UC Santa Cruz is located in beach central, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Monterey Bay and many smaller beach communities surrounding the city of Santa Cruz, including Capitola, Soquel, Aptos, and Scotts Valley. The campus is situated between the Silicon Valley and Monterey Bay areas, about a half hour drive from San Jose and about a two hour drive from San Francisco. Downtown Santa Cruz has a lot to offer, from the ten cafes with free wireless internet to secret beach spots ideal for a romantic sunset. UCSC is around two hours from San Francisco and about four and a half hours from the skiing and snowboarding of Tahoe. UCSC doesn't have the central plaza, college town, or frat and sorority rows that are common on and around most UC campuses. The campus is located on a hillside that overlooks the Monterey Bay. You can easily see towns 30 miles away on a clear day. The only colleges with ocean views are Cowell, Stevenson, and Oakes, because the others are located behind these colleges in the redwood forest. The beach is a very popular destination for students on the weekends, just about a ten-minute bus ride from campus. The Santa Cruz area is one of many great surfing locations. The campus grounds make up a small portion of the university's actual landholdings. The entrance to campus is located about a mile away from the campus grounds. There is an arboretum, a garden, an organic farm, and a student community (known as the village) near the entryway, or base of campus. The Great Meadow extends from the base of campus to the campus grounds. This area is full of biking trails and picnic spots - the ideal places to watch a sunset. Behind the campus is an enormous redwood forest that is also university property, with Cowell Redwoods State Park to the rear. Students love to hike and bike in the forests behind campus. A trailer park, which looks like hippies abandoned it in the 60s, is known to be located in the forest at the edge of campus. Pogonip Open Space Preserve, Gray Whale Ranch, and Wilder Ranch are also forests and opens spaces that are very close to campus. Downtown is very student friendly and just 15 minutes away from campus by bus. It is well-known for unique local stores, like the shop that sells only Asian light fixtures and another that has hundreds of varieties of tea. Downtown is also well known for its avant-garde street performers - one dresses in all purple and walks down Pacific Ave. all day long and doesn’t speak to anyone. Downtown has a wide variety of restaurants, bars, cafes, coffee houses, and beaches. The Catalyst is located downtown and is Santa Cruz’s most famous nightclub. It is mainly used as a venue for local and popular bands. Tom Petty, R.E.M., Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Ramones are some of the bands that have set foot on the Catalyst’s stage. The Catalyst has a bar and large dance floor downstairs that converts into standing area for shows. Upstairs there is another bar and a game room with pool tables. Most shows are for ages 16 and up, unlike many bars that only allow ages 21 and over. So, younger students don’t have to worry. The shows are also reasonably priced. The Redroom is located downtown. It is a sophisticated bar decorated with fashionable couches and restaurant-like seating areas. The drinks are very expensive, so mainly students willing to spend money go to this bar. The atmosphere is sophisticated and upbeat. The bar is very crowded during the weekends or even starting on Thursday. Many young locals and professionals come here after work to mingle too. The Redroom seems out of place in Santa Cruz, and would probably be more at home in Manhattan. Still, trendy students at UCSC come here and agree that it is one of the best bars in Santa Cruz. Natural Bridges State Beach is the closest beach to campus, only a 15-minute bus ride away. It is located only four miles away from campus and near many of the neighborhoods where students live off campus. Students head down to the beach on the weekends or when the surf is good to relax and surf in the ocean. Students also bodysurf and play volleyball. Many tourists don’t go to Natural Bridges because it is further away from the boardwalk and downtown. So, students and locals mainly have the beach to themselves. Seabright Beach is near downtown where all the tourists hang out. The boardwalk is open during tourist season and has roller coasters and carnival games. It is a fun place to take a date on the weekends. The pier mainly has overpriced restaurants and stores for tourists. Pacific Avenue is the heart of downtown Santa Cruz. Students go to have a good time or go grocery shopping at Trader Joes.

The UC Santa Cruz campus is about as untraditional as a college campus can be. Its size is impressive - 2,001 acres of slightly hilly land covered with redwood trees and sprawling meadows. But don’t assume that the walk to class will be long – students live and take classes in their respective colleges (there are ten on campus) or can take buses to their core classes. UCSC is surrounded by national and state parks and overlooks Monterey Bay, where science majors perform the bulk of their research. UCSC resides on the old Cowell Ranch, which was deforested for timber and mined for limestone before it was sold to the University of California in 1961. Remnants of the ranch are still evident on campus, such as the barn area at the entrance. The large treeless meadows (known as the Great Meadow) that extend from the entrance of campus to the actual campus grounds are part of the areas that were lumbered. There are also two large quarries. One is near the village and the other next to the bookstore, which has been converted into an amphitheater. The university is relatively easy to maneuver around. A main street passes by all the colleges. All students are allowed to ride buses for free; so most students hop on a bus to get to class. Buses are the main form of transportation for students to get around in Santa Cruz. It only takes ten minutes to get to the opposite end of campus on bus, and about 20 minutes by foot. The many footbridges that cross over ravines make the walk to classes relatively easy. Crown/Merrill and Nine/Ten have the steepest walkways and students often complain about having classes up hills. UCSC doesn’t have a central plaza on campus, but if it did, Quarry Plaza would be it. While too small to be the central cross roads of a university with 15,000 students, the location nonetheless gets a lot of traffic. Not only is Quarry Plaza home to the bookstore, a snack shop, an express office supply store, and Joe’s Pizzas and Subs, fraternities, sororities, and other organizations also gather at there for tabling and promotions. It is also where most protests occur. Porter Field is a large expanse of untouched fields surrounded by Redwoods. It’s located at the far edge of campus, tucked away behind the campus and the main road. The meadow is famous for hosting 4/20. Students fly kites and picnic on the fields on sunny days, and it's the perfect place to find privacy and sleep for a bit between classes. Time seems to stand still in the meadows. The 'knoll' by Stevenson College is a grassy space between the Redwood trees that overlooks East Field and the Pacific Ocean. There are benches and grass for students to sit out and relax in the sun, plus it is rather hidden from the dorms by the trees and is on the far edge of campus, giving students privacy. The knoll is thus infamous for pot smokers, and it is fairly common to see someone smoking there. The Stevenson Coffee House - The Stevenson Coffee House (aka Stevenson Café) is a hip and spacious café located in Stevenson. The café is filled with couches, chairs and tables with people playing chess and studying. Student paintings line the walls, along with other weird art. The café has the largest outside patio on campus. There is even an outside table surrounded by a circle of Redwood trees. Adjacent to the café is a game room with a pool table, table tennis, and an arcade, which is rarely used. The cafe is well known for their popular fudgie desert, which is delicious fudge bar mixed with all sorts of delicious unhealthy additives. Stevenson Café plays the latest alternative Indie music. It also hosts Open Mic Nights, where students can play the newest song they’ve been working on. The café becomes jam packed with people during Open Mic Nights, which often last a few hours. The music type varies at the Open Mic Nights. People will sing along to “Build Me Up Buttercup” and then someone will do their rendition of a punk classic. Tacos Moreno – Best burritos on campus, if not in all of Santa Cruz. Who doesn’t love this place? It is a bit of paradise on an island of dining halls. They only have a number of items on their menu but the quality is amazing. They serve typical Mexican food that just tastes great. Their tortillas are wrapped in such a way that the tortilla becomes squished inside the burrito. So, you bite into the burrito and eat a piece of soft warm tortilla. The line is usually out the door during dinner hours. Tacos Moreno is located in Merrill and is about a 2 minute walk from the Merrill Crown dining hall.

UC Santa Cruz has a very unique campus living system, where students live where they learn. Housing is guaranteed for freshmen and sophomores. UCSC is broken up into ten different colleges, which is one of the school's best characteristics because it makes a big school feel more like a few small communities. Each college is separated by theme rather than major. These themes are: Cowell, the first college built at Santa Cruz, is 'The pursuit of truth in the company of friends.' Mostly athletic, preppy, and science students live there. Stevenson is 'Self and Society.' Mostly athletic and studious types live there (be warned: a longer core-course than the other colleges). Crown is 'Ethical Issues In Emerging Technologies.' Science/math whizzes are there(warning: up a giant hill). Merrill is 'Exploring Cultural Identities and Raising Global Consciousness.' This college has a large LGBTQ population. Porter is 'Life is short, Art endures.' Mostly theater students and hipsters live there, and it is known as the party school. Kresge is 'Power and Representation.' This school is known for 'hippies' and a large LGBTQ population. Oakes is 'Values and Change in a Diverse Society' There is a large population of minority students at this school (warning: far removed from most of campus). Eight is 'Environment and Society.' Mostly preppy students live there. Nine is 'International and Global Perspectives.' The 'normal kids' live there. Ten is 'Social Justice.' The 'normal kids' live there too. The only requirement for each college is one class in the beginning of freshman year with a broad topic in which only students from that particular college enroll. Each college has a "sister college", one which they are located close to and share a dining hall with. Along with the five dining halls on campus, each college also has its own cafe. There are sports centers on both the east and west sides of campus, each containing volleyball and tennis courts along with other facilities. Within each college, there are anywhere from five to and ten dorm buildings, usually less than four stories, and between three and five apartment buildings for upperclassmen. One of the more unique aspects of dorm life at UCSC is the fact that each floor has coed bathroom and shower areas. There are single-sex options, but complaints about privacy and discomfort in coed situations are few. Each of the ten colleges at UCSC has dormitories and apartments. The dormitories are usually for freshmen only, while the apartments are for sophomores, juniors and seniors. All freshmen have to live in dorms if they choose to live on campus, except for freshmen who are part of Kresge College, who have the choice to live in apartments. The apartments have kitchens, communal living space and large bathrooms that are only shared by the four to eight people living there. Dorm residents, on the other hand, sometimes have to share bathrooms with the 20 to 30 others on their floor. The apartments make the dorms feel like cruise ship accommodations, i.e. cubical status. Educated incoming freshman will sometimes apply to Kresge, just so they can have the option to live in apartments. The apartments are grouped in three different areas: Kresge Proper, Kresge East, and the Kresge/Porter Apartments. Most freshmen live in Kresge Proper, which consists of 59 apartments. Kresge Proper is near a mailroom, a lounge, a food coop, a basketball court and a cafe. There is a main plaza in the middle of Kresge Proper, designed to be artsy and alternative that features concrete waterways, an elevated lookout patio (reminds me of a Byzantine fortification), and murals. Kresge/Porter Apartments was recently built and looks like a modern pedestrian village. Kresge East is an extension of Kresge proper. The Porter Dorms are very popular for theater, music, and art students. The majority of freshmen who live in Porter are musicians, artists, and actors/actresses. They are by far the most eccentric group of people on campus. The dorms are older, and the Porter dining hall is fairly dilapidated. Totem poles, statutes and open plazas mark the grounds around the dorms. I have heard that these dorms have the most theft, and definitely seem the least inviting from the outside. However, freshmen flock to live in the Porter dorms because the art, theater, and music departments are located near Porter. The International Living Center (ILC) houses approximately 100 students. Fifty percent are international students and the other fifty are UCSC students. The ILC is not considered a dorm, but is an on-campus living community. The purpose of the ILC is to foster a cooperative and amiable living environment for students from all different backgrounds. The ILC is located near the College Nine apartments, minutes away from the largest dining hall on campus. There are study lounges, TVs, a café, a restaurant, and an on-site laundry facility in or nearby the ILC. The ILC goes along with College Nine’s theme of 'International Global Perspectives.'

UCSC is an NCAA Division III school with the most popular and widely known sports being men’s and women’s rugby and ultimate Frisbee teams. Athletics don’t play a major role on campus, and the college has no football team. UCSC doesn't have a football team. That tells you a lot about us. I know a few people who go to sport games, but not a lot of students are on teams. We don't have a sports stadium or a large basketball gym. We are competitive against our neighbors: UC Berkeley, Stanford and UCSB, but I wouldn’t consider Santa Cruz to be rivals with any of these schools. Many students who follow sports are Berkeley fans because Berkeley teams are very popular in the Bay Area. There is an infamous Nor-Cal, So-Cal rivalry in California. UC Santa Cruz is considered to be in Northern California, so it has a Nor-Cal bias. Students showcase their pride for Northern California by wearing Giants, Raiders, Cal (Berkeley) and other Northern California sports team clothes. They also use the word 'hella' (meaning: very) endlessly. For example, one might say, 'this is hella cool or I’m hella fed up with So-Cal.' Nor-Cal supporters dislike anyone and everything to do with Southern California. They dislike the Dodgers, LA Lakers, UCSB, UCSD, and UCLA etc. almost by default. Although students aren’t very involved in competitive sports, we do have a large pool facility and a state-of-the-art workout center. For the most part, students take alternative types of physical education courses such as; dance, yoga, meditation, and massage. The Office of Physical Education, Recreation and Sports (OPERS) offer various outdoors trips each quarter, which are very popular among students. The trips fill up quickly and vary from snowboarding and mountain climbing in the winter to kayaking and hiking in the spring. The trips have additional fees, but are usually inexpensive.