UCLA Hunger Strike
On April 28th, 1993, the night before the funeral of Cesar Chavez, the Conscious Students of Color group at UCLA began a sit-in demonstration. Approximately 200 students took place in the protest on UCLA's campus, and 99 of them were arrested by UCPD and LAPD, who approached the campus in riot gear. Some of the students, and even a professor, decided to expand upon the sit-in protest and take part in a hunger strike where they abstained from eating any food. This hunger strike was inspired by the protest methods of Cesar Chavez himself. In 1968, Chavez completed his first hunger strike for agricultural workers where he did not consume any food and drank only water for 25 days.
The protests and strikes proved to be successful, as the Chicano Studies program was not only kept open, but it became its own department in 2005. The the department was titled the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicano/a Studies after the Chavez-inspired protesting that led to the department's formation. The department has since grown to become the home of over 450 undergraduate majors and minors, 30 PhD students, and 14 faculty members. The research done within the department from both students and faculty continues to expand as the years go on.