July 15, 2008
SAN DIEGO, Calif.
Kennedy Vermilion
“We’re going to meet at the Cross,” Kevin Mann says. To some students and faculty, the Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) is their home away from home. Many people came to the original site to study, eat lunch, meditate or as Joseph Ramirez, the facility manager, says, “Just breathe.” The CCC is a place of refuge, security, quiet, and relaxation.
The CCC has struggled to make their newest location as welcoming and uplifting as before. “It’s a home. It’s a community,” Lea Burgess-Carland, the administrative manager, says. The walls of the new location are still bare, unlike the painted and tagged walls of their old home.
The newest home of the CCC, the Price Center, is the student center of the UCSD campus. Professors and students utilize the Price Center for dining, shopping, computer usage and socializing. Heavy traffic flow through the Price Center brings in curious people wondering what the window painted with “CCC” is. While the newcomers to the CCC do not find the Price Center location to be unsettling, the alumni are still getting used to the new environment.
“It’s for the those that want to get out of the world,” Joseph Ramirez says. The CCC staff is in the process of warming the walls with decor and renovating the rooms. They want to welcome the new users and comfort the old. They hope to bring in the same consolation as the previous centers. Their front office wall has been covered with colorful and vivrant phrases and words that express the Cross-Cultural Center’s purpose. As the wall displays, the Cross-Cultural Center will continue “building commUNITY from the ground up."
