 Although the city of Santa Cruz already exhibited a strong conservation ethic before the founding of the university , the coincidental rise of the counterculture of the 1960s with the university 's establishment fundamentally altered its subsequent development . Early student and faculty activism at UCSC pioneered an approach to environmentalism that greatly impacted the industrial development of the surrounding area . The lowering of the voting age to 18 in 1971 led to the emergence of a powerful student @-@ voting bloc . A large and growing population of politically liberal UCSC alumni changed the electorate of the town from predominantly Republican to markedly left @-@ leaning , consistently voting against expansion measures on the part of both town and gown . 
