Merrill College - History

History

Merrill was founded in 1968 as the fourth college at UCSC. The college takes its name from Charles E. Merrill Jr., former Headmaster of the Commonwealth School in Boston. In 1968, Merrill was the chairman of the Charles E. Merrill Trust, named for his father, Charles E. Merrill, Sr., the founder of Merrill Lynch. It was in this year that the Trust elected to donate funds for the construction of the hitherto-named College Four at Santa Cruz.

The first three colleges at UCSC all had clearly identified academic specialties before their founding: Cowell in the humanities, Stevenson in the social sciences, and Crown in the natural sciences. However, Merrill allowed its early faculty and students to determine its theme. The college originally intended to focus on international studies, but an early shift towards global poverty led to its eventual emphasis on the developing countries and their cultures, as well as the impact of the United States in the developing world.

With a progressive theme, Merrill quickly attracted liberal and radical faculty and students. It offered ethnic studies classes as well as student housing with ethnic studies emphases, and attracted progressive visitors, including Herbert Marcuse in 1975. Merrill also gained a reputation as a campus center of openness and acceptance for gays and lesbians; in 1991 it established the Vito Russo House in one of its student residences.

In 2003, as part of a campus-wide food service consolidation program, the Merrill dining hall closed and was converted into a multi-use space, called the Merrill Cultural Center. In 2006, the History Department, and many affiliated faculty, left their longtime home at Merrill for the new Humanities Building next to Cowell College.