against the evils of American society and, in particular, against the horrors of the Vietnam War." The students then tried to award an honorary degree to Huey P. Newton (who was in jail at the time, although he went on to earn his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees at Santa Cruz). Kerr later recalled this episode of "guerrilla theatre" as "one of the worst afternoons of my life."
According to Kerr's account, during the 1970s, the quality of UC Santa Cruz's incoming freshman classes deteriorated as Me generation students increasingly chose to matriculate at less experimental UC campuses in order to major in subjects such as engineering and business administration (both absent from Santa Cruz). Another major factor behind the decrease in quality was a series of "grisly murders" around Santa Cruz, which at the time was labeled the "murder capital of the world". The average SAT scores of UC Santa Cruz's incoming students dropped from 1250 in the early 1970s to 1050 by the early 1980s.
=== Sinsheimer Reforms …
