The Santa Clara March 22, 1961, issue gives context to big change. It reflects fear about admitting women, but also optimism. The Alumni Association president at the time, Richard Lautze ’39, was pleased. “I have four daughters.”
Echoes of the broader world can be found in a student newspaper, says Nadia Nasr, head of Archives & Special Collections at the SCU library. “It is easy to think ‘Oh, university history, whatever,’” she says, “but you really do see a lot of what was happening on a national scale reflected locally and in microcosm on your campus communities.” Now it’s easier to access those SCU stories from anywhere in the world. The Archives & Special Collections digitized 2,367 issues of The Santa Clara. Newspapers from 1922 through 2013—more than 24,000 pages—are available now online and searchable via keywords. With an online archive, researchers can remotely learn about a time directly from the people who lived it. And Nasr says the archive is full of valuable lessons about Santa Clara, the Mission Church, and the United States as a whole.