CSUN Honors Premier Graduates

Cal State Northridge began a week of graduation ceremonies Tuesday evening in fine college fashion--with crying, hooting, hugging and a speaker who kept it short and built his message of “moral courage” around television.

Some 700 students who had high grade-point averages or who had demonstrated excellence in the arts, athletics or other school-related areas while at CSUN--and their beaming friends and relatives--gathered in the evening sunlight to receive gold honors medallions and words of wisdom from CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson and Times television critic Howard Rosenberg.

Wilson told the gathering that human knowledge is now accumulating at such a pace that much of the how-to information students had studied in class would be irrelevant in a few years. Therefore, she said, “the most important part of your education . . . will be the values you have learned here.”

Rosenberg, invoking such indelible television images as that of the Chinese student who stood in front of a tank during the 1989 uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, exhorted the students to “stand up and be counted when it matters most.”

During the ceremony, which CSUN called its “Honors Convocation,” the achievements of five students in particular were celebrated. One of them, Oliver Vasquez, 22, served as student director of the university’s orientation program for two years and in the student senate, and he had been named Greek Man of the Year by his fellow fraternity members. He has already been accepted to law school.

With all his accomplishments and honors, however, he was still a college student about to graduate.

“Whoooo-hooooo!” he shouted when his girlfriend’s name was read during the ceremony. Then to people standing nearby: “Oh, excuse me.”

Also Tuesday, university officials said they had received the largest gift ever from an alumnus--a $1 million trust from Dirk Gates, 35, founder of the Thousand Oaks-based computer hardware-maker Xircom, and a 1983 graduate of CSUN.

The money, which the university will receive only after Gates’ death, will go to the College of Engineering and Computer Science, said CSUN Development Director Michael Hammerschmidt.

Commencement ceremonies will be held at the campus throughout the week, with some 6,219 students expected to receive diplomas.