It is with gratitude that the community wishes Cal State Bakersfield President Tomas Arciniega well as he moves into retirement.

Arciniega announced last week that he will retire in July 2004 after serving for two decades as Cal State Bakersfield's president. After retirement, he will move to the Cal State University chancellor's staff to fill a temporary advisory post.

The 65-year-old Arciniega was appointed president of the Bakersfield campus in 1983, replacing President Jacob Frankel. The campus was only 13 years old and Arciniega was its third president.

Many changes and advancements have occurred during Arciniega's watch. Enrollment grew from 3,400 in 1983 to nearly 7,800 in 2002. The campus' status was elevated from a "state college" to a "university." Diversity made a great leap. With only 11.4 percent of the student body being Latino in 1983, it is now 36 percent.

Arciniega sought to make the university more comprehensive, moving it from its roots as a small liberal arts college by adding professional degree programs and a satellite campus in the Antelope Valley.

The campus also grew physically with the construction of the five-story Walter Stiern Library, the nearly 4,000-seat Icardo Activity Center, the Student Union and a five-building Business Development Center complex.

But Arciniega's tenure has not been without controversy. He has warred with his faculty and sometimes his community relations have been chilly.

Arciniega's distance from the community may be rooted in the process that led to his selection as CSUB president. There are lessons that must be learned from that process and that must not be repeated.

To understand the importance of these lessons, you must understand the importance of Cal State Bakersfield to this community.

Bakersfield kicked and scratched its way into getting a state college campus. Until about 1970, people living at the southern most tip of the San Joaquin Valley could only look to two-year Bakersfield College as an institution of higher education.

Although some colleges offered extension courses in Bakersfield, for students to attend classes on a "real" four-year college campus required a two-hour drive to Southern California or a two-hour drive to Fresno.

A community campaign that rivaled a forced march on the Legislature and state college system resulted in Bakersfield being granted a campus. Today, the entrance to Cal State Bakersfield bears the name of a former mayor the late Don Hart who with others spilled blood, sweat and tears in the struggle.

Cal State Bakersfield is a product of this community's determination. It has educated a generation that now fills leadership positions in local government and business.

And because of the community's "ownership" of Cal State Bakersfield, the way Arciniega was appointed two decades ago left bitterness.

A 13-member search committee, which included seven people from Bakersfield, helped recruit and screen candidates. More than 100 candidates were narrowed to three finalists. The seven Bakersfield members unanimously recommended John R. Beljan of Wright State University in Ohio.

But when the chancellor named Arciniega, an administrator at Fresno State, to fill the post, the Bakersfield members were stunned and embittered. "We were railroaded. We were pigeons. We were used," one member told The Californian at the time.

Even today, a member of that committee bitterly recalls Arciniega's appointment came from "left field." Local members considered Arciniega's experience in community participation and affirmative action to be weak.

There's a different chancellor today. And there is even a greater need for a Cal State Bakersfield president who can reach out to the community, weaving the university's fabric into the community's.

We urge Chancellor Charles Reed in his search for a new president to sincerely include local input.