This type of activism and optimism speaks volumes about the students here, the faculty, the stuff, but also the character and history of Merced—a town built by laborers and immigrants from all over the world: early settlers who came her as pioneers and trailblazers in the late 1800s as part of the Gold Rush and built the churches and businesses and schools that exist; Americans who escaped slavery and the racism of the south to work on the the railways as truck drivers up and sown Route 99; Mexican Americans who travels north to find work on the farms and have since bacome the backbone of our agricultural industry; Asian Americas who arrived in San Francisco and have slowly branched out to become a part of the community in the San Joaquin Valley.