Residence Halls
All three John R. Lewis College residence halls are set among multi-trunk deciduous trees on a large, sunny knoll surrounding a landscaped plaza. Each bedroom has access to ResNet to provide free wireless Internet access.
John R. Lewis College residence halls have the following room types:
- Single
- Triples (most available)
- Large Triples
- Quads
Residents are provided with an extra-long twin mattress bed (80” x 36” x 6”), chest of drawers, closet, wastebasket, bookshelf, desk and a chair. Residents are encouraged to bring a desk lamp for their bedroom. All rooms are carpeted and have blinds and a soft fluorescent overhead light and a heater. All residence halls are completely smoke-free.
During the 2009-2010 academic year, the residents of John R. Lewis College formed a committee to name the three John R. Lewis College residence halls. The committee conducted a survey and a voting system that, through the ideas of John R. Lewis College residents, eventually named the residence halls Ohlone House, Angela Davis House, and Amnesty House.
Ohlone House (RH 4)
Ohlone House stands in remembrance of the diverse Ohlone Native American group who still live along California's central coast. Today, there are many Ohlone people who work together to fight for federal recognition, the protection of sacred sites, and land rights.
When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of languages, the Ohlone languages, belonging to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the 1970s by some descendant groups and by most ethnographers, historians, and writers of popular literature. Before the Spanish came, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups and did not view themselves as a distinct group. They survived by hunting, fishing, and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern.
Amnesty House (RH 5)
Named after national non-profit organization, Amnesty International, Amnesty House stands to serve as a beacon for community service.
Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 3 million supporters, members
Angela Davis House (RH 6)
Angela Y. Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar, and activist/organizer. She is a living witness to the historical struggles of the contemporary era.
Professor Davis's political activism began when she was a youngster in Birmingham, Alabama, and continued through her high school years in New York. But it was not until 1969 that she came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position in the Philosophy Department at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party, USA. In 1970 she was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List on false charges and was the subject of an intense police search that drove her underground and culminated in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. During her sixteen-month incarceration, a massive international "Free Angela Davis" campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.
Professor Davis's long-standing commitment to prisoners' rights dates back to her involvement in the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, which led to her own arrest and imprisonment. Today she remains an advocate of prison abolition and has developed a powerful critique of racism in the criminal justice system. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center and is currently working on a comparative study of women's imprisonment in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Cuba.
During the last twenty-five years, Professor Davis has lectured in all of the fifty United States, as well as in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of five books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography; Women, Race, and Class; Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday; and The Angela Y. Davis Reader.
Former California Governor Ronald Reagan once vowed that Angela Davis would never again teach in the University of California system. Today, she is a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1994, she received the distinguished honor of an appointment to the University of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies.
When applying to the residence halls, students can choose between single-gender or mixed-gender residence halls, in which members of all genders live in the same hall or floor. Bathrooms may be mixed-gender, while bedrooms are single-gender spaces. There are two common bathrooms, consisting of toilets, sinks, and showers, on each floor of the residence halls. All toilet stalls have locking doors and all showers have a ceiling to floor curtain as well as a changing stall with a ceiling to floor curtain.
Please visit housing.ucsc.edu for more information on applying to the residence halls at John R. Lewis College.
