Written in gold on the UC Santa Cruz homepage is the statement reading: “Our voices will define the century.” More often than not, students express their voices through picket signs, megaphones or chants.

Behind those signs and megaphones are 60 years’ worth of student activists, all united by a shared history defined by student agency.

The Black Liberation Movement (1965)

Just three years after UCSC opened in 1965, students organized in support of lecturer and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver after the UC Regents barred him from speaking at UC Berkeley (UCB).

Cleaver was the minister of information for the Black Panther party in 1968. UCB invited him to guest-teach a course titled “Dehumanization and Regeneration of the American Social Order.” He only taught one session before Governor Ronald Reagan asked the UC Regents to cancel the course due to concerns about its radical content.

In hopes of appeasing concerns from Reagan, UCB forbade the campus from offering credit for the course. Due to UCB’s policy on zero-credit courses, this also meant that Cleaver could only teach one of the ten classes initially allotted for his course. Over 150 students had enrolled in the course for credit, and some saw UCB’s actions as a threat to black voices at the university.

In response, students disrupted a UC Regents meeting held at UCSC. For three days, students of the Black Liberation Front (BLF) blocked buses, held rallies and heckled speakers, protesting the decision to restrict Cleaver from university campuses.

Students at UCSC also demanded that College 7, now known as Oakes College, be named Malcolm X College and themed around “domestic and third world concerns.” Two thousand students and faculty signed a petition in support of the proposal.

The BLF brought the idea to UCSC Professor J. Herman Blake, who was the only Black faculty member at the time. Blake proposed that instead the college theme be focused on ethnic studies. These conversations paved the way for UCSC to form an ethnic studies college, which the academic senate approved unanimously in 1969.

TWANAS Hunger Strike (1979)

In 1979, UCSC’s Third World and Native American Student Movement (TWANAS), now under the title Communities of Color and Native American Student Press Collective, called upon the university to establish a third world and Native American studies department. A coalition of about 25 students set out on a hunger strike to make it happen.

Some students decided to fast for the entire five-day duration of the strike, while others fasted for single days in solidarity with the movement. Although the university did not meet the demand of creating the program, negotiations between strikers and UCSC led four new tenured positions spread across the feminist studies and the American studies departments.

Kresge College’s Attempt at Seceding from the University (1990)

Students have fought for new disciplines and themes to be taught at UCSC, and they have also fought to maintain old ones.

In 1990, Kresge College fought to preserve their college theme, which is participatory democracy.

Student parliament voted to secede from the rest of the university in protest of the growing distance to its founding values. The ballot measure drafted by the student parliament read:

“With an increasing erosion of undergraduate emphasis and significance on this campus, we, as students of Kresge College, refuse to be victims of Administrative tyranny. In the face of insensitivity and incompetence, we demand autonomy. We demand freedom.”

Even though the measure passed, administration pushed back and Kresge College wasn’t able to secede. Although they never achieved complete autonomy from the university, the Kresge College website states that they continue striving to “give [students] a small- college learning experience that prioritizes personal and intellectual growth,” echoing the sentiment that students fought for 35 years ago.

The COLA TA Strikes (2019)

Six years ago, graduate workers across the UCs called upon their universities to provide fair cost-of-living adjustments, marking the beginning of the Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA) strikes.

With Santa Cruz having one of the most severe housing crises in the U.S., graduate workers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of inequitable wages and cost of living. However, this is not a sentiment unique to graduate workers in Santa Cruz. The COLA strikes spread across the UC system, with many teaching assistants refusing to submit grades and participating in classroom walkouts until their demands were met.

Despite a vote from the United Auto Workers (UAW) 2865 to end the strike that deemed the protest as legally unsanctioned, UCSC strikers continued to protest. 

This marked the transition from COLA to unsanctioned graduate student wildcat strikes, in which the university fired 80 graduate students for their participation. One year later, the administration reinstated the graduate workers’ employment status due to a last chance agreement spearheaded by union negotiators.

Gaza Solidarity Encampment (2024)

In late spring of 2024, students demonstrated their commitment to non-complicity.

Following Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent bombing and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) formed an encampment in the Quarry Plaza for 30 days — calling upon the UC to divest funds from weapon manufacturers profiting from the war in Gaza.

During the encampment, SJP held teach-ins, created community support systems to ensure food and water resources for protestors and even hosted a redveil concert.

SJP communicated with the university to negotiate demands, including full disclosure on all investments, donations and grants. They also called upon the UC to “end the silence,” calling for a ceasefire and the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

On the twentieth day of the solidarity encampment, students moved to the base of campus. On May 30, university officials asked California Highway Patrol and four other police department units from around the state to intervene and effectively disband the encampment.

For nearly 16 hours, students created a human barricade between the solidarity encampment and police. Over the course of the raid, 122 UCSC community members were arrested.

Hundreds of students showed up that evening in support of the encampment. The fight has continued through the organizing efforts of SJP, Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) and many other student organizations.

Continuing a History of Resistance

This summer, UCSC students and workers continued a 60 year-long history of resistance.

In late April, the UAW 4811 filed a whistleblower report outlining accusations of abuse and discrimination against a Principal Investigator (PI). She is the lead researcher of a lab within UCSC’s chemistry department.

Thirty academic workers gathered in solidarity with one academic researcher, who accused the PI of abuse, at the “Justice 4 Zach” rally on Aug. 8. Zach’s story was one of many researchers who have claimed to face discrimination by this PI.

The complaint was accompanied by a petition with over 150 signatures.

According to a UAW 4811 press release, university officials banned Zach from campus for the duration of the investigation of legitimacy of the complaints, which is still being conducted by UCSC as of Aug. 31.

When City on a Hill Press reached out to assistant vice chancellor of communications and marketing Scott Hernandez-Jason for comment on Zach’s story, he declined, stating, “Consistent with our responsibility to protect employee privacy rights, I am unable to comment on this matter.”

Rebecca Gross, the union chair of UAW 4811 spoke to the continuing importance of organizing against oppressive forces at the university.

“It’s very easy to just kind of roll over and get depressed right now in this climate,” Gross said. “I think what we need to do more than ever is put our faces out there, put our names out there, and not let this climate of fear infiltrate our organization.”

Additional reporting by Naomi Schulze.