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Oct. 23, 2006

Will Growth End Santa Cruz’s Uniqueness?

The University of California’s Santa Cruz campus has long had a reputation as a counterculture institution that prides itself on being different from the system’s other campuses. But when the campus unveiled the final draft of its plan on Wednesday that projected increasing student enrollment from 14,000 to more than 20,000 and adding 3.2 million gross feet of building space by 2020, students protested over that and a wide range of other issues at a Board of Regents meeting, resulting in arrests.

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While local residents expressed concerned that expansion will increase traffic and hurt the environment, professors and students said that the real worry is whether a larger UC Santa Cruz can retain its offbeat personality and its focus on small classes.

The campus was founded in the mid-1960s during a time of strong political protest, and that era has greatly influenced both the university and the city of Santa Cruz, said Tyrus Miller, provost of Cowell, one of the 10 residential colleges found on the campus. “Those days are definitely over, but we do have some of that innovative core,” he said. “I’m very hopeful that it can be retained.”

“It’s quite different already from the old days,” said Ellen Suckiel, provost of Stevenson College, another of the residential colleges. Suckiel said that the era in which Santa Cruz was founded is over, and that people are of a mixed mindset about whether change and expansion are good or not. “I’m worried about the traffic,” she said.

Miller added that much of the protest against change is not coming from the campus community, but from residents of Santa Cruz who have a “slow growth or no growth mindset” and who are motivated by material desires to keep their property values high. UC Santa Cruz is now locked in a lawsuit with the city, which is presenting ballot proposals for the next election on traffic and water pollution that may impede growth by the university. Miller said that UC Santa Cruz has always planned to expand and that with UCLA and Berkeley running at maximum capacity, Santa Cruz must grow to offer educational opportunities to California’s high school graduates.

Jennifer Ward, an information officer with the University of California’s Office of the President, echoed Miller’s views. “California is expecting an influx of a lot of students. How do we provide for them?”

Leah Bartos, co-editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, City on a Hill Press, said that the local town does have a “coastal utopia” ideal that creates conflict when the university wants to expand. She said that the ill effects of expansion are most noticeable when environmental issues such as traffic and water pollution become a problem. “We can see that a former redwood grove is now a building. That’s tangible,” she said.

However, Bartos added that students are also discussing whether growth will change the unique nature of the campus. Bartos first attended UC Santa Barbara for a short time before switching to Santa Cruz. “It was like night and day.” She said that Santa Barbara offered mostly large classes in which students showed up for lectures and took notes. Classes at Santa Cruz offer more interaction with professors, more chance to do research and projects, and a better feel for community. “We value education in a different way,” she said.

Elizabeth Irwin, a spokeswoman for the university, said that the plan is only a proposal for possible growth and that the university may choose to not expand as much. (Last month, the university lowered the enrollment projection to 19,500.) “Some careful and gradual growth over the next 15 years is likely, especially as the population of California increases.”

— Paul D. Thacker

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Comments

UC Santa Cruz

There is a statement in the article about growth plans at UCSC that is probably incorrect. I live 100 yards from the university (and support its expansion). The articles states that people oppose expansion because they are concerned that growth would lower property values. My unscientific survey says that my neighbors oppose growth because of the impact on traffic and the environment. University growth is likely to increase property values.

Joe Esposito

Joseph J. Esposito, at 11:05 am EDT on October 23, 2006

Asking the right questions

I am a “pioneer” graduate of UCSC — one of those students who lived in trailers and believed we were doing something very different in pursuing our own peculiar vision of higher education at the University of California’s most distinctive campus. And my training at Santa Cruz and my life in academe after that experience require me to ask: “are we positing the right questions?” UCSC was founded in a particular time for a particular purpose — in part a response to the political and social environment of the times, and in part the vision of academic pioneers and entrepreneurs such as Clark Kerr and Page Smith. Those times are past, and the institution’s purpose — and its vision of its role — must evolve. The question to me is not “should UCSC grow?” but “how can UCSC grow and keep alive the aspects of the experience that remain vital, relevant, and important today?” In an era in which “exclusivity” and “elitism” are being extensively argued (in Dan Golden’s book and elsewhere), we have to remain mindful of the fact that there are all kinds of ways that opportunity can be denied to deserving and aspiring students: keeping UCSC artificially small in the face of a burgeoning California population is one such arbitrary barrier. UCSC has had many issues to deal with over the years; the institution I attended, with less than 4,000 students and a pass/fail grading system, has already disappeared. But the fact that UCSC continues to be seen as unique in the UC system, and worthy of defending, stands as an indication that the institution has been able to keep its distinctiveness and maintain its value to its stakeholders as it has grown and changed. And here’s hoping that it can continue to do so as the world it addresses continues to ask more of it.

Rob Moore, Lipman Hearne, at 12:31 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

Measure ‘G’ and More

Measure G is the minimum wage ordinance to be voted on by Santa Cruz city voters.

Highly contentious, it will go to the ballot requiring a $9.25/hr wage for all employees within city limits... pitting the merchants and businesses of of Santa Cruz against their employees, who are overwhelmingly (and inclusive of UCSC students) service workers.

I won’t go into the details here as both sides of the issue are easily searchable, but as a 30 year resident of Santa Cruz, I must say that it’s not ‘growth’ per-se, it’s the type of growth.

UCSC has absolutely reflected the cultural pattern and growth of the population-at-large.

Fewer ‘hippie’ students working on a degree in organic farming and it’s ancillary pursuits. More engineering students.

In Santa Cruz, the ‘hippies’ are pretty much gone too.More computer industry (and it’s ancillary) employees who commute to ‘Silicon Valley’ from ‘Silicon Beach’ every weekday morning, giving the sunrise over Santa Cruz a pinkish-yellow glow.

Santa Cruz’s population has doubled in the thirty years I’ve been here and the tangible improvements to the infrastructure of the city.. it’s streets, sidewalks, sewers, etc have not kept pace or are non-existent.

Seeing that most of the City Council members are UCSC graduates, it would seem reasonable for them to assume that UCSC’s growth would be as badly planned as Santa Cruz’s, and most likely they are wrong, simply because of whatever oversight there might be, and statewide publicity of UC issues.

That doesn’t mean that it’s all OK @ UCSC though, and there are many locals and alumni who will never forgive or forget UCSC for building a six story parking-lot-in-the-redwoods where Elfland once stood... Much in the way that Santa’s Village and the Tree Circus in Scotts Valley have been replaced by parking lots and corporate offices.

It would seem that Santa Cruz’s growth pattern, city and county, and UCSC’s growth, are parallel universes on the ’silicon coast’.

Leigh Meyers, at 12:50 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

What about the...

What about the slugs? If you build it, they will come (and trample the redwoods, add to already hidious traffic on the narrow highways, and what of the outrageous housing price-can that be addressed in a positive way with this “expansion"?!)

One last think, is UCSC and Santa Cruz really THAT “unique” (diversity)? Who can afford to live there? Narratives are gone and GRADES have become the norm/order of business- is loosing this “uniqueness” really a new thing?

Ah, I miss it, the costal utopia- my love for it won’t change with more UCSC grads- I’d hate a loca stuff in traffic, though! (Sucks, ay Sherman the Shark and SantaCruzites?)

Proud SLUG Alum!

—kika

kika, Palabrista at University of Tejas, El Paso, at 1:15 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

Attitude vs size

I went to UCSC 1968-1973. My son followed in 1997-2001. In spite of growth and changing times, we both fully benefited from the individualism that permeates the culture. It’s not the size that matters, its the attitude. I think UCSC will always attract students, professors, administrators, and donors who will champion that tradition. Certainly, common sense says don’t get bigger than the town and environment can handle. But, c’mon Slugs, let’s be part of the world and export even more of that special Cruz attitude!

Nancy Everett, at 2:20 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

CHANGES

Santa Cruz has come far from its days of the hippie trailer park in the rear of the campus, wether we think that the influx of a more diverse and larger population is better or worse doesn’t really matter if the city cannot accomodate them. The truth is that Santa Cruz is in the midst of transition and it is visible in the new group of students walking through the woods, or whats left of them, wearing trendy clothes and sporting greek letters. Evolution must allow for the growth of things but we must take note of what it once and to have other values besides capacities. As a recent Grad... I would feel most upset if the town and its people not, just the students, were affected by the changes that the institution forces them to deal with. We must note that indeed SC is a transition point for many of these kids but most importantly a home to many more that do care and understand how special this place trully is... peace T.

Antonio “notorio” Martinez, noto, at 2:30 pm EDT on October 24, 2006

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