Dubbing Feb. 28 a "Day of Absence," the faculty will bring their classes throughout the day to the Presentation Room of Cal State Northridge's Oviatt Library for a series of discussions. Topics will range from the impact of the CSU Chancellor's order to cut back on remedial education and the anti-affirmative action Prop. 209 on African-American students to developing strong ties between the students and the African American community in the San Fernando Valley and the greater Los Angeles area.

Rosentene Bennett Purnell, interim chair of CSUN's Pan African Studies Department, said she hopes the "Day of Absence" will foster "badly-needed dialogue between our students."

"Instead of meeting in their regular classrooms, we are taking the students into a new environment where they can feel free to voice the concerns and issues most affecting them and their generation in trying to survive here at Northridge and in the larger world," Purnell said.

CSUN's Pan African Studies Department is one of the oldest and largest in the nation.

The "Day of Absence" draws its title from the award-winning Off-Broadway play by Douglass Turner Ward. In the play, the whites in a small Southern town wake up one morning to find that all of their black "help" have disappeared, with disastrous and comedic results making a telling commentary on American race relations.

A free performance of the play will take place at 8 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Performing Arts Center.

The "Day of Absence" teach-in is the culmination of a month-long series of events at Cal State Northridge marking the observance of Black History Month.

Purnell said everyone at the university is invited to attend the "Day of Absence" discussions in the library.

"Everyone today is looking for directions, answers and leadership," she said. "This is going to give us a chance to, at a minimum, look at some of the questions our students and the black community are concerned with, serious questions indeed that are being raised while going unanswered."

For more information about the "Day of Absence," call Johnie Scott at (818) 677-2289.

California State University, Northridge has more than 27,000 full- and part-time students and offers 48 bachelor's and 39 master's degrees. Founded in 1958, it is the only four-year university in the San Fernando Valley.