CSUN Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Turns 55

Good Trouble  

CSUN Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Turns 55, and the Fight for Equity is Not Over

“It’s a program that has been in place since the late 1960s—created to even the playing field in educational opportunities—and unfortunately is necessary today more than ever. ” says Shiva Parsa, Senior Director of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at CSUN.  

She’s quoting former EOP director, the late José Luis Vargas, who was one of the trailblazers of the program.  

The EOP marked its 55th Anniversary at CSUN with a celebration on September 25 that honored the trailblazers of the program and attracted more than 400 students, alumni, faculty and community members.  

Parsa herself has been with the EOP for 35 years, and attended CSUN as a non-traditional student herself, receiving both her degrees while working and raising a family.  She and colleague Leslie De Leon Tzic were lucky enough to work with former EOP director Vargas, who was a freshman at CSUN when the program was born.  

A Movement Becomes a Mandate 

EOP emerged from the Civil Rights movement as a response to the call for access and equity to higher education. Parsa says, “Director Vargas was able to share with us how it all started. There was  a lot of turmoil on university campuses as people began to be aware of the inequities in education and realizing that it was not a case of ‘education for all.’”   

Several racial incidents occurred in November 1968 at CSUN (then San Fernando Valley State College) and sparked the campus protests. “That’s when the demonstrations and the solidarity among the students began,” Parsa recounts. The Black Student Union (BSU), MECHA (then UMAS), the community of Chicano students and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), all began to grasp the inequity—and the downright discrimination—that existed in the university system and staged an occupation of the CSUN administration building until their demands were addressed. One of the demands was an expansion of EOP.   

“So, these students, these communities, risked everything—their financial aid, their ability to be students, their futures—to demonstrate, which was a real example of activism. Because they were already here, they were actually fighting for the future students to have access. And they did it in a peaceful way.”  

Peaceful, that was, until hundreds of police officers showed up and arrested around 286 students and faculty, including, according to Parsa, William “Bill” Burwell, founder of the BSU. Burwell got out of jail, finished his education and became a professor at CSUN, establishing the Department of Afro American (now Africana) Studies. In April 2024, CSUN president Erica Beck worked with Governor Gavin Newsom to grant Burwell a posthumous pardon. Professor Everto Ruiz, who will soon be retiring from CSUN, was also arrested that day.   

The work didn’t stop with the creation of EOP. In 1969 the activists approached State Senator John Harmer, “the most conservative Republican in California,” according to Parsa, who successfully introduced legislation to make the EOP a mandate across the CSU system via SB 1072.  

There were similar movements at other CSU campuses; Now there are 23 universities with EOP programs, and hundreds of thousands of students have attended college thanks to those programs.   

“And despite early resistance, the trailblazers were brilliant, because they never made EOP a race-based program,” says De Leon, “It has always been an income-based program.” 

Designed to right systemic wrongs 

That said, EOP serves historically disadvantaged students, not those experiencing situational poverty. Applicants need to demonstrate at least a 10-year span of low income. “Our mission is to serve the most underserved, marginalized populations,” says De Leon, “If the trailblazers had not gotten the EOP legislatively mandated, and based on income, it probably would have been taken away a few years later. Most of those leaders in the 70s and 80s had to fight every day just to justify the existence of the program.” Challenges ranged from budgetary to political and are likely to continue.  

The CSUN EOP program not only offers financial assistance to students, it also has been responsible for establishing learning communities, tutoring, holistic advisement, and a curriculum that includes ethnic studies. “I’ve been documenting EOP for 15 years, and I’ve seen how the sense of pride our students feel has evolved,”  De Leon says. “At the event they were chanting, ‘WHO ARE WE? E O P!’ loudly and proudly.  

“It’s wonderful to see the program improving the lives of people who didn’t have hope, who didn’t even think college was possible,” Parsa says. And the program itself keeps evolving, to include issues such as how technology affects the students, how COVID affected them. “We realized that we needed to incorporate life skills, social skills into the program. We just keep moving.”    

Both Parsa and De Leon are grateful for the continued support from the CSUN administration as they seek to serve our EOP students.  

Learn more about the courageous students, faculty, and staff who made great sacrifices to fight for justice and inclusion at CSUN, in the documentary The Storm at Valley State https://www.csun.edu/csun-eop/history-eop-csun