Several colorful murals on the outside wall of the Cesar Chavez Student Center show the rich diversity and social awareness of the campus community. The Garden of Remembrance, a memorial honoring the Japanese American students who were forced into internment camps during the Second World War, offers the student body calm and reflection. With its murals, meetings, and protests, the student center and its surroundings have been the subject of criticism and marvel.

Architect Paffard Keatinge Clay designed the Cesar Chavez Student Center thirty years ago, but the symbolic nature of the building began before it was erected. In the mid-'60s students, sick of the old union building, raised the money through student fees to hire a world-renowned architect named Moishe Safdie.

Safdie designed a building in 1967 that was ultimately turned down by the state college trustees. This design was submitted around the same time as the infamous student strikes and demonstrations, which came about because of the lack of a black studies department. Some saw the rejection of the students' building as punishment for the strikes.

Many reasons were given as to why the trustees rejected the building, including the fear that it was unsound and the fear that it gave potential snipers too many places to hide.

Regardless, the original building plans were abandoned after a bitter fight that left both sides polarized into that environment came architect Paffard Keatinge Clay.

Clay, who studied under famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, gave the students the opportunity to have input into what was to be "their" building.

Throughout the late '70s, many celebrities came to the building to speak, including Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda, Robert Kennedy Jr. and ex-black panther Bobby Seele. But as the '70s ended and the '80s began, student activism decreased and activity at the center was confined to the mundane student experience.

The fiery days of demonstrations and student strikes were over and a new atmosphere took hold of the campus.

But this calm would not last.

Malcolm X Plaza, as it has been dubbed due to the large Malcolm X mural, is once again the location of many rallies and protests. Each mural has a story, and those stories often reflect the diversity of the student body.