In 2022, UC Santa Cruz became the first campus in the UC system to hire a dedicated community archivist—a person charged with helping to preserve community history in Santa Cruz County.
But in late November, the university quietly announced it would discontinue the Community Archiving Program in early 2026 due to the “current campus budget crisis.”
"I don't think it's malicious," said Steve McKay, faculty director for the Center for Labor and Community at UCSC. "But it's definitely not well thought out."
He thinks the decision to end the program is short-sighted and a betrayal of trust.
"There's not always a lot of stuff we can brag about our university to the community," he said, "And this was one of them, I have to say. So, for them to pull the plug without any discussion with any of the stakeholders was hurtful."
In a report from a 2022 listening tour ahead of the program’s debut, a respondent said, “You get one chance with community groups, one chance to make a good impression.”
"Those first few years, it's not about the output, it's the trust building," McKay said. "And that's just basically where we were. Just as you’re building that trust, the program’s gone."
When asked about the critique that ending the program just a few years after it began harms community trust, university spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason did not respond directly.
Instead, he wrote in an email that the university remains proud of the program’s work and will continue to steward the community archives in its care.
A petition to save the program garnered more than 800 signatures, but the university has not changed its plans.
