A Mardi Gras Soirée. A steak dinner. A graduation ceremony.
These are the elements of a dinner dance that awaited married Chico State students in 1964. The annual event, reported in an issue of The Wildcat published 62 years ago today, honored married students who would graduate in the current or following semester.
In the summer of 1964, 22 Chico State students were set to earn eight units by trekking through England, West and East Germany, the Balkan countries, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and France in the span of six weeks.
Fast-forwarding 32 years to a 1996 issue of The Orion, it was reported that about 400 people in Harlen Adams Theatre cheerfully greeted their latest campus guest speaker, Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers.
Huerta spoke about “the California Civil Rights Initiative and its ‘hidden intention’ to take away women’s rights” as well as the American problem of scapegoating immigrants for all of society’s troubles, and urged those in the audience to help make positive changes in the lives of minorities.
Huerta also highlighted the “wealth created by the Japanese and Chinese, many of whom were brought here to build railroads,” the contributions of women to society, the “wealth and culture created by African Americans,” and the food and comfort brought to society by Latin American farmers.
“In order to make the employment playing field level, she said, we should acknowledge the labor of other people,” wrote staff writer Xenia Guido. “She spoke of the wealth created in this country hundreds of years ago by Native Americans. ‘Who did this land belong to?… Let’s put that back on the table,’ she said.”
The same week as Huerta’s visit, The Orion’s editors and managers held an open forum to receive comments, suggestions and questions from the campus community. Members of the audience suggested more coverage of ethnic activities and more detailed and accurate coverage of campus groups.
Jumping forward another six years, 2002 marked the first year in which students could vote in the Associated Students election online, according to an issue of The Orion published 24 years ago. The traditional activities coordinator, the commissioner of community affairs and two volunteers worked on the project for months, writing code and testing versions of the program.
“But amid fears of hackers, system crashes and other technical problems, the program performed above all expectations, free of glitches and problems… the 1,391 students who voted online surpassed their initial hopes of 1,200 students,” wrote senior writer Jason Goldman-Hall.
Unlike the costs of similar programs at other campuses, the financial cost of the program at Chico State was minimal, about $500. Most of the money was spent on pizza and drinks for those working on the project.
Archives of The Wildcat and The Orion can be found online and in the Meriam Library on campus.
