UCSC students arrive ahead of first-ever “Downtown Day”

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION-TV) -- Thousands of UC-Santa Cruz students are slowly pouring into the university on the first real move-in days since the beginning of the pandemic.

Move-in day continues through September 22 and the university expects 6,100 new students for the fall 2021 quarter.

Overall about 18,600 students are attending UCSC this academic year. 9,300 of which will live in campus housing.

During the height of the pandemic, universities like UC-Santa Cruz had to shut their doors down to students and transition to online instruction. For many, this was a disruption to their everyday way of going to school. One student that KION spoke with says that despite being a sophomore in college, he stills feels like a freshman.

"The transition to having to mentally transition from being online in high school to online in university still felt like high school almost for the first year. So, as a sophomore coming in, I feel like a freshman," said Nathan Paredes, a student at UC Santa Cruz.

Danny Savin is a freshman at UC-Santa Cruz who spent his high school senior year inside but hopes to socialize once more.

"There’s been a couple of times where I thought maybe I’ll get to go back to school this time or this time, but this time it looks like I actually will get to do some in-person classes and stuff like that so really excited for that,” said Savin.

The campus is requiring students and staff to be vaccinated before stepping foot on campus. One student is glad to have in-person classes again.

"Online hybrid learning was not really for me, but I'm super excited to get back to the classroom, you know, just have that one on one connection with my professor," said Fernanda Ortiz.

Classes begin this Thursday, September 23rd.