Campus Comeback : The death knoll had already been sounded for L.A. Southwest College when Thomas Lakin took over at the helm in 1986. Twenty months later, enrollment is up 60%, new programs have been added and nobody is talking of closing the college.

The death knell had already been sounded for L.A. Southwest College when Thomas Lakin took over at the helm in 1986. Twenty months later, enrollment is up 60%, new programs have been added and nobody is talking of closing the college.

When the trustees named Thomas Lakin president of Los Angeles Southwest College in March, 1986, they attached acting to the front of the title. The extra word underscored a widespread belief that he--and the institution--might not be around very long.

Enrollment at the predominantly black two-year college had plummeted to 2,900 students--a 64% loss in five years--making it the smallest in the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District.

Programs and staff had been cut. Classrooms stood empty in the campus’ only permanent building, a massive, four-story structure stretching along Imperial Highway near Western Avenue. Scarred by graffiti and surrounded by weeds, it had begun to look like an abandoned fortress.

‘Putting in Time’

“The place was really at a low point,” a district official said. “People there just seemed to be putting in their time, waiting for the end.”

Twenty months later, new programs have been added to the college’s curriculum, enrollment is up 60%, and nobody is talking about closing Southwest. And the acting has been removed from Lakin’s title.

The college, founded in 1967 in the aftermath of the Watts riots, had been billed as an educational ladder of opportunity for blacks in the ghettos of South-Central Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

It flourished for a while in the late 1970s after the long-delayed completion of the first permanent building in 1973. By 1981, enrollment had reached a peak of 8,000.

Then the downward slide began.

Some blamed Proposition 13, which dried up funding needed to continue construction on the 71-acre campus so it could compete successfully with older colleges. The district’s short-lived experiment with an earlier semester start in August cut into enrollment, as did the state’s imposition of a first-ever tuition fee.

‘Another Dream Deferred’

Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, who represents South-Central Los Angeles, blamed “weak leadership” and the “low priority given to the needs of black communities.” Southwest, she said, had become “another dream deferred.”

Others blamed the community, saying that people there didn’t want their own college enough to support it. They pointed out that inner-city students were driving past Southwest by the thousands on their way to other colleges, like El Camino and the Santa Monica and West L. A. campuses.

In 1985, the state’s Little Hoover Commission, after looking at the college district’s budget and management problems, pointed to the elimination of Southwest as part of the solution. A county grand jury reached the same conclusion.

Lakin, a 43-year-old administrator who was a vice president at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College before being called to Southwest, was taking his first shot as head of a college. He said he tried to view his new assignment as a once-in-a-lifetime challenge.

“Not everybody gets a chance to save a college,” he said. “The scary part was that I knew my career was on the line.”

There were so many problems he didn’t know where to start. So he decided to start with first things first.

Pulling Weeds

He bought a batch of weed pullers, issued them to his staff and invited the educators to join him in attacking the wild plants that had taken over the campus grounds.

“That got our attention,” said Major F. Thomas, an assistant dean and Southwest veteran. “We weren’t sure he was serious until he shouldered his own weed puller and led the way. Before long, we even had some rose gardens planted.”

Lakin let it be known in other ways that he expected everyone, starting with himself, to help with any task, big or small, that needed doing.

“When I saw a piece of paper on the floor, I always stopped to pick it up,” he said. “Pretty soon I saw others doing the same thing.”

Quoted From Song

At his first formal staff meeting, Lakin quoted from the lyrics of “This Is It,” a Kenny Loggins song in which an ailing father is urged to rise from his sick bed and fight for his life.

“It was do-or-die time for Southwest, too, and I wanted the people here to know it,” Lakin said in a recent interview. “I told them we had to turn this place around fast, or very likely the college and everybody working around here would be history.”

A number of people moved on immediately. Lakin replaced the college’s 10 top administrators, except Thomas, with his own handpicked team--people he had come to know and trust in his 12 years as a district teacher and administrator.

He fired the old maintenance crew and told the new workers that their job tenure depended on daily victories against weeds, graffiti and dirty floors.

Join the Parade

Several employees suspected of drug-dealing, Lakin said, were invited to join the history parade. Campus security was reorganized and strengthened.

In sending Lakin to replace Walt McIntosh as president, the college board had decreed that enrollment had to rise by at least 20% in two years. Few around the campus believed it could be done. Others had tried and failed.

“But the president just kept saying, ‘Here’s the plan and we can do it. We can do it,’ ” Thomas said. “Before long, he had us believing it.”

To reach the enrollment goal, Lakin started an all-out recruiting campaign that extended through the summer last year. His daily calendar filled with speaking engagements at area high schools and before community groups. Potential students were pulled aside, wherever they could be found, for a review of their educational needs and goals and told about financial aid available at Southwest.

Expanded Bilingual Programs

To reach the growing Latino population--now estimated at up to 40% in some areas around the school--Lakin expanded bilingual and English language programs, set up a Spanish hot line for prospective students and promoted Latino festivals on the campus.

To attract working adults, he adopted PACE (Project for Adult College Education), a fast-track program to a two-year degree that has been used successfully at several other district campuses.

PACE students, like Sherry Potts, a 40-year-old Northrop Corp. employee, say the program can fit the work schedules of “anybody who wants to get ahead in life.” Classes are held one night a week and on Saturdays.

“Lakin is turning people on to Southwest by giving them programs they need,” said Potts, whose views were echoed by teachers and other students. “He’s given me my ticket at last to a four-year college and a degree.”

To promote Southwest as a high-tech institution, Lakin introduced “Information Age” programs such as computer-assisted design, word processing and computer-aided math studies. He based them on a districtwide program he developed at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

“We tried everything we could think of to get people in,” Lakin said. “We were practically shouting from the rooftop.”

When the 1986 fall semester opened at Southwest, seven months after Lakin’s appointment, enrollment shot up 44% over the previous year. This fall, enrollment reached 4,700 for an overall gain of 60% in 19 months--three times the two-year goal set by the trustees.

“We have been impressed and encouraged,” said Harold Garvin, president of the college board. And to show it, the board voted to remove the acting from Lakin’s title, making him the full-fledged president at Southwest.

Now that Southwest--like the father in Loggins’ song--is back on its feet, talk of closing the college has faded away. But Lakin, who keeps physically fit by running in marathons, knows that Southwest’s race for survival has only begun.

Momentum gained through 19 months of determined effort can be lost overnight “if we slacken off, if we let our gains slip away,” he said. Time may run out, people may tire and lose hope again, he worries, before the foundations of an enduring institution can be laid.

What sometimes keeps him awake at night, he says, is the thought that the district, Sacramento, the community--whatever combination of political and social forces that is to determine Southwest’s fate--may decide not to complete construction of the college.

“Wherever I go--and I go to a lot of meetings--I tell anyone who will listen that new construction is crucial to the life of this college,” Lakin said. “We simply cannot develop a long-range program to meet the educational needs of this community without adequate facilities and equipment.”

Compete on Equal Footing

First on Lakin’s building agenda are a technical center and a gymnasium, which he estimates will cost $12.5 million. The technical center, he says, will enable Southwest to compete on an equal footing with other colleges for students interested in high-tech careers.

A gym was intentionally left out of the original construction on the notion, Lakin says ruefully, that blacks are already too much into sports and need to concentrate more on academics. As a result, Southwest teams must travel to other campuses to practice and play games, and sports-minded high school graduates tend to look elsewhere for a college.

“Besides costing us students,” Lakin said with a rare display of anger, “the lack of something so fundamental as a gym and a swimming pool cuts out whole areas of community interest and participation at our campus. If every other college--Santa Monica, El Camino, you name it--can have a gym, why can’t we?”

Limited Construction Money

Garvin, the college board president, said the district is giving high priority to Southwest’s building needs. But the real decisions on funding requests are made in Sacramento, and Southwest must compete for limited construction dollars with other schools throughout the state, including the district’s uncompleted Mission and West L.A. campuses.

“Lakin isn’t bashful about telling us what he wants, and I like that in a college president,” Garvin said. “But we do have to deal with the funding realities.”

In his first 18 months at Southwest, Lakin charged full tilt against the “realities” and ran into what he calls “the circular reasoning of Sacramento bureaucrats” who tried to convince him that what he was asking was impossible. Now he has fallen back to regroup for a longer battle.

Help Spark Drive

His most powerful ally is Assemblywoman Waters, who has tried before to get construction funding for Southwest and now says Lakin’s accomplishments at the college can help spark a new drive for funding. “When I deal with these agencies (in Sacramento), I’ll talk nice at first like I always do,” she said. “But if that doesn’t work, I can get rough. . . . I won’t let this dream die.”

Clarence Mangham, who heads construction planning in the state chancellor’s office, said Southwest’s technical center has a good chance of breaking through the funding barrier in the next fiscal year. But he said the gym is 17th from the bottom on a list of 98 projects.

“Dr. Lakin has generated a lot of sympathy for the needs at Southwest,” Mangham said. “We are doing everything we possibly can to get these new buildings for him.”

To rally community support and raise local money, Lakin has revived the Southwest Education Foundation by replacing its inactive directors with new supporters of the dream, including the assemblywoman’s husband, Hollywood car dealer Sidney Williams.

Old Racquetball Buddy

The group is headed by one of Lakin’s old racquetball buddies, Joseph Rouzan, a security consultant and former Inglewood police chief who now serves on the Inglewood school board.

And Odessa Cox, a legendary figure in Southwest’s history, said she is willing to “start agitating again” for the college. Now in her mid-60s, Cox is credited with leading a 17-year crusade that led to Southwest’s founding.

In an interview, Lakin, a New York native who earned his doctorate at UCLA, mixed aggressive action themes with the reflections of a thinker who pauses to view the struggle from a distance.

“You know, the hardest part of my job doesn’t involve buildings and curriculum and limited budgets,” he said. “It’s trying to convince young people that they need an education in the first place.”

How, he mused, do you talk about preparing for the future to kids who want immediate gratification and think tomorrow will take care of itself, when and if tomorrow comes? How do you sell a kid on the value of an education when he makes more money on a quick drug deal than a Ph.D earns in a month?

Education Taken for Granted

In his own family, Lakin said, a good education was taken for granted. “I come from one of the largest black families in the country,” he said. “When we had our last annual reunion in Washington, 900 people were there.

“Chuck Bolden, the astronaut, is a cousin and another is Ralph Carter who played in ‘Good Times’ on television, and we’ve got scientists and doctors and engineers and educators. You just don’t belong to my family and not learn how to live and how to make a living, and there used to be a whole lot of black families that believed strongly in a good education.”

Lakin paused, then returned to his action themes. “The question about whether our community deserves a first-rate, comprehensive community college should have been settled long ago,” he said.

“The only question now is, what do we have to do to get it?”