The Hunger Strike Declaration was released by El Congreso on April 27, 1994, the day students began fasting in front of Cheadle Hall. Written during a student hunger strike, the declaration explains why students believed direct action was necessary and outlines their criticisms of the university. The document opens with a quote from El Plan de Santa Barbara: “At this moment we do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people.” El Congreso argued that UCSB had a responsibility to serve Chicano and Latino students, not simply to include them symbolically.

The document criticizes Rudy Acuña’s non-hire as evidence of discriminatory hiring and retention practices and UCSB for spending more than one million dollars defending itself in the Acuña case, rather than accepting a “spousal hire” and retaining Antonia Castañeda, along with other faculty. It also raises concerns about the campus climate, including the failure to hire a qualified Chicana applicant as Women’s Center director and the university’s handling of sexual assault and harassment allegations. El Congreso argues that the university’s neglect was not limited to campus issues, but extended into the surrounding Isla Vista and Santa Barbara communities, farmworker struggles, and low-income families of color.

The release of this declaration marked the moment when students were no longer asking the university to listen, but using their bodies to force UCSB to confront the invisibility and second-class status it had placed on Latinx students.

El Congreso demanded a stop to student fee hikes for the 1994–1995 year and protection for the Educational Opportunity Program. This demand connected affordability to survival at UCSB. For many low-income Chicano and Latino students, rising fees made the university harder to access, while cuts to student services made it harder to remain enrolled. EOP was especially important because it provided advising, mentoring, counseling, and retention support for students who were often first-generation, low-income, or from underrepresented communities. By demanding protection for EOP, students were arguing that access does not end with admission. UCSB could not claim to support diversity while raising costs and weakening the very programs that helped Chicano and Latino students stay.

El Congreso demanded that UCSB help establish a community center for low-income families in Isla Vista and that the center be administered by the people it served. This demand shows that the students did not view UCSB as separate from the surrounding community. Many Chicano and Latino students saw the university as part of a larger local environment shaped by poverty, immigrant labor, housing insecurity, and unequal access to resources. By demanding a community center, they were asking UCSB to take responsibility beyond its campus boundaries. The demand challenged the university to support the families and communities connected to Chicano and Latino students, instead of treating Isla Vista and nearby communities as separate from university life.

One of the central hunger strike demands was the expansion of Chicano Studies. El Congreso demanded 15 permanent full-time faculty appointments and a fully funded Ph.D. program. This demand came from the belief that UCSB had allowed Chicano Studies to exist but had kept it too small to thrive. Students argued that the department had remained one of the smallest on campus despite serving a growing Chicano and Latino student population and despite the importance of Chicano Studies to UCSB’s identity. A Ph.D. program would have made UCSB a major center for Chicano scholarship, while more full-time faculty would have allowed the department to offer more courses, mentor more students, and gain stronger institutional power. This demand was about resisting tokenism. Students wanted Chicano Studies to be treated as a serious, permanent, and fully supported academic field.

El Congreso demanded stronger recruitment and retention of Chicano and Latino students because students believed UCSB did not reflect the communities it was supposed to serve. Recruitment meant bringing more Chicano and Latino students to campus, especially from local and regional communities. Retention meant making sure those students had the support to stay, graduate, and feel that they belonged. This demand was important because students understood that admission alone was not enough. Without faculty who understood their histories, spaces like El Centro, programs like EOP, and a campus climate that respected them, Latino students could be admitted but still feel isolated or excluded. The hunger strike connected access to belonging: students wanted UCSB to not only open the door, but also make the university livable once they arrived.

El Congreso demanded that Building 406 be preserved, made permanent, expanded, and renamed El Centro de Arnulfo Casillas after the founder and first chair of El Congreso. El Centro was more than a building. It was a meeting space, organizing space, cultural space, and second home for Chicano and Latino students. It gave students a place to gather, plan events, build community, and connect their education to activism.

El Congreso demanded that UCSB adhere to the United Farm Workers grape boycott. This demand connected campus activism to farmworker struggles beyond the university. For many Chicano and Latino students, higher education, labor rights, immigrant communities, and farmworker justice were part of the same broader fight for dignity. It reminded UCSB that Chicano and Latino students came from communities shaped by agricultural labor, economic inequality, and organizing traditions. By including the UFW demand, students pushed UCSB to recognize that a university cannot claim to support justice while ignoring the labor conditions affecting the communities connected to its students.

On the first page of Yolanda Broyles-González’s letter, Chicano Studies faculty were asking UCSB for an urgent commitment to increase the department’s faculty numbers. Broyles-González explains that the department had been asking for help year after year, but no real plan had been created. She calls the situation an “emergency” because a department cannot survive long term without enough faculty. She also says the department had existed for twenty five years but had never grown beyond 3.75 FTE, which shows how limited UCSB’s support had been. Faculty were seeking a serious recruitment plan, not another small or delayed response. They wanted UCSB to stop treating Chicano Studies as a marginal department and begin supporting it as a real academic unit.

On the second page, Broyles-González explains what this lack of faculty actually did to the department. Chicano Studies had only 3.5 FTE, which represented six faculty members, but most were only half time. In a typical year, only about four faculty members were present, which made the department almost impossible to run. She describes the department as a “ghost town” because there were not enough people to build a normal department life. Faculty were carrying too much administrative work, while also trying to meet students’ emotional, intellectual, political, and academic needs. This page shows that faculty were seeking more than just hires. They wanted a livable workload and enough people to support students properly.

Broyles-González states that only 10 or 20 percent of courses were taught by ladder faculty, which damaged the department’s consistency and quality. Because the department depended so much on temporary lecturers, course offerings became unpredictable. This hurt majors and non majors because students could not count on stable classes or long term planning. Even special visiting lecturers, including César Chávez, could not make up for the lack of permanent faculty. Faculty were therefore seeking permanent faculty positions so Chicano Studies could offer a stronger and more reliable curriculum.

On the third page, Broyles-González focuses on hiring and retention. She argues that UCSB’s hiring process for Chicano Studies had moved too slowly for years. One faculty position took six years to fill, and the department’s requests for more positions had not been met in a meaningful way. She also explains that this slow and piecemeal approach made faculty feel demoralized and contributed to people leaving. Faculty were seeking a more serious hiring process, especially through a cluster hire, because one position at a time was not enough to build the department.

Broyles-González says UCSB had kept Chicano Studies in an “institutionalized crisis.” After twenty five years, the department remained the smallest on campus while other departments received more resources and grew into stable programs. She argues that Chicano Studies was not treated as part of the university’s core academic life, but instead was left to barely survive. Faculty were seeking an end to this pattern. They wanted UCSB to take responsibility for the department through sustained support, permanent faculty, fair resources, and real institutional respect.

Naomi García, Edwin López, André Vásquez, Salvador Barajas, and Claudia Leiva met at García’s Isla Vista apartment and decided to begin a hunger strike. At first, the plan was kept almost secret, partly because students worried about divisions within El Congreso and whether the action would fail. But when press releases announced the strike under the banner “Indigenous Resistance for Social Justice,” the broader Chicana/o and Latina/o student community gathered for an emergency meeting at El Centro on April 18, only hours before the strike was supposed to begin. That meeting was intense because some students supported the strike, while others felt it was too sudden or that more organizing should happen first.

After El Congreso agreed to endorse and help plan the hunger strike, students delayed the strike for a week and revised the demands to make them broader and more strategic. They also changed its structure for the strike by creating an executive council and about fifteen subcommittees in charge of outreach, fundraising, security, media, medical services, public relations, research, supplies, and other responsibilities. El Congreso also selected three student negotiators, Benjamin “Benny” Torres, Mike Muñoz, and Marisela Márquez, because the hunger strikers would not be physically able to negotiate while fasting.

This organization shows that the hunger strike was not only about the nine students who fasted. It depended on a much larger network of students, supporters, and behind-the-scenes labor. El Congreso also selected three student negotiators, Benjamin “Benny” Torres, Mike Muñoz, and Marisela Márquez, because the hunger strikers would not be physically able to negotiate while fasting. By creating demands, subcommittees, negotiators, and public outreach, students turned personal anger into a coordinated campaign. Their organizing made the hunger strike a collective action rather than an individual sacrifice.

After El Congreso agreed to endorse and help plan the hunger strike, students delayed the strike for a week and revised the demands to make them broader and more strategic. They also changed its structure for the strike by creating an executive council and about fifteen subcommittees in charge of outreach, fundraising, security, media, medical services, public relations, research, supplies, and other responsibilities. El Congreso also selected three student negotiators, Benjamin “Benny” Torres, Mike Muñoz, and Marisela Márquez, because the hunger strikers would not be physically able to negotiate while fasting.

This organization shows that the hunger strike was not only about the nine students who fasted. It depended on a much larger network of students, supporters, and behind-the-scenes labor. El Congreso also selected three student negotiators, Benjamin “Benny” Torres, Mike Muñoz, and Marisela Márquez, because the hunger strikers would not be physically able to negotiate while fasting. By creating demands, forming subcommittees, engaging negotiators, and conducting public outreach, students turned personal anger into a coordinated campaign. Their organizing made the hunger strike a collective action rather than an individual sacrifice.

On the first page, the negotiators explain that the Academic Senate had power through shared governance. They asked the Senate to respond in three ways: influence money, pass formal resolutions, and take symbolic actions. So, the first step was for UCSB to use its official campus bodies to back the demands instead of leaving El Congreso and Chicano Studies to fight alone. This meant the administration and Academic Senate needed to help direct funding toward the issues students and faculty had already identified.

For El Centro, UCSB could make it happen by protecting Building 406 as a permanent facility or creating a new permanent space if campus growth affected it. The negotiators pointed back to a 1989 university commitment that El Congreso would be consulted if El Centro was threatened. UCSB could follow through by involving El Congreso directly and directing the Foundation and Development Office to raise money for the project. This mattered because El Centro housed Chicano and Latino campus spaces, including El Congreso and support services connected to the community.

UCSB could also fund recruitment and retention programs at higher levels. The letter names programs like STEP, EOP, Upward Bound, scholarships, and community literacy projects. These were not random programs. They were meant to bring Chicano and Latino students to UCSB, help them stay, and connect the university to the surrounding community. If UCSB wanted to support Chicano Studies faculty and students, it had to fund the systems that helped those students actually succeed once they arrived.

On the second page, the negotiators explain that UCSB could support a Ph.D. program in Chicano Studies by passing Academic Senate resolutions. But they also make clear that a resolution was only the beginning. To make Chicano Studies a leading department, UCSB needed to allocate at least 15 FTE faculty appointments by 1997 to 1998. This connects directly to Yolanda Broyles-González’s letter, where she argued that the department could not survive with only a few mostly half time faculty members. In other words, UCSB could make the department stronger by hiring enough permanent faculty to create a real academic foundation. UCSB could also rename Building 406 as El Centro de Arnulfo Casillas. The negotiators said this required approval through the committee on Traditions and History, so the university could make it happen by speeding up that process instead of delaying it. This was not only about a name. It was about recognizing the history of Chicano student organizing at UCSB and honoring a figure connected to that struggle. Finally, UCSB could show public support by passing resolutions against student fee increases and in support of the United Farm Workers grape boycott. These actions would show that the university understood Chicano Studies as connected to larger issues, like access to education and farm worker justice. Ralph’s chapter makes this same point because the hunger strike was not only about one department. It also grew out of rising fees, cuts to support services, threats to El Centro, weak recruitment, and the poisoning of farm workers through pesticide exposure.

The presence of the hunger strikers’ parents added another layer of pressure that changed the direction of the negotiations. Their support made it harder for UCSB to dismiss it as unreasonable. The May 2, 1994 Daily Nexus article shows this shift clearly, as administrators met with the student negotiators, the strikers, and parents; there was more deliberate conversation even though the first meeting was to set ground rules. Student negotiator Marisela Márquez said they were ready to begin negotiations, but the administration was not prepared to move forward yet. Benjamin Torres also warned that each delay placed the hunger strikers in greater danger. In this moment, the parents’ presence helped make the stakes more personal and urgent. Juana Gutiérrez, the mother of one of the strikers, stated that the most important goal was to stop the strike, but also made clear that she hoped the students received what they were asking for. The parents were not simply asking their children to give up, but some of them supported the purpose of the protest and their actions, while also making the students’ health impossible for UCSB to ignore.

Student organizations did support the hunger strikers, and that support helped make the protest harder for UCSB to ignore. The A.S. Women’s Commission’s letter to the Daily Nexus openly defended the strike and stated that the hunger strikers were “risking their lives to be given a voice.” The letter also pushed back against the idea that the protest was “radical,” “sensational,” or “irrational,” arguing instead that students had already gone through the proper channels for years without seeing real change. This shows that other student groups understood the hunger strike as a response to long-term administrative neglect, not as a sudden or unreasonable action. This support also connected the hunger strike to issues beyond El Congreso alone. The A.S. Women’s Commission named fees, EOP, the Chicana/o Studies Department, the grape boycott, and a diversified student body as concerns that affected the entire university community. In that way, student organizations helped frame the strike as a campus-wide struggle over education, access, and whose voices mattered at UCSB. As support grew, student groups erected solidarity tents alongside the hunger strikers, transforming the protest site into a visible center of campus activism.

Faculty did support the hunger strike, especially the Department of Chicano Studies. In their Cinco de Mayo response to the hunger strikers and El Congreso, the department described the students’ actions as “heroic” acts of sacrifice for the collective good. They also said the strike had “re-vitalized and re-inspired” the department, which shows that faculty saw the protest as meaningful and necessary. The department also agreed with the larger reason behind the strike. Faculty wrote that the students’ demands were “just and reasonable” and connected them to a longer history of marginalization at UCSB. They explained that Chicano Studies had spent twenty-five years trying to work through official channels, but those channels had not produced enough institutional support. This becomes especially clear on the concluding page of the letter, where the department rejects the administration’s temporary solutions because they believed part-time or temporary fixes would weaken the department even more. They said the administration’s proposal of seven permanent faculty by 1997–98 was still too low and called instead for at least 12.5 to 15 positions. Instead, faculty proposed a “realistic” direct plan: hire four permanent full-time faculty on an emergency basis, add 3.0 FTE in 1995–96, and add another 2.5 FTE in 1996–97.

The hunger strikers and UCSB administration agreed on a response to the students’ six demands, but it was a compromise rather than a full acceptance of everything the students wanted. Donald Crawford’s May 6 memo says the agreement ended the fast and that UCSB’s main concern during the meetings was the health of the students, while still staying within the university’s academic planning and budget rules. Through the agreement, UCSB reaffirmed support for Chicano/Latino students, faculty, staff, and the Department of Chicano Studies.

One major part of the agreement focused on student support, El Centro, and the Isla Vista community center. UCSB agreed that EOP/SAA was a core unit and promised to support retention services like peer counseling, mailings, newsletters, and social or cultural activities. UCSB also agreed to work with local agencies to seek funding for an Isla Vista community center. For El Centro, the administration did not promise Building 406 would stay forever, but it agreed El Congreso would be consulted before any change and that future relocation plans would preserve the El Centro concept.

The agreement also addressed Chicano Studies, admissions, and the grape boycott. UCSB recognized that the Chicano Studies Department was too small and agreed to move toward more faculty, including a minimum goal of 7.0 FTE by 1997–98, while also expediting the Ph.D. proposal. UCSB also promised to recruit and admit all UC-eligible Chicano and Latino students from the quad-counties and set a goal of increasing new Chicano/Latino enrollment from those counties by 20 percent each year for three years. For the grape boycott, UCSB agreed to remove grapes as a regular menu choice in residence halls and UCen Dining, while also working with El Congreso to educate the campus about the boycott.

The coalition plan was UCSB’s attempt to strengthen Chicano Studies by temporarily bringing faculty from other departments into the Department of Chicano Studies. In Don Zimmerman’s May 17, 1994 memo to Yolanda Broyles-González, he explains that one part of the hunger strike settlement called for “term transfer” of faculty from other departments. Faculty from Education, English, Anthropology, Sociology, and Religious Studies had agreed to accept these temporary transfers. If approved, each transfer would move .2 FTE from the faculty member’s home department into Chicano Studies for three years, after which the FTE would return to the original department.

Its significance was that UCSB was trying to respond to the demand for more Chicano Studies faculty without immediately giving the department the permanent full-time positions students and faculty wanted. On paper, the plan looked like progress because it brought more faculty bodies into the department and made the administration appear responsive after the hunger strike. But it was also limited because the transfers were temporary, partial, and dependent on faculty from other departments. That meant Chicano Studies still did not receive the kind of permanent institutional support that Yolanda’s letter and the hunger strikers had been demanding.

They wanted a stronger Chicano Studies Department that could offer more courses, support students, connect to the community, and challenge the broader racism and neglect they were experiencing at UCSB. The coalition plan was significant because it showed UCSB was willing to compromise, but it also showed why students and faculty remained skeptical.

El Congreso explains that students protested later in the fall because they believed UCSB had gone against the spirit of the hunger strike agreement. The fact sheet describes the Chicano Studies Department as being “under siege” by the administration and highlights the non-reappointment of Yolanda Broyles-González as the latest “slap in the face.” Students did not view this as a routine administrative decision. Broyles-González had become a symbol of the department’s independence and had supported Chicano Studies throughout the struggle. When UCSB replaced her with Dean Don Zimmerman, a white male administrator from outside the field, many students interpreted it as an attempt by the administration to gain greater control over a department that had been built through years of Chicano activism. The fact sheet includes these details because El Congreso wanted readers to understand that the protest was rooted in specific actions taken by the university, not simply in general dissatisfaction.

The fact sheet also presents the issue as larger than the fate of one professor or one department. It warns that if the administration could intervene in Chicano Studies, then other programs created through student activism, such as Black Studies, Women Studies, and Asian Studies, could face similar challenges. El Congreso mentions these groups to build solidarity and show that the conflict affected broader questions about representation, self-determination, and academic freedom. By listing rallies, pickets, and calls for support from different student organizations, the fact sheet attempts to mobilize a wider coalition and convince readers that defending Chicano Studies was important for protecting all ethnic and interdisciplinary studies programs.

The second fact sheet uses even stronger language to explain why students felt betrayed after the hunger strike ended. El Congreso argues that although the strike concluded with a legally binding agreement, the administration was “distorting and manipulating” that agreement. Students believed that instead of honoring the commitments made during the strike, UCSB was using the situation to justify greater oversight of Chicano Studies and to weaken student influence. The fact sheet points to the forced term transfers, the removal of Broyles-González, and Zimmerman’s appointment as evidence of what students saw as political retaliation. These examples are included to support El Congreso’s argument that the administration was acting in bad faith and to persuade readers that the struggle was not over. By documenting these events, the organization sought to show that continued protest was necessary because the goals of the hunger strike had not truly been secured.

The aftermath showed that the agreement did not end the struggle because many of UCSB’s promises were still incomplete after the hunger strike ended. The image shows that some demands moved forward, such as EOP funding being granted and grapes only being supplied upon request. However, other requests were still unresolved. The construction of a community center in Isla Vista still needed outside funding, the future of El Centro remained a pending decision, and the Ph.D. program had not been implemented. This shows that the agreement forced UCSB to publicly respond, but it did not automatically create the changes students had fought for.

The request for additional professors was only partly met, since full-time employees increased from 3.5 to 4.0, while the total number of employees actually decreased from 6 to 5. The Luis Leal Endowed Chair was also still not filled because an offer had been extended, but no response had been received. These details show why students continued to feel frustrated. The agreement gave UCSB a framework to act, but the slow pace made it seem like the university was still delaying real support. By 1996, students could point to some progress, especially with Chicano EOP positions and increased recruitment efforts for Latinx students from the Tri-Counties region. But the larger goals, like reaching the faculty target, creating the Ph.D. program, filling key positions, protecting El Centro, and building the community center, still required pressure from students and the community.