^{When asked about the banners made for the Alexander Protests, Maria Torres comments on how the community also responded to them as well, especially the banner that stated “Honk for Diversity.”}

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Which meant that every time a car went by College Ave., they honked…in front of the building. Not everyone honked! Some people were like [makes angry hand gestures]… but other people were honking; a lot more people were honking than were not. So one of the things we did is: we just made sure the students were safe. That was the whole objective. Make sure they were safe, make sure they were not being threatened in any way, make sure that they were being listened to…that was important.

• And when it was done, where were you? Or how did you feel when they…

When it was done,  I was in the building. We went in, and we talked to a number of faculty, the administrators went in. When the administration basically gave the students some really big demands they yielded and said, ‘we are gonna give you this: one, two, three, four.’ SO when that was done, a group of faculty and a number of administrators, we went in to talk to the students and say, ‘you’re done. You’ve won. You’ve got these concessions from the administration. It’s time for you to go home and go back to your studies now. It’s time for you to do that. And I think the students were very orderly about it because they knew had achieved their goal. If they had not achieved their goal, they wouldn’t have felt so good about it. But I think it’s the fact that the concessions were made. I think the faculty felt, and the students felt, and the administrators that were there felt that everyone was acting in good faith and that the demands were basically met. That the big, big parts of the demand: more faculty, more students of color at the Claremont Colleges… I think those demands were all met. They said, yes we’ll make a commitment to hire more faculty, yes we make a commitment to look at Asian American Studies, and make a commitment to bring in more Black students…

• And did that happen immediately? Or was it more said than done?

Well, not immediately, not immediately. No, because it takes time. But the effort was there.

• And the recognition …?

And the recognition for the need was there. It took a little while. It wasn’t a long while, mind you, it was…you know, steps were set in: we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do this – so it was very systematic. So things did change and more students were brought in, and I think you can clearly see that these students are much more diversified than they were back then.

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