“The founder of the Women’s Center Helene Moglen, was the first woman Dean on this campus [in the Humanities Department], and met over a period of time with women from the town of Santa Cruz and women from on campus,” said Roberta Valdez, director of the Women’s Center from 2000-2008. “They all decided that UCSC needed a Women’s Center. She went into the Chancellor’s office one day and asked for a space and walked out with the Cardiff house.”
Today, four decades later, the Cardiff House still serves as a home to UCSC’s Women’s Center. It has been forty years of providing resources, forty years of creating community, and forty years of celebrating women.
As one of the five resource centers on campus, the Women’s Center serves as a pillar of community on campus and works to “affirm the dignity and diversity of all women.” They provide free services for students of all identities such as: access to a gender neutral bathroom, a food pantry, a fully stocked kitchen, a library of feminist literature, a basic needs cart stocked with hygiene and menstrual products, and a welcoming space to decompress.
In commemoration of their 40th anniversary, over 50 students, interns, and staff attended the “Still Rising: 40 Years of the Women’s Center” event in the Alumni Room on May 9. The event, which began with dinner catered by UCSC Dining Services, united past, present, and future women leaders.
Previous events put on by the resource center, such as Collage and Cookies, and Ekphrastic Poetry provided a space for students to create and submit works to be included in an anniversary zine.
The collaborative project was then unveiled and distributed at the May 9 dinner, with each attendee receiving a copy in a complementary tote bag. The zine included photos, poetry, paintings, collages, and music celebrating themes of girlhood, love, resilience, and community. 
Participants paint tote bags, one of the activities offered at the 40th anniversary event.
Angel Cervantes, a fifth-year computer engineering student, was one of forty individuals who submitted artwork that was featured in the zine. Cervantes’ collage used magazine scraps of shoes standing in a puddle full of negative and positive descriptive words to illustrate the struggles they faced as a first-generation student of color entering higher education.
“As someone who’s Mexican-American and a first generation student, those words [impostor syndrome and trickster] resonated with me because ethnically speaking, I’m not really part of the bigger demographic [of students] here,” said Cervantes.
“Going outside of my bubble, I kind of felt out of place. I felt like I didn’t belong,” Cervantes continued. “Resource centers like the Women’s Center really helped me find new people and connect with others.”
Alissa Takesy, Grad Student Coordinator, shows off the “Celebrate Women” shirt, also given out to all attendees.
Speeches, awards and laughs were shared throughout the dinner, as guests posed for pictures at a photobooth provided by the resource center. Attendees were also invited to explore the Women’s Center’s archive created by Valdez, which displayed photos from events and political marches, posters, transcripts from past meetings, and newspaper clippings dating back to 1985. This rich herstory illustrated the origins of the resource center, and the many faces that have visited.
Community events such as children’s art shows, social hangouts for mothers, and open mics are just some of many events that the Women’s Center has put on to connect with students and community members.
After the dinner, Mai Foua Her, the current director of the Women’s Center, and Valdez held space for their Q&A Women’s Center reflection.
Roberta Valdez, past director, and Mai Foua Her, current director, talk about their vast experiences working in the Women’s Center over the years.
As the directors, past and present, answered the questions, one message stood out most: the importance of celebration, collective care and love in the midst of uncertainty. Members of the audience echoed this sentiment, sharing their appreciation for the event and its unifying and celebratory feeling.
“We’re going through a lot of struggles, sometimes the same struggles for decades and it’s a fight that we have to keep fighting,” Cervantes said. “It’s important to let other people know that we’re here, [and] we’re not going to just be quiet about it and go through the motions of whatever lawmakers are passing. We’re going to fight and we’re going to keep doing things that we believe are for the good of the community.”
Student leader Mia Haskins was recognized by The Women’s Center for her work in addressing community needs and supporting the student population on campus.
Haskins, a third year education, democracy, and justice major, was presented with The American Association of University Women (AAUW) Helen-Sigmund Gibson Scholarship Endowment Award for her work in creating a basic needs corner at Cowell Coffee Shop. Haskins developed this project as part of the UCSC Student Volunteer Center.
The basic needs corner provides essentials such as: toothpaste, toothbrushes, t-shirts, tampons, pads, menstrual cups, soap, shampoo, conditioner, sunscreen, deodorant, condoms, tissues, and floss. As part of her work in connecting students to essentials needed, Haskins created a master document containing a list of all free UCSC resources available on-campus.
“Tuition at UCSC is so expensive, and students are struggling,” said Haskins. “We have the highest population of student houselessness at any UC, it’s close to 10%. The amount of students that could and do benefit from these resource centers are exponential.”
In light of the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on minorities and access to community resources, the services and support that the Women’s Center provides are more crucial now than ever. Within higher education, students are outspoken in fighting back against the proposed policy changes.
For attendee Samantha Zavala, a first year global and community health major, the nature of these threats are senseless.
“I think [having access to resources] is an essential for life, and the fact that people are challenging the idea of possibly taking that away is ridiculous to me, especially in higher education. In higher education, if we spread the message that this is what we need for our society, to support our needs, then we have the voice and the power to make that change because we’re the future.”