From the ashes of the “Compton Cookout,” an off-campus student party meant to mock Black History Month, a Compton reach-out has risen at UC San Diego.
And that is how a group of 20 Compton High School students and four of their teachers ended up in La Jolla for a special three-week summer program at the university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
In the wake of the Feb. 15 party that roiled the campus, a group of students and faculty at Scripps felt compelled to respond.
“We have a lot of people at Scripps who have relatives in Compton or are from Compton,” said Tony Haymet, director of the institution and a university vice chancellor.
“My Ph.D. students said, ‘We want to go up there and look them in the eye.’ We were upset. We wanted to show them that we have a warm and welcoming community.”