By Maria Cubillo
A ceremony honoring member of Board of Trustees and former ELAC President Ernest H. Moreno took place last Wednesday with the unveiling of E3 Building’s name, titled Ernest H. Moreno Language Arts and Humanities Building.
The Ernest H. Moreno Language Arts and Humanities building stands at 135,000 square feet, making it the largest building in the California Community College System.
President Marvin Martinez started the ceremony and introduced Moreno. He was followed with speeches by Board of Trustee President Scott Svonkin, Board of Trustee Vice President Mike Eng, and former Writing Center Director Maria Yepes. Eng described Moreno as “Ernest More No; no more to buildings built in WWI.”
When Moreno began his term as president, ELAC was fifth in enrollment of the nine colleges in the district. “He put ELAC on the map, front and center,” Rolando Lonnie Cuevas, former ASU student body president from 1994 to 1995, said.
When Moreno started his presidency in 1993, enrollment was at 13,000.
“ELAC was [the] lost campus of the district when Ernest Moreno came as president,” Yepes said. Eighteen years later, when he retired in 2011, enrollment had increased to 40,000. Under his direction, the campus went from having the least enrollment in the district to being number one.
When Moreno started, the buildings were 20 to 30 years old, the bungalows were from World War I, and the rest of the campus was made up of 50-year-old temporary facilities. Due to decreasing enrollment at the time, ELAC was not receiving much funding.
With enrollment increasing, ELAC began to receive funding. Gabriel Leon, an audience member, had not been on campus since 1985 when he used to pick up his sister. The campus is “unrecognizable and impressive,” Leon said, adding that he walked a little slower to take it all in. Moreno’s vision when he began his 18 years of service was to redesign the college and improve student’s college experience.
His long career in the district depicted his commitment to the ELAC community.
Yepes described Moreno as not having a political agenda. “He changed the culture of the community and got the community involved,” Pat Flood, Moreno’s wife, said. “As president, he was able to see from the students’ perspective and from the faculty’s perspective.”
president; Ernest H. Moreno, Board of Trustees member and former ELAC president; Mike Eng, Board of Trustees member;
and Maria Yepes, former Writing Center director (left to right) celebrate the ceremony honoring Moreno in front of the E3
Building on Feb. 8. C/N Jorge Aldaco
Disturbing to read Ernest Moreno was immortalized on a college campus when he continued to collaborate and was an accomplice to his protege, Rolando Lonnie Cuevas, who is a known sexual predator on the Los Angeles Community College campuses. Sexual harassers/predators like Rolando Cuevas, #MeToo, are even more dangerous on college campuses filled with young vulnerable women. Ernest Moreno was made aware, when he was college president, by numerous women that Rolando Cuevas was a sexual predator, and nevertheless Ernest Moreno continued to protect and collude with a sexual predator through his silence, covering up for, and continuing to use his power in the District to have Rolando Cuevas hired by the District.
Now that everyone is finally aware that sexual predators like Rolando Cuevas #MeToo don’t operate alone and are enabled by powerful accomplices such as Ernest Moreno who protect them and turn a blind eye to the harassment reports from vulnerable women on their college campuses. Even the LACCD Board of Trustees had to be brought in before Ernest Moreno would stop his continued protection of and employing of Rolando Cuevas in a College District filled with vulnerable women.
It’s a very sad fact to read Ernest Moreno was rewarded with a college building named after him when Mr. Moreno was an accomplice for many years in keeping Rolando Cuevas on college campuses where he was able to continue sexually harassing women many years after Mr. Moreno was first made aware of Rolando Cuevas’s predatory behavior.
I’m not the only one who knows and reported this to Ernest Moreno when he was a college president at LACCD, I only hope other women will now have the courage to come forward #MeToo and alert other women and District leadership about Rolando Cuevas, so that in spite of Mr. Moreno’s powerful endorsements he can’t continue to enable and collude with a sexual predator being placed in positions of power over young college co-eds.