By Mike Wallace (Crown ’72)
When people ask where I went to college, I tell them it was school that no longer exists. The buildings are still there, to be sure, and so are the students — far more of them than in my day — but it isn’t the same place at all. You see, I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz in the late sixties and early severnties when it was new and different and exciting and special: when it was the place almost everyone wanted to be.
It is impossible to imagine an unorthodox and experimental state university campus like UCSC, as we call it, being created in today’s political and economic climate. it was a miracle that came about because California in the late fifties and early sixties was a booming, growing, forward-looking place where two university careerists could dream up an alternative concept for a university and actually get the taxpayers to bankroll it.
As originally conceived, UCSC lasted little more than a decade before morphing into a mid-size, traditional state university little different from any other. In institutional terms it had the life span of a mayfly, but its impact on those who were there in those early days was profound. Like Hemingway’s Paris, it was a moveable feast that has stayed with us the rest of our lives.
Mike,
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your article. Right down to the stirring conclusion.
Your former Crown roommate,
Mark
Well, Mike, you certainly weren’t short-changed on writing skills at UCSC! That was an excellent essay recounting UCSC’s early history, and adding the personal touches that really put the reader into that environment.
A couple of little follow-up factoids:
– The first year (before you and I were there), the Crown dorms were segregated by quad: the so-called upper quad was male, and the lower quad was female. Then, they swapped two pairs, so each quad was two of each, and the evolution to fully co-ed was underway. As I recall, there were log books for visitors to sign-in at the entrance to each dorm. The pages of those books were largely, if not completely, blank.
– Reagan was elected Governor in 1966, and had campaigned against the University (the Berkeley Free Speech Movement), and began his assault on it almost immediately upon taking office. In very short order, Clark Kerr was forced out of the University Presidency. On one occasion, I went to a Merrill College Night to hear him speak. That would have been either my first or second year (same as yours), after he had been fired.
– In the spring of 1969, the Peoples’ Park affair blew up and pretty soon the entire UC system was “On Strike! Shut it Down”. UCSC was front and center on that one.
Combining that with that raucous Regents meeting in the fall of 1968 made for quite the exciting freshman year! To paraphrase that old GM ad, “This was not going to be your father’s college education!”.