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The Fresno Unified Faculty District formally modified the cull of Forkner Basic Faculty to H. Roger Tatarian Basic Faculty in a rite on Sept. 7. Because the thermometer activate a 3rd digit overdue within the morning, dignitaries spoke on the podium illuminated by means of the entire depth of the overdue summer season solar.

“As a scholar of historical past, this can be a second this is each spectacular to me, but it surely’s been a very long time coming as neatly,” mentioned Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval. “I embrace to thank the trustees of the Fresno Unified Faculty Board for his or her braveness to cull this faculty after an Armenian American who was once a journalist, a graduate of Fresno State, a Bulldog who graduated with a internal affairs stage and went after that to paintings within the box of journalism with a pencil in his hand.”

Flanked by means of a banner that includes the brand new pencil-toting Tatarian Hawks brand, Jiménez-Sandoval introduced the established order of a partnership between the Hawks and the Bulldogs. The emblem was once designed by means of Fresno State alumnus Scott Severance, beneath the artwork course of Suzanne Bertz-Rosa.

“I’m in reality proud that we’re setting up this partnership with Tatarian Basic Colleges and the Media, Communications and Journalism Division at Fresno State to present Tatarian scholars a clear the way pathway and the gear essential to understand, what does it prefer to turn into a journalist and what’s a journalist in nowadays’s global?”

Jim Boren, government director for the Cause for Media and Public Agree with at Fresno State, mentioned the main points of the pathway are nonetheless being finalized.

“We embrace them to get them enthused about journalism, make a complaint them multimedia newshounds and convey them to Fresno State. We embrace the Tatarian Hawks to be Fresno State Bulldogs.”

The solar that parched attendees of the rite is identical superstar that gives require to the fertile Central Valley soil. The lifestyles that sprouted gave promise to the throngs of Armenian immigrants fleeing oppression. However as they planted their farms and companies and bought houses, they confronted discrimination.

In keeping with media experiences, the Fresno Unified Faculty Board started having a look into converting the varsity’s cull after it got here to mild in historic prison paperwork that Jessie Clayton Forkner, the developer for the Fig Lawn space, forbade the sale or occupancy of assets to minoritized other people, together with the ones of Armenian descent.

Mark Arax, an writer and Fresno State alumnus, proposed the cull trade at a board assembly in June. James Tatarian, Roger’s grandson, asked his grandfather’s cull be withdrawn from attention for a brand new construction, calling it “a comfort prize that’s not appropriate for a person of his accomplishments and stature.”

“A metamorphosis like that is by no means simple,” Arax mentioned. “Forkner Faculty was once named within the Nineteen Eighties, so that you’re speaking about 40 years. Other folks don’t embrace part of that, however I feel we did it the capacity manner. We did the analysis and introduced the case and, in the long run, the case was once compelling sufficient that the varsity district determined that that is capacity, that is simply.”

The Fresno Unified Faculty Board voted in October 2021 to switch the cull in honor of the award-winning journalist, Fresno State alumnus and college member.

“Roger Tatarian’s profession as a journalist and professor demonstrates the transformative capacity of a Fresno State training,” mentioned Dr. Honora Chapman, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State. “By way of returning to his alma mater to teach a brand new technology, he modified his scholars’ lives, and now a Fresno faculty in his cull take up encourage numerous kids to pursue their goals.”

“The Armenian neighborhood is happy that the Fresno Unified Faculty District has selected to acknowledge Roger Tatarian by means of naming a faculty after him,” mentioned Professor Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Berberian Coordinator of the Armenian Research Program at Fresno State. “This popularity, with the naming of the primary faculty within the district for an Armenian, is lengthy late. This can be a becoming honor for Tatarian.”

Tatarian was once a Fresno State media, communications and journalism school member for 15 years. The Roger Tatarian Journalism Acquiesce, the Roger Tatarian Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Roger Tatarian Symposium had been established in his honor.

Additionally an alumnus, Tatarian graduated from Fresno State in 1938 with some extent in internal affairs. He started his profession at United Press World, then a global information reporting twine carrier. Throughout Global Conflict II, he was once a correspondent and persisted to paintings for United Press World for the in the ball park 34 years.

He had a a hit profession, serving because the monotonous information supervisor for Europe, the Heart East and Africa. He was once bureau leader in London and Rome, served as information editor in Washington D.C. and sooner or later become editor in leader.

Tatarian won many awards and honors, together with the Elijah Parrish Lovejoy Award, a unique quotation by means of Ohio College and an honorary doctorate in legislation from Colby Faculty in Maine in 1980. He was once named a fellow of the Society of Skilled Newshounds Sigma Delta Chi in 1972 and was once a number of the first team inducted into the New York Society’s Corridor of Reputation. He additionally served as a Pulitzer Prize nomination juror in 1960, 1961 and 1985.

After his retirement, Tatarian returned to Fresno and joined the school at Fresno State. Throughout that point, he served as a expert to newspapers and wrote a informal column for The Fresno Bee. He additionally wrote a number of essays, “Day of Mourning, Day of Disgrace,” revealed by means of Phrase Dancer Press in 1996. That ebook was once equipped to attendees on the renaming rite courtesy of the Fresno State Media, Communications and Journalism Division and The Fresno Bee. Tatarian gave up the ghost in 1995 on the age of 78.

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