A discussion held on April 27 during Alumni Weekend reminded staff, faculty, students and alumni why the legacy of Oakes continues to live on at UC Santa Cruz.

The public discussion was carried out by founding Oakes College provost
Herman Blake — who is the current humanities scholar in residence at the University of South Carolina — and his longtime friend and colleague, UCSC senior lecturer and emeritus in writing, Don Rothman.

Blake and Rothman discussed topics ranging from the founding days of Oakes in 1972, to the presence of students of color and other underserved communities in higher education.

Among the students present at the discussion was fourth-year politics major and Oakes student Fithawi Kudus, who was asking around for a Sharpie so Blake could sign his hat. Kudus and other students in the audience said Blake was a source of inspiration after listening to Rothman and Blake discuss the roots of Oakes College, and sharing memories from the early decades of UCSC.

“He’s our hero,” said fourth-year neuroscience major Lon Ogunduyile.

As a founding member of Oakes College in 1972, Blake sought to increase the presence of students of color in the higher education system and to create a
community on campus that would support marginalized and underserved students.

Blake said Alumni Weekend was a chance for him and his colleagues, who were present on the UCSC campus in its earlier decades, to see the recruitment and support of students of color — all goals set through the founding of Oakes.

“What you saw Friday night was what we hoped for,” Blake said. “Why was it important to me? It was important because it was a dream come true.”

Although Blake said that Oakes was often called “experimental” in its founding, he would not use that word to describe the college.

“Oakes was not experimental,” Blake said. “But, a lot of people used that term, and I objected to the term on the grounds that an experiment meant that, if the situation got difficult, it was expendable. And I never considered Oakes College expendable.”

Blake said many in attendance at the discussion during Alumni Weekend had gone on to careers in professions like law, engineering and medicine, and many worked with the same sectors of society Oakes aims to support — low-income and marginalized communities.

Blake also recognized alumni Victor Cabrerra, who attended the discussion with his family and is now a lawyer. Cabrerra primarily works with clients who identify as undocumented.

“[Victor Cabrerra has] served the communities we hoped for,” Blake said.

Blake has also been a strong proponent of increasing the presence of people of color in the fields of math, science and engineering.

“We live in a world in which science plays a major role politically, economically and intellectually,” he said.

Highlighting the way that Oakes continues its focus on providing support to students of color in the sciences, Blake said Oakes has rooted itself in counteracting and preventing a racist view from prevailing in modern society.

“Our communities needed environmentalists, they needed engineers, they needed doctors, they needed dentists, and they needed nurses,” Blake said. “The general belief was that minorities weren’t smart enough, or intelligent enough to do the sciences, and we were determined to not let that view prevail,” Blake said.

Graduate student Danyale Bell — who is the only black student in the UCSC master’s of education program — and Ogundunyile were recruited to UCSC through Destination for Higher Education, which continues to organize UCSC undergraduates to inform minority high school students about opportunities through university education.

Both Ogundunyile and Bell participated in Destination for Higher Education outreach efforts during their time as undergraduates, something they agree has allowed them to give back to the communities they represent.

Bell and Ogundunyile, both students of color who pursued math and science degrees, respectively, said that Oakes’ advisors had assisted them in finding resources like the Academic Excellence program, which seeks to increase the diversity of students graduating with math and science degrees.

“[ACE, Oakes faculty and administration] was my support system … they support you for the decisions you make,” Bell said.

The impact that Oakes has had on students like Danyale and Lon has its roots in the enduring legacy of Oakes. Gregory Brown, a UCSC alumni (class of ’81) and assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Fullerton, said his affiliation with Oakes in his undergraduate years had a “profound” effect on his education, and continues to have an impact on him today.

“The big emphasis [at Oakes] is that it’s encouraging people to go outside their comfort zone, to go outside of their racial/ethnic group and try to meet others because there is a richness and diversity there,” Brown said. “All too frequently, society is very ethnocentric … I felt that the Oakes experience was trying to change that. They were trying to create an environment that encouraged people to interact with others different than them.”

Oakes College continues to be a place where students, as well as Oakes staff and faculty from a variety of backgrounds interact and receive support from one another. Ogundunyile and Bell both said that Oakes has shaped their experiences at UCSC in many ways and is a place on campus that feels like “home” — a place of diversity and community.

“I fell in love with [Oakes] … I felt comfortable being in [Oakes] being a math major … Black, and a math major — I learned this over the last five years — [are] not something that ‘go together,’ according to society or whoever,” Bell said. “Being at Oakes, I felt good about my major, it felt good to be in that space and I was welcome … it was like my motivation to keep going.”

Campus electrician Gary Riggs said the unit was protesting in response to questionable paycheck practices from UCSC.

“Before our contract was expired in the end of September, the university started taking additional pension contributions out of our paychecks, and pension contributions are a mandatory subject of bargaining,” Riggs said, as cars driving by honked in support. “The union, on behalf of the Skilled Crafts Bargaining Unit, filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university for taking these additional pension contributions and not bargaining in good faith.”

The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), which describes itself as a “statewide quasi-judicial administrative agency,” filed a complaint against UCSC on March 6.

“[UCSC] failed and refused to bargain in good faith … in violation of Government Code section 3571(c),” according to the issued complaint.

Riggs said AFSCME Local 3299 is currently in contract negotiation with the university, and he hopes for a fairer shake when they meet for mediation on May 7.

“We’re trying to get job protections right now for the first time in the Skilled Crafts Bargaining Unit’s history,” Riggs said. “This last year, we suffered layoffs. We had a bunch of people retire and not be replaced. So, we’re being asked to do more work with less people, and we’re looking for job protections in the form of stronger language in our contracting out article.”

Riggs said that as the contracting article currently reads, the university can lay off union employees and give their work to outside contractors with no consequences.

UCSC director of public information Jim Burns said contract negotiations between AFSCME and the UC happen at a statewide level.

“The parties have been negotiating since last September for a successor agreement, and it would be fair to say that reaching agreement over the remaining issues has been challenging,” Burns said in a email. “Because of that, the parties have mutually agreed to meet with a state mediator next week to facilitate what I’m sure everyone hopes will be productive dialogue.”

AFSCME union representative and organizer Rebecca Gilpas said that the union’s demands should not be much of a stretch for the university.

“We feel like we’re not asking for much,” said Gilpas, who has been with Local 3299 for about a month. “We’re asking for improvements in health care. Workers are already putting in enough money out of pocket, and we don’t want that to stay as is.”

Family Student Housing carpenter Orin Hutchinson said that in the face of budget problems, the university’s priorities don’t make sense.

“We’ve had layoffs in our unions, where we did have a five-person physical carpentry shop, and now they’re down to two people,” he said. “At the same time, the university is adding millions of square feet of new buildings, yet they’re actually shrinking the number of [employees] that maintain and work on those buildings.”

Riggs, who held a sign that read “Reunion with Recognition and Respect,” said the demonstration’s coincidence with Alumni Weekend was strategic.

“There’s a lot of people coming up here, a lot of donors,” he said, “and we’re hoping to have an impact and put a little pressure on the administration to do the right thing at the bargaining table.”

Hutchinson said that although the unit is small — its total membership is 47 — he is hopeful that AFSCME Local 3299 stands a chance of getting what they want.

“We are the only union that this university itself, UC Santa Cruz, bargains with,” he said. “We’re not a statewide entity. We’re local to this campus, and we bargain our own contract with help from a union negotiator. I think that one person can make a difference.”