When Joe Rodriguez first spotted the flashy red, white and black shorts on a clothing rack at Target, he couldn’t have imagined they would inspire a mission that would a few months later find him making international headlines. 

The Mediaworks video producer/director is credited with removing fashions featuring racist symbolism from Target stores across the country.

For those efforts and more, he was among 13 individuals recognized for honoring and promoting diversity during the campus’s recent Principles of Community celebrations — Soaring to New Heights and Disability Pride Week. Group awards honoring several other employees also were presented during the mid-April Soaring to New Heights banquet, attended by hundreds of staff and faculty members and administrators. 

For Rodriguez, earning a campus Affirmative Action and Diversity Award marked the second time in a week he had been acknowledged for showing how one person can help change circumstances that, left unchecked, could otherwise foster anger or hatred.

When he first saw the pair of shorts late last spring, he was attracted to bright collage of colors and skulls. An artist and a fan of the horror genre and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) paraphernalia, Rodriguez said he has long been drawn to skeleton imagery. But then he saw past the skulls. “I thought, wait a minute, these things have ‘88’ on them, too.”

The 88 he recognized from a documentary he had recently seen on VH1 about the rise of racist rock music in America. The show highlighted hate group codes and symbolism in popular culture, including Aryan, neo-Nazi, skinhead and other white supremacist movements. Eight eight or eighty-eight is a code for Heil Hitler, since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Rodriguez also found on store shelves a boy’s-size cap design that melded a spread-eagle dragon — a symbol similar to those used by members of gangs that advocate overthrow of the government —teamed with an 88. According to Anti-Defamation League materials, spread eagle birds also are common white supremacist symbols.

“This is representative of a group that wants to see people of color dead,” Rodriguez said. “And it was coming from a company that says how much it cares about the community.”

When Rodriguez approached his local Elk Grove Target store, the manager said he’d talk to the regional manager but that he couldn’t just take the clothes off the racks. Rodriguez pursued the issue with Target headquarters in Minneapolis — which ships clothing to some 1,100 stores across the nation. But he received disappointing results. “We’ll let our customers determine what they want to buy,” company representatives told him.  

Over the next several weeks, Rodriguez made contact with area Jewish center leaders, tolerance.org and representatives of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project — which tracks white-power activities in the United States.

The story eventually caught the attention of the media. On Aug. 26, the news went national, then international, with British Broadcasting Co. coverage. On Aug. 27, Target pulled the merchandise off its shelves, and over the next several days, Rodriguez was interviewed by dozens of media outlets, he said.

The store issued a formal apology, but Target never fully explained to his satisfaction where the designs had originated, he said. The corporation would only say the prints were inspired by popular urban youth motifs.

Rodriguez continues to keep an eye out for racist designs in Target and elsewhere.

For instance, he recently found a store selling a children’s shirt featuring the words “Motown Crew” accompanied by an image of a graffiti tagger. “What kind of a message is that sending?” Rodriguez said.  

Prompted by Rodriguez’s experiences, the Staff Affirmative Action and Diversity Advisory Committee last fall hosted an Anti-Defamation League brownbag event on campus that addressed hidden extremist group symbolism in mainstream society.  

An ambush at the courthouse

The week before being recognized on campus, Rodriguez also had earned a nod for his compassion for the oftentimes scared and crying children who must wait outside family court at the Sacramento County Courthouse. For about four years now, he has brought monthly care packages filled with Barbies, baseball cards, Hotwheels and more to the courthouse for sheriff’s deputies to distribute to the young victims of domestic crimes and disputes.

A dozen of those sheriffs ambushed Rodriguez during his April toy run. They pulled him into a courthouse room and presented him with a plaque during a short, impromptu ceremony. 

“It’s kind of selfish really,” Rodriguez said of the motivation for his efforts. “It just makes you feel good to do it.”

And, he said his dealings with Target have reaffirmed for him an important lesson — “that one person can do something.”

“I was able to make noise,” he said. “Now I know I can do that as one person.”

While thankful for his diversity award, Rodriguez said he will be glad when no one has to be recognized for simply doing the right thing.

“The awards show there are still diversity issues, and they keep things in the public eye. It’s an affirmation that people are doing things,” he said. “But I’ll be happy when nobody has to get special awards like this, because it will mean we’re truly diverse.”

Dozens honored

Other 2003 Affirmative Action and Diversity Awardees were the law school’s Noah Cutler, and Student Housing’s Torey Bookstein, Stephanie Hubbard, Erin Peltzman and Tonia Teresh.

Noah Cutler, a third-year law student, spearheaded the law school’s Pre-Law Specialty Program — within the Special Transitional Enrichment Program — for underrepresented students with a potential interest in attending law school. The program picks up where their summertime STEP program leaves off. Cutler worked tirelessly to garner support from administrators and faculty members for the program and to help develop curriculum for it. He also has personally counseled students and has provided administrative coordination and oversight for the program.

Torey Bookstein is a member of the Student Housing Diversity Committee. Nomination materials said: “Everything from the multicultural decorations in her office to the way that she lives her life allows individuals to feel free to be who they are.” Bookstein is credited with creating a schedule for the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Speakers Bureau this year that offered a well-balanced view of the gay lifestyle. She also was recognized for consistently challenging campus community members to “confront their own biases.” Nomination materials also said: “She is always the staff member to point out an injustice or to provide a suggestion about how to be more inclusive.”

On campus since, 1999, Stephanie Hubbard was recognized for focusing her energy to further educate staff members and residence hall students in diversity. She chaired a task force on multicultural education; was a facilitator for the 2002 REACH conference and helped plan last year’s “Call to Community” diversity event on the Quad. In addition, Hubbard has worked with the Campus Hate-Free Partners Committee on a campaign that has included the distribution of Prin-ciples of Community pledge cards, and “Hate stops with me” and “Respect starts with me” buttons. She is a chair of the Student Housing Diversity Committee, directing programs to promote a more inclusive campus for some 4,200 residence hall students.

Also recognized for building a more inclusive campus community, housing conduct coordinator Erin Peltzman regularly meets one-on-one with students “outside the choir” — those who do not embrace diversity education programs, according to nomination materials. Peltzman  serves as co-chair of the Student Housing Diversity Committee. This February, she coordinated skits that helped dispel prejudices based on gender, age, sexual orientation and more. She currently is working on a “Safe Place” campaign, featuring magnets, placards and more announcing hate-free zones. In addition, students will sign a pledge stating they understand the importance of creating inclusive environments and that they will serve as an ally to all underrepresented groups.

Tonia Teresh, a leadership coordinator in the Residential Education Office, is responsible, among other duties, for developing leadership programs for some 1,500 of the campus’s first-year students. She also advises the Cuarto Area Leadership Council, which includes diversity education among its missions. She is facilitator for the Student Housing Diversity Committee and has worked on projects including: Principles of Community workshops during Fall Welcome Week, a Principles of Commu-nity program for staff training, the diversity film festival, and an HIV and AIDS awareness program. She also facilitated the “Freshman 15” program, highlighting what 15 things students need to know about diversity.

Meanwhile, the Deanna Falge Award went to Marti Hanna of Advising Services. During the past decade, Hanna has developed and coordinated 113 workshops in the “Appreciation of Differences” category of the Student Leadership Development Series. More than 2,000 students have completed the certificate program. “These students come away with a heightened understanding of leadership in multicultural context and a pluralistic society,” nomination materials said. “Marti has demonstrated that she is deeply committed to the Principles of Community and the students have been richly rewarded through her creativity and resourcefulness,” the nomination added.

A special citation honored members of the Campus Community Book Project  Committee. Committee members helped organize special Hmong culture events, discussion sessions and speaker panels complementing the 2002 book project selection The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Ann Fadiman.  Committee members also taught classes and found funding for the project. Members of the committee are: Griselda Castro, Gary Goodman, Kou Her, Wendy Ho, Alison Kent, Cathy Kudlick, Angie Ma, Kari Mansager, Yvonne Marsh, Cindy Oropeza, Nicole Raubaud, Joseph Rodriguez, Mary Reid, Karen Roth, Marbella Sala, Linda Scott, Paul Takushi, Jane Thomson, Vicky Vang, Dave Webb and Maiko Xiong.

And a Principles of Community Celebration Department Award went to the law school’s admissions office. Sharon Pinkney, Moira Delgado, Candace Rogers, Bonita Roznos and Jennifer Tanner were recognized for the creation of the King Hall Outreach Program and for their roles in the law school STEP program. The department also fostered creation of the Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship program — designed to attract applicants from disadvantaged communities. The awardees helped expand outreach efforts at California State University campuses and are credited with fostering a more than 20 percent increase in law school applications each year during the last two years. With their help, the law school also was recently able to secure a grant for more than $60,000 to expand  outreach efforts.

In addition, six campus members were recognized with Disability Pride awards.

Three facilities workers were honored: project mangager John Gray, assistant superintendent William Rumley, and senior superintendent Allen Tollefson. The employees were recognized for finding rapid, workable solutions to accessibility problems faced by faculty and staff members, and for proactively searching for campus funds to implement those solutions, including the installation of automatic doors on campus.

Molecular and Cell Biology employees Christina Jones and Gary Zamzow, a management services officer and an electronic technician, respectively, were honored for creative thinking and problem-solving to create an accessible environment for a long-term employee with a disability. The actions enabled an employee to return to work and comfortably perform her job. Their work shows “a spirit committed to the retention of employees with disabilities,” nomination materials noted.

And Tamara Murray-Guerrero, a human resources manager for the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory, also earned a Disability Pride award for providing workplace accommodations that foster the retention of  employees. She is credited with helping to implement alternate work schedules and adaptive equipment, a trial work placement and more. Her nomination said: “Tamara is an excellent role model for managers and supervisors…and truly embodies the spirit of our Principles of Community.”