Latest news with #FullertonCollege
Los Angeles Times
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Klan controversy surrounds Fullerton historic home designation
Overlooking Fullerton Stadium, a pistachio-hued Craftsman bungalow first built in 1917 now finds itself at the center of a Klan controversy more than a century later. A narrow Fullerton City Council majority voted on Tuesday to designate the former Hillcrest Drive home of Louis E. Plummer a historical landmark, but not without overriding a dispute over how to do so. An education pioneer, Plummer served as a longtime superintendent of Fullerton High School and Fullerton College. According to a membership list gone missing from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., he also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County during the 1920s. Plummer's name has been the subject of controversy in Fullerton before. In 2020, the Fullerton Joint Union High School District board of trustees voted to remove his name from a Fullerton High School auditorium after an online petition gathered more than 25,000 signatures in support. The year before, President's Advisory Council of Fullerton College decided to take Plummer's portrait down from the campus library. Jose Trinidad Castañeda, a former Buena Park City Councilmember, raised questions about the designation at Tuesday's council meeting in light of the Klan connection. 'Plummer was a notable figure in Fullerton, but also an active member of the KKK,' he said. 'I'm not sure if we're designating the Plummer house with that name… into the historic preservation code. I would want to caution [against] memorializing the name, though I do want to credit the architectural features.' The application for the historical designation lists the property as the 'Louis E. Plummer House' while lauding its Craftsman architecture with Victorian and Revival elements. Plummer lived in the house, built by William Campbell, for a few years before moving to a bigger Fullerton home to accommodate his growing family. Fullerton Councilwoman Shana Charles sought to designate the Hillcrest house without naming it after its controversial first resident. 'I'm glad that we're designating historic landmarks, and it's based on the architecture, but I would like to have a motion where we would approve this petition, but maybe not call that the Louis Plummer home, because that would be what was on the plaque,' she said. Councilmember Nick Dunlap, who had earlier called for a vote to approve the historical designation of the home alongside two others, called Charles' proposal 'unnecessary.' Ernie Kelsey, president of Fullerton Heritage, was invited to speak as council members disagreed on how to designate the house. Kelsey noted that the nonprofit has tried to 'clear Mr. Plummer's name,' especially amid the auditorium debate years prior, though he acknowledged that Plummer associated with Rev. Leon Myers, the Exalted Cyclops of the Orange County Klan at the time, on prohibition raids. 'There's nothing that shows that he was in [the Klan],' Kelsey claimed. 'Nobody can really see this supposed list of his name. We feel that his name has been sullied over the years.' The Fullerton Joint Union High School District disagreed five years ago. It cited a 1979 doctoral dissertation on the Orange County Klan by UCLA history student Christopher Cocoltchos in an agenda item regarding renaming the auditorium. As noted in his research, Cocoltchos used a Klan membership list housed at the Library of Congress, which he called a 'valid and complete catalog' of Klansmen through August 1924. Cocoltchos, who taught history at Western Oregon University, not only identified Plummer as a Klansman using the list, but called him 'a leader in the Myers-led Klan' who joined in 1923. But the list, which fueled the recall of four Klansmen from Anaheim City Council a century ago, went missing in 1982 and hasn't been found since. A list donated to the Anaheim Heritage Center by former Anaheim City Atty. Leo Friis is believed to be a derivative by Library of Congress historians, but is missing a page where Plummer's name would appear alphabetically. In the application to historically designate the Hillcrest house, Fullerton Heritage claimed that 'the accuracy of the list is difficult to ascertain' and later cited an oral history interview where Albert Launer, a former Fullerton city attorney, lauded Plummer as 'one of the finest citizens Fullerton ever had.' TimesOC reviewed the 1968 Launer interview transcript that Cocoltchos also cited in placing Plummer in the Hooded Order. Although there were names, like Plummer's, that Launer did not 'directly associate' with the Klan, he said Plummer 'fit in' as someone preoccupied with protecting youth from vice. Despite Kelsey's comments, some Fullerton council members remained uncomfortable with a plaque that could be construed as a Plummer memorial. '[Plummer] didn't build the house,' Councilmember Ahmad Zahra said. 'He was the first resident, right? 'Could the plaque just state that? It will be more historically accurate.' Zahra asked if council members could vote on the historical designation for each of three houses separately. The first two historical homes — the William N. Rollo House on Whiting Avenue and the Suters House on North Richmond Avenue — passed unanimously. The council split 3-2, as is often the case on contentious issues, on the Hillcrest house. Charles and Zahra voted to designate the house without the Plummer name. Mayor Fred Jung, Councilmember Jaime Valencia and Dunlap voted to keep the name on the forthcoming plaque.
Business Wire
25-04-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Fullerton College and ForeFront Power Complete a 1 MW Solar Carport System
FULLERTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of its Earth Week celebration, Fullerton College held a ribbon cutting ceremony to commemorate the completion of a new solar canopy system developed in partnership with ForeFront Power, a leading developer and asset manager of commercial and industrial-scale solar energy and storage projects. The 1 megawatt-DC (MW DC) solar parking canopy array, located in Student Parking Lot 5 adjacent to Sherbeck Field, is projected to save Fullerton College nearly $6 million in energy costs over the next 20 years. Fullerton College pursued this project to save on utility costs, reduce its carbon footprint, and advance its sustainability goals of transitioning campus energy consumption to 100% renewable energy. The solar carport system will generate 1.8 million kWh of renewable energy, which is enough to power the annual electricity use of over 300 homes. This energy output will offset roughly 19% of the College's electrical consumption. The clean, renewable electricity production from the solar energy system will help the College avoid 1,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, which is roughly equivalent to taking 200 cars off the road each year or offsetting the emissions from over 1 million pounds of coal burned. Put another way, the CO2 avoided each year will equal the amount of carbon sequestered by over 900 acres of U.S. forests in a year. 'After over a century of being in operation, Fullerton College is moving into the future by implementing clean energy solutions that will allow us to reliably produce clean energy, reduce harmful emissions, and reinvest energy savings into student success,' said Dr. Cynthia Olivo, President of Fullerton College. 'What better time than during Earth Week to reaffirm our responsibility to the planet and future generations.' This is a pilot solar project for North Orange County Community College District to help demonstrate how solar can benefit other campuses in the District. The project is the culmination of an initial Solar Feasibility Study completed in 2021, which helped the College identify the project site, as well as implement the College's 2023-2026 Campus Sustainability Plan, which approved the development of the Student Lot 5 solar carport project through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with ForeFront Power. The PPA with ForeFront Power enabled Fullerton College to develop its project at no upfront cost and without using bond funds. Under the terms of the PPA, ForeFront Power develops, owns, and maintains the solar energy portfolio and charges the College a fixed, lower rate than the utility for electricity, locked in for the 20-year duration of the agreement. ForeFront Power will continue to operate and maintain the system at no cost to the College, while the College benefits from budget certainty by avoiding utility rate increases for decades to come. 'As a trusted renewable energy partner to California schools, ForeFront Power is honored to have the opportunity to help Fullerton College kick off the beginning of a decades-long journey towards transitioning to clean, renewable energy,' said Nate Smith Ide, Senior Manager at ForeFront Power. 'By making clean energy more accessible and simplifying the procurement process, we're helping schools like Fullerton College lead the way for other public institutions across California and beyond.' Fullerton College selected ForeFront Power to develop, finance, and construct its solar and energy storage portfolio via the Renewable Energy Aggregated Procurement (REAP) Program offered by SPURR. SPURR, a Joint Powers Authority of hundreds of public education agencies, uses competitive solicitations, aggregated buying power, and technical expertise to obtain excellent pricing and terms for utilities-related goods and services. The REAP Program allows any California public agency to obtain the best solar and energy storage pricing and terms from a competitive statewide solicitation. About Fullerton College Fullerton College, established in 1913, is indeed the oldest continuously operating community college in California. It offers a wide range of academic programs, including over 120 associate degrees and numerous certificate programs. About ForeFront Power ForeFront Power is a leading developer of community solar and commercial- and industrial-scale (C&I) solar energy and battery storage projects in the U.S. and Mexico, also offering vehicle fleet electrification services. Over 15 years of working together, the ForeFront Power team has developed more than 1,900 behind-the-meter and community solar projects, totaling more than 1.6 gigawatt-DC of renewable electricity. ForeFront Power serves business, government, education, healthcare and community solar customers with a broad array of development, asset management and advisory services from its San Francisco headquarters and via teams based in New York, Mexico City, and across the U.S.
Los Angeles Times
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
O.C. punk exhibit showcases the sound and scene that ‘put punk rock on the map'
In the early 1980s, at the peak of the punk rock scene in Fullerton, the interest and demand for punk in Orange County reached a boiling point during one particular TSOL show at Fullerton College. The band was playing a room filled to capacity when an overzealous throng of people stormed the back door, causing chaos as a ceaseless current of punks flooded the building just to see the most feared and revered band in O.C. punk history. . 'You know when people are trying to get out of a building and they're getting trampled? Well, these were people getting trampled on their way into a building,' the band's vocalist, Jack Grisham, told The Times. 'It was crazy, it was like people trying to get into Costco on a Thanksgiving morning, Black Friday, except they weren't going for TVs and f—ing Xboxes, they were going for punk rock.' Fullerton's punk rock history is spotlighted as part of a larger celebration of Orange County punk at the Fullerton Museum Center, where a new exhibit called 'Punk OC: From the Streets of Suburbia' is kicking off Saturday with an opening reception featuring live performances by D.I. and TSOL, Joe Escalante of the Vandals deejaying, and comedian Chris Estrada as the master of ceremonies. The exhibit runs through Aug. 10 and was put together by curators Georgette Collard and Jim Washburn. 'There was already a lot of punk enthusiasts here in Fullerton starting with our mayor at the time, and from there it was just kind of on the talks of 'Hey, we should have a punk exhibit, all these great bands came from Fullerton' … a lot of our board members were previously in the punk rock scene in their younger days, so everyone was just really excited to highlight and showcase that,' Collard said. The exhibit chronicles O.C.'s punk history starting with the early Fullerton bands of the late 1970s like Eddie and the Subtitles, Social Distortion, Agent Orange, D.I. and Adolescents before moving through the decades and highlighting bands that rose from other cities in the county. Notable bands like TSOL, the Crowd, the Vandals and the Offspring will be among those featured, and an assortment of rare objects, artwork, flyers, photographs and personal mementos will be on display. 'I was impressed because one tends to think of punk as almost a disposable commodity, if people are living too fast you'd think they wouldn't be preserving these things as they went along, and there's a tremendous amount of stuff that people did save, it's filling up the walls here,' Washburn said. As a conservative region, O.C. may seem like an unlikely breeding ground for punk rock, especially compared with neighboring Los Angeles, but Grisham, who came up in the O.C. punk scene with his bandmates in TSOL, credits the area for innovating punk rock with a distinct sound that catapulted the music beyond local neighborhoods. 'L.A. had cool bands, but the Orange County sound — that surf skate sound that came out Orange County — that's what blew punk rock up,' Grisham said. 'Now, some people would like it that it never got blown up, that it just stayed in their own little basement, backyard, but that's what really put punk rock on the map, the skaters, the surfers, the videos, the clothing, everything came out of that, it didn't come out of these other areas.' Even with the creation of this innovative sound, Orange County wasn't easy to navigate for punk rockers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to Grisham, and its conservative grip on residents often made life difficult for outliers and creatives. 'You can go to downtown L.A. or whatever and you can dress crazy and no one's even going to look at you, they don't care, there's so much craziness on the street, nobody gives a s—,' Grisham said. 'You come down in a suburban neighborhood and go walking down somebody's street with a leather jacket on and purple hair, there's going to be a problem, you're going to be stopped by the police, you're going to be harassed, you're going to be threatened, this is what we were going against down here.' Grisham said that poverty and family dysfunction also marred the region, and it was no different there from anywhere else. 'Out of the four original TSOL guys, I was the only one that had like a together family unit, they were all broken families, divorced, torn up, all of them,' Grisham said. According to the curators, the exhibit will help deconstruct preconceived notions about Orange County punk by exploring the diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic factors that prompted many bands to rebel and channel their creativity into the music. 'It was nice to learn a lot about it, I was, among other people, fairly dismissive of Orange County punk for a long time, you'd think, 'You live in a bucolic paradise compared to where some of the punk music's coming from, what are you upset about?' Washburn said. 'Then you talk to some of the people and realize how bullied they were in school, or what a horrible, broken family they came from and realize there was a lot of things driving them — just being outcasts in a society that looks perfect doesn't make you feel any less outcast.' Showcasing this juxtaposition and the community that grew out of it to create a vibrant music scene is one of the most impactful aspects of the 'Punk OC' exhibit. At its core, it's the resilience and community of the Orange County punk scene that is being illuminated and celebrated. 'One of my main goals for this exhibit is to educate the public, maybe people who don't understand punk rock,' Collard said. 'I want to educate people to show that this is an inclusive environment for punk rockers and that anyone is welcome to be in the punk scene — there's a big sense of community in the punk rock scene and I think that will be evident in the exhibit.'
Los Angeles Times
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Shakespeare in Love' arrives at Fullerton's Maverick Theater in time for Valentine's Day
Local actors Samantha Green and Justyn Franco Gonzalez are co-starring in Maverick Theater's upcoming stage production of the Academy Award-winning 1998 romantic-comedy 'Shakespeare in Love.' Gonzalez plays a young William Shakespeare and Green plays Viola De Lesseps — the young Bard's love interest. Gonzalez and Green, who have been a couple for seven years this March, first met in an acting class while attending Fullerton College. Though it wasn't their plan to star in a romantic comedy opposite each other during the Valentine's season, they're happy with the result. 'These characters, Viola and Will, fall in love and have this whirlwind romance in the length of time it takes to rehearse a show and put it up onstage,' Gonzalez said. 'So for us to have that deep intimacy with each other going into this, I feel that we're ahead of the game. We don't need to spend the time to create natural intimacy onstage because it is natural. As far as falling in love goes, every year I fall in love with Samantha again, so Will's love for Viola is as deep as my love for Sam.' Maverick Theater founder/co-owner and director Brian Newell said he first saw the stage adaptation of 'Shakespeare in Love' while on a family vacation in London in 2015. He knew he wanted to produce it on his stage, but it took some time for all the pieces to come together. This is the Fullerton theater's first time presenting the production. It opens Feb. 7 and runs through March 16. 'It's been a long time coming, 10 years … so it's overdue for the Maverick stage,' Newell said. The production will take place in the black box theater of the two housed inside the Maverick because of its capacity to accommodate a two-story set for the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet,' the play performed within the play. The story line isn't without its comedic twists and mischief. In fact, Viola pretends to be a male actor, Thomas Kent, in order to perform in Shakespeare's play. 'I don't consider Thomas Kent to be a character. Thomas Kent is a name and a mustache,' Green said. 'Viola longs to be an actor but lives in a time when only men were afforded the opportunity. Most of the time when Viola is in disguise she is performing as Romeo. So the way I see it, the two characters I play in this show are Viola, and then Romeo in the play within the play. Except when I am playing Viola performing in 'Romeo and Juliet,' I am always only Viola, just with a mustache. I actually play another character but I won't tell you which. You have to watch and find out.' Gonzalez said his inspiration for performing Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes in the film, comes from connecting with the playwright as an artist. 'Shakespeare is this larger-than-life figure, and his work is still being performed today because of its profundity,' Gonzalez said. 'He was able to create stories that captured the human condition — our desire for love, revenge, servitude, vengeance, power and our political and social ambitions — which are still very relevant today. All that being said, he was a man. He was a writer trying to achieve some worthy pages so that he might live well and continue his life in the theater. That is what inspires me. He was an artist trying to make a living and make art that fulfilled his creative desires. From that place, he is much more accessible and easier to connect to.' Green, who considers 'Shakespeare in Love' one of her favorite films, said she loves 'anytime we speak Shakespeare's words.' 'There is a reason his plays have stood the test of time and it's because his poetry is utterly enchanting — hysterical, heart-wrenching and honest,' Green said. Newell said the production is large — with 21 actors, an elaborate set, numerous Elizabethan costumes and many actors performing multiple roles. 'We have racks and racks of costumes for the show,' he said. Green has particularly tricky costume transitions because she'll be playing a man for the rehearsal scenes and a woman for party scenes. Plus, she has to manage a mustache. 'There's probably six or seven quick costume changes she has to do,' Newell said. 'With a massive set and elaborate period costumes, we have to figure out how to get the performers in and out of them in a timely manner.' With all the moving pieces, Newell said the fact that the couple ended up as the romantic leads has made the intimacy scenes much easier to direct. 'The callbacks were pretty tedious. I went back and forth with a lot of different actors. … It was just a coincidence that they also happen to be dating,' Newell said. 'They have great chemistry onstage.'
