in our areas. Including Tribal land acknowledgments in practice, and understanding and acknowledging history, is not only respectful and educational, it is the justice-oriented advocacy necessary for continuing the work of dismantling the devastating effects of settler colonialism in our society. As an institution physically located in Southern California, we at UCR would like to respectfully acknowledge and recognize our responsibility to the original and current caretakers of this land, water, and air: the Cahuilla [ka-wee-ahh], Tongva [tong-va], Luiseño [loo-say-ngo], and Serrano [se-ran-oh] peoples and all of their ancestors and descendants, past, present, and future. Today this meeting place is home to many Indigenous peoples from all over the world, including UCR faculty, students, and staff, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these homelands. Please take a moment to acknowledge and reflect on the Native, Aboriginal, and Indigenous peoples of your area from which you are physically joining us today. If you are unfamiliar with the original and current caretakers of the land, water, and air from your area, we highly encourage you to take the time to self-educate, reflect, and listen to these histories." The early years After the 1945 passage of the GI Bill, a massive influx of former servicemen began to enter college and strained the capacities of many state university systems throughout the United States. While this wave was expected to eventually subside by the early 1950s, state and federal studies released in the late 1940s all projected massive demand for access to higher education in California in the near future. The UC system was then composed only of established campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles which were already operating near capacity. Davis was then still a primarily agricultural campus, while Santa Barbara State had just entered the UC system in 1944. In 1947, the Board of Regents and an Education Committee of the State Legislature appointed a committee to conduct a large-scale study of California's needs which was dubbed the Strayer Committee (after its chair, George D. Strayer, professor emeritus of Teachers College, Columbia University). As the Strayer Committee was empowered to make recommendations regarding the establishment of any new state campuses, a group of Riverside citrus growers and civic leaders, including many Cal (Berkeley) alumni, formed the Citizens University Committee (CUC) to lobby for a small liberal arts college attached to the UC Citrus Experiment Station. After