t.
THE
ETROPOLITAN
The Metropolitan State College of Denver student newspaper serving the Auraria Campus since 1979
Denver, Colorado
Volume 13, Special Edition
January 1991
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Photo courtesy of the Auraria Library Archives & Special Collectlons
The birth of Auraria
Campus: A tri-institutional adventure
Carson Reed The Metropolitan October 19, 1983- Ten years ago, MSC was a rapidly growing four year institution, but with no place to go. Only eight-yearsol~. MSC was an awkward adolescent suffering through an amazing growth spurt. UCD, on the other band, had been around for just about forever - since 1938, but only as an appendage to CU in Boulder. Ten years ago, it was celebrating its one-year
anniversary as a full-fledged, state institution of higher learning. In that year the Regents officially changed the name to University of Colorado at Denver, although people still had a tendency to refer to-it as a CU extension. DACC, then CCD, centered around a rather sleazy section of Broadway. It was only six-years-old, and also gr<?wing. Both students and faculty at CCD seemed to go about the business of education oblivious to the ramshackle surroundings. For the students, at least, there was frequently a sense
of wonder that they could afford to be ir. school at all. Legislative declaration of Section 23-70101, which established the Auraria Higher Education C_enter, was still a full.year away. Butthat isn'tto say all was quiet on the Front Range. To the contrary, voters had already made preliminary approval of the concept in 1969 and, as a consequence, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) was quietly buying up and clearing the 169 acres of see AURARIA page 9