For many members of the Colegio community, the most memorable campus event occurred on May 16, 1974, when Cesar Chavez paid his first visit to the college.... More than 600 people, mostly Mexican Americans, crowded into Guadalupe Hall to see and hear Chavez.... Chavez devoted most of his speech to the union’s fight with the growers, making his case for the boycott. But he also talked about Colegio, confessing that, if someone had told him five years earlier that Mexican Americans would have established their own college in Oregon, he ‘would have thought they were crazy.’ ‘Who knows?’ he added. ‘Maybe tomorrow there will be mariachi music in the White House.’May, Glenn Anthony. Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon. Oregon State University Press. Pages 174-5.
