ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between student activism, faculty involvement, and institutional change in the history of the Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program at Oregon State University through the use of university archival materials that span the past twenty-eight years. The student organizers who addressed the university president in 1990 were not an anomaly in the history of the institution, but rather another generation in an ongoing legacy of student activists at Oregon State. In the United States, the state of Oregon has a reputation for being a highly progressive liberal state but, in reality, the state operates from a place of white liberalism – meaning people who proport to be “liberal” but still uphold beliefs, practices and policies that continue to support oppression such as racism or classism. Oregon has a population-dense urban corridor ranging from the cities of Portland to Eugene; however, most of the state outside this corridor is composed of rural communities.
