The first UC Santa Cruz commencement in 1969 saw students throw their diplomas at UC President Clark Kerr and Chancellor Dean McHenry. Student activists disrupted the ceremony to award imprisoned Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton an Honorary Degree.
It’s in this tradition of opposing university leadership and calling attention to injustice everywhere that UCSC students — some 54 years later — organized a walkout on Nov. 9 in support of a free Palestine.
Those who chose to make a statement by walking out of class, marching down to the base of campus, or protesting in an intersection (forcing traffic to be diverted to another route) were doing just that. Protestors stood in solidarity with those suffering in Gaza, where at least 14,800 people have been killed, primarily women and children. They were calling for the liberation of Palestine and an immediate ceasefire. Protestors also called out the UC system, specifically Chancellor Cynthia Larive’s failure to condemn Israel’s relentless siege of the region.
To date, the only official statement on the conflict has been to “condemn this act of terrorism” by Hamas on Oct. 9. However, the protest itself prompted an almost immediate response by Chancellor Larive. The university’s response, a stern letter addressed to the campus community, was consistent with their often adversarial position concerning student activism.
UCSC has had a long, complicated relationship with student activism since its inception. The university was built during the 1960s when, just up the coast, UC Berkeley was struggling to quell student’s free speech demonstrations. Over the years, many have theorized that UCSC’s sprawling campus was intentionally designed to mitigate protests.
“There are two competing narratives about the founding of UCSC,” said former Merrill Provost Elizabeth Abrams to City on a Hill Press in 2016 for an article regarding early activism at UCSC. “One is that the founders’ vision of having smaller colleges is deliberate. The other is that Reagan wanted to stop anti-war protests by establishing a decentralized campus.”
Despite challenges posed by campus layout and university and state repression of protests, students came together to forge an identity grounded in activism. In 1968, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver was barred from speaking at UC Berkeley. In response, UCSC students blocked buses and held mass protests at UCSC that disrupted a UC Regents meeting attended by then-governor Ronald Reagan. Two years later, 2,000 students gathered to protest the Kent State shooting and military action in Cambodia — the entire student body consisted of 3,600 students.
Throughout the school’s history, students have cemented this philosophy, fighting for progress on issues like race, sexuality, global politics, fair tuition, and more. This legacy of social justice and activism makes it a desirable destination for many prospective college students. UCSC, the institution, has attempted to maintain this perception.
In 2021, UCSC renamed College Ten John R. Lewis College to honor the prolific civil rights leader. Attendees of the naming ceremony were given shirts printed with a quote by Lewis urging people to “Go out there. Speak up. Speak out. Get in the way. Get in good trouble. Necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
However, students were unsatisfied, feeling the ceremony did not match their actions. The ceremony was interrupted by a demonstration from the Black Student Union calling out the university for inadequately supporting Black students.
The T-shirts, the renaming, and the ethos behind the two align with the student body’s history of protest and hunger for a more just society. The disconnect lies between the image of UCSC that the university portrays and its actual response when students empower each other to engage in activism, such as the Nov. 9 walkout.
“Shut it Down for Palestine” was a peaceful demonstration, drawing support from students and community members with a range of backgrounds and relationships to the issue, all looking to “get in the way” and make “good trouble.”
In response to the protest, organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Chancellor Larive sent a campus-wide email with the subject line “Upholding community responsibilities.”
The letter did not address any of the concerns raised at the demonstration and only vaguely alluded to the atrocities being committed in Palestine as “global tragedies that should be unthinkable, but sadly are not.”
The remainder of the letter served primarily as a condemnation of the protest and its methods. The letter argued the demonstrations “contradict the values to which our community commits.” This was later followed by a thinly veiled threat toward participating protestors.
“Students, faculty or staff who choose to block an entrance or otherwise disrupt normal activity on our campus will be held accountable under applicable policy or law,” read the Chancellor’s letter.
The Chancellor’s main objection stated in the letter was how the protest inhibited accessibility to campus. A sprawling campus on a hill, UCSC has been plagued by accessibility issues long before any cars were diverted due to this protest.
Still, to focus only on those issues raised in the Chancellor’s letter is to miss the larger point of the demonstration. The response to the protest further proves how critical such protests are for college campuses. UCSC joined the ranks of college students all over the country, dissatisfied by the inaction of their institutions and horrified by the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
By taking to the street, UCSC students marched alongside the impassioned students who came before them with a cause, a voice, and a knack for making ‘good trouble.’
This article was published as part of a backlog of content from December 2023.
