CSUF Staff Discounts Boy’s Harassment Story

Cal State Fullerton officials on Thursday concluded an investigation into their Upward Bound program, saying they found no corroboration for the complaint of a 14-year-old who alleged that he was mentally abused and harassed by fellow students during the program.

After interviewing Upward Bound staffers and students and the father of the former student, a university administrator said he could not find any facts to back up Omar Carrasco’s account that his peers harassed him by routinely soaking his bed with water and leaving him to sleep on the hard dormitory floor.

The Carrasco family sticks by its complaint--sent July 18 to Cal State Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon--that a lack of adult supervision left their son “mentally and emotionally drained and defeated, physically shaken and frightened.”

Omar, who will enter Santa Ana High as a freshman this year, was one of about 50 teens spending six weeks in a residential dorm as part of the federally funded, college-preparatory Upward Bound program.

Upward Bound is designed to prepare junior high and high school students for college through biweekly after-school sessions, monthly classes, individual college advisement, career planning and a summer residential program.

The program is targeted toward students from the Santa Ana Unified School District who are low-income or likely to be the first in their families to attend college. Since 1992, Cal State Fullerton has received about $240,000 a year from the federal government to run the program.

During the week of July 11, Omar and his father allege, students soaked his clothing and bedding in a shower stall. In the middle of the night, he said students would toss balloons full of water, after-shave, toothpaste and even toilet water into his room, forcing him to sleep on the floor.

“It was embarrassing and sometimes humiliating,” Omar said in an interview. “I wore the same clothes for three days because my [other] clothes were always wet. [Other students] made fun of me and said I smelled.”

Omar has withdrawn from the program, even though his older brother went through it and his father once served on a parent advisory committee.

He said a complaint to a resident advisor was answered with advice to ignore the pranks and wait for them to go away.

Silas H. Abrego, the campus’ associate vice president for student affairs, investigated the Carrascos’ complaints this week. He said his interviews with Upward Bound students and staff--the program continues this summer until Aug. 7--revealed that Omar and a handful of other students were engaged in a long-running, prankish water balloon fight and nothing more. Omar’s roommates said he would simply flip over his wet mattress after the fights and sleep on the dry side.

“There was nothing to corroborate or substantiate any of the allegations that Mr. Carrasco has made in his letter,” Abrego said. “Yes, his mattress was wet. Yes, there were water balloon fights, but they were either initiated by Omar or Omar participated in them. He was not intimidated by them. He was a very popular student.”

Despite his finding that the youth was neither harassed nor hazed, Abrego said the university takes the complaint seriously. He vowed to follow up with program director and resident advisors to ensure that students have adequate supervision and are not bombarding each other with balloons in the middle of the night.

Campus rules and state law prohibit harassment or hazing of students. Upward Bound rules say that behavior of participating teens will be monitored by staff and that fights are not allowed.