Sonoma State University

Student Voices: An SSU Community Archive

We want you, our SSU students, to contribute to your own campus history!

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Sonoma State’s University Archives preserves representative examples of material about campus history since Sonoma State University’s founding in 1961. These records document the history, growth, and development of the University and support campus memory.

Campus yearbooks, catalogs, scrapbooks, student newspapers, photographs, student club publicity, and other material are documented and preserved for all to use.

However, archival practices have historically erased, marginalized, and ignored the records and stories of much of SSU’s diverse student body.

To ensure greater representation and help document a more comprehensive Sonoma State history, we encourage all student submissions, including those from underrepresented student groups such as ethnic minority, LGBTQI+, veteran, first-generation, economically disadvantaged, undocumented, and international students.

Our hope is that student participation in University Archives will grow and expand to fully reflect the student energy and diverse communities we are so proud of here at Sonoma State University.

If you have any questions about donating materials to the University Archives, contact specialcollections@sonoma.edu.

Poster with text A lecture series on liberation struggles in the belly of the monster

Lecture on liberation struggles, circa 1970

Archives contain an assortment of objects considered unique or special enough to be preserved for future generations. They generally have significant historical value. The material collected in archives can be personal and unplanned—a photograph, a letter to a friend, diary entries—or more formal documents, like the meeting minutes, publicity materials, and charter documents of student clubs, for example.

At Sonoma State, the archives include materials representing our campus history. This history is important to collect, preserve, and make available to current, past, and future Sonoma State students in order to learn from our past and define and shape our future.

Watch this short introduction to our collections

An archive like our very own University Archives offers unique perspectives on past time periods, lives, and specific events. Such a collection can safeguard us from inaccurate recollections, gaps in the record, or intentional erasures of historical fact.

 

Mn wearing a mortarboard, small windmill with SSU label

Commencement, 1987

Physically, this campus history is housed in the Library’s Special Collections on the 3rd floor of the Jean & Charles Schulz Information Center. You can find out more about campus history on the University Archives web page, including how to make an appointment to see material on any time period in our history that interests you.

Digital copies of a small selection of this campus history are in our University Archives Digital Collection, which is where we would like to add your records and stories. Note that there is a section specific to you, Student Voices, on the collection page.

 

  1. Material from a club, organization, or affinity group you belong to and believe in and want to see reflected as part of campus history, like this Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority photo.
  2. Reflections from your own experience on campus. This can mean materials created:
    • From your own initiative and concern, like the Student Chalk Art created in response to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
    • In response to an instructional assignment, a reflection on your life as an SSU student and/or as a member of a unique community on campus. How have you engaged as a student to make sure your voice is heard? What do you want current and future SSU students to know about you and your community?
    • In response to an initiative on campus to nurture a living archive—stories of life and community crises happening right now—such as responses to the COVID-19 pandemic or the Black Lives Matter movement.

You are encouraged to submit digital material, but if you would like to submit physical materials, we will ask you to upload photographs or video of that work here so we can see what you would like us to add to our physical University Archives.

Chalk text of "Build Bridges Not Walls"
Chalk text of "Can't scare us away"
Chalk text of "We are never assured justice without a fight, Angela Davis"
Chalk text of "Where there is opposition there will be Resistance"

Student chalk art, Election Day, 2016

A lecture on human rights by Angela Davis.

Lecture by Angela Davis, 1978

  • If you are in the Center for Community Engagement Community Diary Project, please write to cce@sonoma.edu for more details.
  • If you are a student at SSU but not in the above project, please write to specialcollections@sonoma.edu for more details.

We’re so glad you are considering making a contribution of your work to the University Archives!  Your donation helps to ensure that the SSU student experiences of your time here are preserved and accessible for future generations. We will follow up with you after you submit this form with any questions we may have; you may have some, too!

Be aware that, when you submit materials, we will ask you to agree to the following licensing agreement:

I hereby irrevocably grant Sonoma State University a non-exclusive, royalty-free worldwide license, with right to sublicense, to reproduce, distribute and publicly display the work[s] for inclusion in the collection of the Library and unrestricted access and use in connection with the educational mission of the university. I retain any and all copyright and merely grant Sonoma State University the right to preserve and provide unrestricted access and use, including Internet or other wireless or digital access to the work[s].