There are different parts of a UCLA campus tour that can stay with students long after they first hear them.
For Angelo Isaac Sandoval, president of the American Indian Student Association, it was learning that the remains of Native Americans which were stored on campus for study in the past outnumbered the live Native American student population.
For Stephanie Castro, one of the facilitation team leaders for the Student Activist Project, it was seeing Campbell Hall, where two Black Panther members were shot in 1969.
But these hidden histories are not heard on regular student tours; instead, they are part of the student-initiated People of Color Tour, an informal tour that seeks to reveal the contributions and struggles of minority students on campus.
It is only on the People of Color Tour that students can learn that the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement was drafted in the Public Affairs building, or about the anti-apartheid divestment protests in Royce Quad, or that in 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech on Janss Steps.
These tours began with the arrival of Asian American studies Professor Glenn Omatsu in 1985. He would assign his students to create what he calls a “political tour” and to learn the history of activism in their communities.
“When you go into these communities, there aren’t necessarily plaques or monuments or statues commemorating people’s struggles. It’s more part of the oral history of the community,” Omatsu said. “There weren’t necessarily textbooks saying these were the kinds of struggles that people were engaged in.”
As more students learned about the tour, they began to do their own research about their communities and add to the script. A more comprehensive version of the tour was written down in the early 1990s, said Ralph De Unamuno, a UCLA alumnus and current adviser to community service projects in the Community Programs Office.
De Unamuno said that after Omatsu asked the students to take the initiative and develop the tour on their own, he and fellow members of MEChA began heavy research in Daily Bruin archives and MEChA’s own historical records. They compiled a tour and typed it up, then sent it off to other student groups and community service organizations, such as the Afrikan Student Union or the Muslim Student Association.
“I had gone on (the tour), and I typed it up, and what we did because I was a student here at that time, we typed up all the stuff that (Omatsu) had and then we included stuff from MEChA’s history as well as the history of the establishment of the Chicano studies department here at UCLA,” De Unamuno said.
The tour has developed organically since this first version as different groups add on to it and as subsequent generations of students pass through and create their own legacies.
Many of the historical facts remain, and students can still hear of the immigrant labor that built all the beautiful brick around campus or of the 1993 hunger strikes in support of the formation of the Chicana and Chicano studies department.
But also included in the tour is information about the 2006 Taser incident in Powell Library or how student pressure helped lead to the development of holistic admissions process after discovering that there were only 100 enrolled black students in the freshman class of fall 2006.
“In one way, it’s constantly evolving. Like now, we talk about how two years ago there were only (100) incoming African Americans. … That was two years ago,” Sandoval said. “It’s dynamic in that it’s not just history ““ it’s constantly evolving.”
Additionally, the tour can vary depending on the guide and the background of the audience, though many of those who lead the tours say they make an effort to cover the history of a wide number of groups, which Sandoval said emphasizes the unity between these groups.
“I think that’s why there’s a good amount on the tour about focusing on the ways different student groups have come together,” he said. “It’s about looking historically at how we’ve been effective and acknowledging that we have been most effective when we come together.”
Those involved in the tour say it is designed to foster a sense of community and belonging for minority students who may feel that their communities are not well represented at UCLA.
Often, educators in the Los Angeles community familiar with the tour ““ such as alumni who work in surrounding high schools ““ will contact one of the groups involved in the outreach and request the tour for their students.
Student groups, in conjunction with the Student Initiated Access Committee, use the tour as a tool in their efforts to bring a diverse group of students to campus and give them support once they arrive.
“The easiest way to marginalize a group of people is to focus on all the incredible things that other communities have done and leave us out of the story,” Sandoval said. “Our needs have not been met, and our community continues to dwindle. So things like the People of Color Tour … these projects are the students at UCLA taking responsibility for serving our own communities because the institution of UCLA is failing to do so.”
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Janina Montero said that given the restrictions of Proposition 209 and other legislation barring affirmative action, the university is unable to provide targeted outreach for specific groups, making the People of Color Tour an important source of information and support.
“The fact that the students have taken on the challenge to work with the university to provide the perspective of the particular group and their university experience is actually quite useful and beneficial and has clearly the potential to engage prospective students into the life of the university from their own background,” she said.
The Muslim Student Association held the tour at its college outreach day for newly admitted students in April.
Dina Mahmood, who has given tours and works as an access coordinator for the group, said the tour not only gives students an alternate history of UCLA, but also lets them know where they can find important resources and support.
One such example is the Student Activity Center. On the regular university tour, guides walking by the Student Activity Center will usually refer to it as the Men’s Gym and point out the athletic facilities. On the People of Color Tour, however, students learn about the outreach efforts and student activism that are housed there.
“The college years with all the resources and huge volunteer base … it’s just an essential time period for people to plug themselves in to social justice movements and community service,” said Naqib Shifa, president of the Muslim Student Association.
De Unamuno agreed, adding that the tour is part of an important legacy of what he called “student of color activism.”
“UC Berkeley gets so much of the credit for its activism, but UCLA is largely overlooked. Just from doing the tour and doing my own research of the student activism at UC Berkeley, it seemed to me that UCLA had been the center of student of color activism since the 1970s, and this gets overshadowed by the free speech and anti-war movements at Berkeley,” he said.
Though Sandoval and Mahmood said there have been some efforts to get parts of the People of Color Tour included in the university tour, Montero said she wasn’t aware of any such discussions but was open to them.
“If people are interested in those conversations, that could be quite fruitful. Most of the tours are quite long … so there are practical issues to take into account, but it certainly is worth the conversation,” she said.
Castro said she hopes the tour can reach out to an even broader population in the future.
“It’s important for people to recognize the history of the institution that they’re studying at. Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone gets to take the People of Color Tour,” she said. “I think it is something that should be spread around. … It is a history that everyone should know and learn.”
Mariam Khalid, a high school senior at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, attended the Muslim Student Association’s College Day and said she and her peers found the tour powerful. Though she was not admitted as a freshman, the exposure to the university reinforced her desire to apply as a transfer student.
“(The visiting students) were kind of shocked by some of the stories they heard. … But it also kind of gave a sense of empowerment because these people did make a difference and did stand up for what they believe in,” she said. “It made me want to come even more because I felt like it plays such a great role in history.”
It is through eager Bruin hopefuls such as Khalid that the tour continues to evolve and the stories get passed down through the generations.