAN
Students at the Black History reception listen to speaker Gwendolyn Alexis highlight black historical progress.
is doing more each year. “It’s important for students to celebrate black history because what African Americans have done in this country has helped to build this country. It has been overlooked for way too long. In order for our current African American students to feel included, to feel a part of the Titan family, we need to celebrate who they are,” Virjee
said. African Americans made up 1.9 percent of students last semester. Cal State Fullerton ranks the second lowest in percent of African Americans enrolled in undergraduate programs within the 23 Cal State campuses. Virjee expressed a desire to see this percentage increase in the semesters to come.
Deallean Breland, president of Alliance for the Preservation of African Consciousness, read an original poem titled “It Takes a Village.” He said the poem was inspired by the school’s need to establish community, since less than 2 percent of students are African American. SEE PRIDE
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A pioneer in African-American history Patricia Adelekan devoted her life to educating and uplifting young people.
surrounding community. After becoming familiar with local business owners and educators in her time as a research specialist for the Sacramento City Unified School District, she asked these community members to become mentors in the program. Together, they helped launch the Youth on the Move organization.
CAITLIN BARTUSICK Daily Titan
To Patricia Adelekan, 76, black history is more personal than what’s written in textbooks — it is the sum of her experiences, her family lineage and a big part of why she has served as an educator for young people throughout her career. “When I was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the youth, some of those young people were forbidden to write about anybody black. How are you going to even know yourself, appreciate yourself, if somebody is negating you and saying, ‘No, don’t waste your time on that.’ What are you going to do? What are you going to think?” Adelekan said. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Adelekan now lives in Anaheim and has been a resident there for the last 18 years. She has devoted much of her life to educating and uplifting young people of all ages, races and backgrounds through her nonprofit Youth on the Move. Youth on the Move In 1984, Adelekan became a single parent overnight to three young boys and one girl. Following a political coup in Nigeria,
Growing up
CAITLIN BARTUSICK / DAILY TITAN
Patricia Adelekan poses with a photo of her younger self from 1983 after getting her Ph.D. in Nigeria.
her ex-husband, a then-senator in Nigeria, was detained and left Adelekan with tough decisions to make about their future in Sacramento. Though she would be reunited with him four years later in the United States, the experience would lead her to take one of the most critical steps in her
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career. “I was panicking. I didn’t know how to bring up boys. So the need was: Who can we find to help raise the young people? As an educator, my basic philosophy is that parents need to be involved in children’s education,” Adelekan said. That year, she founded Youth
on the Move with the intention of helping young people succeed in life by connecting them with positive community role models. In Sacramento, Adelekan said she saw a need for positive role models — not just for her own children, who were suddenly without a father, but in the
Adelekan’s passion for supporting young people was kindled long before the organization’s founding. As a teenager, Adelekan said there were times when she felt unheard and disliked by her mother. “(Young people) need to be valued. It’s why I believe so much in youth, young people. I believe if we give them encouragement and help them find who they are, what are their talents, the sky, the world can be the limit.” In addition to being a distinguished educator, Adelekan is also a prominent civil rights leader. During the civil rights movement, Adelekan met with Martin Luther King Jr. on several occasions. She said whenever the minister would visit her hometown, he would gather the young people together. As president of the NAACP youth council at the time, she was one of those eager young people. SEE YOUTH
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