This group advocates recognition of San Jose State's identity as the original and oldest California State (1862) institution of higher learning for the purpose of elevating the value of CSU degrees from the San Jose campus, and to save the school's football program from extinction due to poor performance and attendance.

We recognize that our school was orginally named the California State Normal School (from 1862 to 1921), first in San Francisco and then in San Jose. It is the oldest public institution of higher education in the State of California (even older than California - Berkeley [1868] by four years).

When our school first became a "university" in 1972, it was named the California State University at San Jose (until 1974).

Now, in 2003, with our graduates struggling in the job market and our football program facing apathy, extinction and racking up loss after humiliating loss, a group of forward-thinking students and recent graduates advocate restoring the proud "CSU" name to our school.

We believe that with the more elite and national-sounding "California State University" name our degrees will be more prestigious and valuable. We also believe the restored CSU name will help rekindle pride in our school and its beleaugered football program and help our school recruit better and more loyal students, athletes, coaches, donors and alumni. We recognize that a successful athletic program, particularly Division 1A football, is the hallmark of a major university in the United States and brings prestige, money and stature to such schools.

Finally, we are aware that another school, Texas State University, recently accomplished a very similar change. This gives us hope that we too can elevate the prestige of our school and the value of our degrees by restoring its original name of "California State" [University]. We are not concerned that other schools in our system also have "CSU" as part of their names because San Jose is the original CSU