By Ron Arias came to Long Beach State as a transfer student in 1969.
Phyliss, his girlfriend at the time who later became his wife, had informed him of the Chicano student movements happening across California campuses. Looking for a place to celebrate and learn more about his own identity, Arias enrolled at CSULB.
“The Chicano student movement was in its infancy, it was just beginning,” Arias said. “In the late ‘60s, probably ‘67, was probably when we [United Mexican American Students] first started to organize in university campuses.”
In 1969 the United Mexican American Students organization was attempting to increase its membership numbers.
Arias said at the time, there were only around 400 Mexican-American students out of the twenty-plus thousand total student body.
With more underrepresented and minority students taking advantage of the Educational Opportunity Program, a program started by disadvantaged students, more Mexican-Americans were able to attend colleges and universities to attain higher education.
As Arias remembers, CSULB was one of the first campuses of the California State Universities to start a Chicano Studies department.
This was due in part to the help of UMAS, which later became Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán or MEChA. The department was instated and students were able to learn about their cultural heritage in an academic setting.
“Once a month, we [EOP students] would go to a Saturday morning meeting to discuss various issues. What it ended up doing was creating a very large organization made up of Blacks, Chicanos, Indigenous people and Asians [who] got to know each other and each of the student organizations were doing the same thing,” Arias said. “They were establishing academic departments, engaging in recruitment and also very involved in retention.”
The Long Beach chapter of MEChA’s main purpose was to spread awareness to other Mexican-American students and offer them the opportunity to join the organization. They would reach out to graduating high schoolers, urging them to attend CSULB.
Their group also hosted seminars with Arias mentioning the importance of the week-long event Seminario De Raza, which included revolutionary speakers such as Cesar Chavez and Angela Davis, among other events to help the Chicano community, on and off campus.
The Chicano student movement was also involved in the Anti-War movement in the ‘60s, focusing a great effort on opposing the Vietnam War. Many students during the time were at risk of being drafted, so the Anti-War organizations promoted a full-time student status to require 16 units as well as keeping above a 2.0 GPA. This protected their student deferments, keeping them away from the draft.
“The background of what is going on in the late ‘60s [is] the overwriting of the Vietnam War. The backdrop of most of what we were doing had a connection to the Vietnam War. […] Most of the students that had a consciousness were trying to avoid being drafted, kept their grades up and their units up to the necessary required number,” Arias said.
The Long Beach Current, formerly the Daily Forty-Niner, reported on these events in great detail. Arias said that the student newspaper was there to cover a majority of the events and that there were a few members of MEChA on the news staff.
“They [the Daily Forty-Niner] covered everything, they were an exceptional student newspaper even back in the day. […] The Forty-Niner was always excellent in terms of coverage,” Arias said. “We [MEChA] had differences with the university and all these stories were covered.”
Arias himself has made great impacts on the Chicano community even after his graduation. He is a retired director of the City of Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services who has established several Long Beach health and research programs.
As an honored member of the community, he was awarded the 2006 CSULB Distinguished Alumni Award for Health and Human Services.
“One of the benefits that they offer outstanding alumnus [is] to participate in one of the many graduation ceremonies. So, I was invited to participate in the graduation ceremony for Health and Human Services,” Arias said. “That graduation ceremony was the most powerful thing that I have seen at Long Beach–ever. It was because of the extraordinary number of ethnic students that were graduating. It made me cry, I was just so overwhelmed.”
Arias is one of the few remaining members of the original Chicano student movement.
His impact, as well as the impact of the others who marched alongside him, has impacted future generations of Mexican-American students.
“It is a great history, it really is. It was great to be a part of it. It’s still part of me, these kinds of things don’t leave you, they make you who you are,” Arias said.
