It is on the southwestern corner of the campus, south of Rachel Carson College and east of the Family Student Housing complex.

[2] Oakes was founded in 1972 as College Seven by Professors Herman J. Blake and Ralph C. Guzmán.

Blake, UCSC's only African American faculty member at the time, along with Guzmán, one of the few Mexican-American faculty on campus, proposed a compromise in which College Seven's academic program would focus on ethnic studies, particularly the studies of minority groups in California.

as a "minority college", partly due to its roots in radical elements of the Civil Rights Movement.

Noted political activist Angela Davis, an Oakes affiliate, [5] is a professor of history of consciousness, an unconventional program centering on the history of struggles for racial, economic and social justice and equality.