About
Founded in 1972, Oakes College is a multicultural community dedicated to equality, social justice, and academic excellence. Students from every major come together here to learn, live, and grow in a supportive environment.
Provost Welcome
Oakes College supports the demonstrations in defense of Black life. We call for the abolition of the police. We call for the abolition of the entire prison industrial complex. Another world is possible. Black Lives Matter.
Traditions & History
Learn about Oakes College history and answer questions like: Do you share a similar ideology with our founding father? Do you think his ideals have been achieved? Do you share a similar experience with students from a decade ago?
News & Updates
Stay connected with all things UCSC Oakes College. From celebrating our students’ achievements and sharing exciting campus events to honoring our rich traditions and vibrant community stories, discover what’s happening throughout our Oakes College family.
Alumni
Oakes alumni carry our mission of social justice and community beyond UC Santa Cruz. They are leaders in many fields and continue to support the college through programs, courses, and scholarships that benefit future generations.
Our mission
Since its founding in 1972, Oakes College has been committed to intellectual, academic and personal inquiry rooted in the possibility of effecting positive social and political change. As a multi-ethnic community, we provoke the exchange of cross-cultural perspectives. Our efforts to understand, accept and celebrate human diversity are a source of exceptional strength. Through this committed inquiry, we raise often unaddressed issues that the university community must examine.
Welcome to Oakes
Founded in 1972, Oakes College is a multicultural community committed to equality and freedom from oppression and to providing the highest quality education to students from diverse backgrounds. Poised at the edge of UCSC’s natural preserve, Oakes is also at the leading edge of scholarship, community-building, and integrated co-curricular experiences. Oakes students are engaged in the arts, humanities, sciences, and engineering, and are represented in all of the majors at UCSC.
Our core course, Communicating Diversity for a Just Society, seeks to help students appreciate the fundamental role of higher education in identifying and solving some of the critical problems facing our nation and the world. Through the course readings, discussions, and lectures, students will explore the connections between educational quality, diverse ways of thinking, and social justice. In the core course and throughout the Oakes community, students are encouraged to explore issues of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic class, and politics.
A support system of academic and administrative staff, student life staff, and student neighborhood assistants aid students in achieving skills essential to success both in college and in life. At Oakes our students have the opportunity to live in a diverse community where the values of individual responsibility and personal integrity are essential to our community standards in and out of the classroom.
At Oakes difference is not a barrier, but an invitation to grow.
Oakes resists simple definition. When asked, Oakes students, faculty and staff describe it as:
A community which strives to offer a safe, supportive environment always working to reduce the feeling of alienation for all people.”
A college which ensures the academic and personal growth and success of all students, with particular consideration for students from underrepresented communities.”
A place that nurtures courageous and innovative thinking about education for active participation in democracy.”
A community which seeks to overcome social oppressions which result in restricting access or opportunity on the basis of race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, age or class.”
A place that does not make sense. It doesn’t want to. It puzzles Status Quo with its relentlessly consistent transformation. Its uncompromising commitment to differences both incommensurable and otherwise makes Coalition’s work much harder. And Panacea stumbles around baffled by Oakes’ uncanny ability to present new and more difficult challenges every single day. No, Oakes does not make sense. It cannot, for the members that make up its community are altogether uncommon. Oakes is always reaching new levels of uncommon-sense.”
A place where people take risks to try out new ways of meeting each other, across racial, ethnic, and class differences. Where difference isn’t always a barrier but an invitation to grow.”
A community which honors and supports the communities from which Oakes students come by creating opportunities for student voluntary service to those communities.”
A place where students experience the power of their intelligence and of their literacy, in as many languages as our community can discover.”
Faculty, student and staff members of the Oakes Mission Review Task Force, who collaborated in framing this statement in May of 1994, invite you to contribute to Oakes’ ongoing process of self-definition.