Distinguished early faculty members included Gregory Bateson, former husband of Margaret Mead and author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Phil Slater, author of The Pursuit of Loneliness; John Grinder, co-founder of Neuro-linguistic programming and co-author of The Structure of Magic; and William Everson, one of the Beat poets.

Distinguished graduates from the early days of Kresge College include Doug Foster, who went on to become editor of Mother Jones magazine, and Richard Bandler, who co-founded Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) with John Grinder.

[4] The geometry and bright colors of the end facades resonate with the campus' original architecture by Charles Moore and William Turnbull of MLTW.

[6] The new Kresge Academic Center, also designed by Studio Gang, opened in 2023 on Upper Street, where the old Town Hall previously stood.

Organic, gently curved outer walls are finished with white plaster, tying the materials of the new building with the original architecture.

"[9] The problem with running the college as a participatory democracy was that only the most committed activists could make it work; everyone else was either sidelined or simply fled.

Kresge's idiosyncratic architecture, designed by architects William Turnbull and Charles Moore, is based on a fantasy Italian village which winds up the hillside.

For example, it is included in G. E. Kidder Smith's 1996 book Sourcebook of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings from the 10th Century to the Present (Princeton University Press).

At the north end of the college was the Kresge Town Hall, which has seen many groundbreaking performances, including the third Talking Heads concert on the west coast, given Dec 4, 1977.

In 1979, Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer implemented major reforms at the Santa Cruz campus which finally ended the most unusual aspects of the Kresge experiment.

The architects originally wanted to put a neon sign from an S. S. Kresge department store at the entrance to the college, but this idea met too much resistance.

It is open to all Kresge affiliates, from first years to transfer students, and engages in community service, funding requests, and occasionally hosts events.

KMEC sponsors PRIDE, an annual campus wide event starting at the Bookstore and ending in Kresge Lower Street.

An annual welcome week tradition is the Board Walk Frolic where UCSC students collectively go to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Parliament also purchased a ping pong table which is located in the laundry room where students are able to play against each other while waiting for their clothes to finish washing.

Kresge may also be a place where the Jewish Renewal movement was advanced as Reb Zalman-Schacter visited Professor Michael Kahn, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, several times in the early 1970s.

Adam Carson, drummer for the band AFI, lived in an apartment in Kresge his sophomore year of college which he "spent all my time hanging out with Fritch at Stevenson.

Then I dropped out and went on tour..." He recalls it as "the bigger mistake" he made, after living at Rachel Carson College his freshman year.