Clara Dudley is a volunteer and site supervisor for the Santa Cruz needle exchange program. She was inspired early on during an Oxbow presentation by Jeff Schoenberg on homeless IDUs in San Francisco and the visibility of his kind of ethnography. It is a movement close to her heart (harm reduction, needle exchange, grassroots disease prevention, drug policy reform, etc). She has been a co-speaker at the National Harm Reduction Conference and is very proud of this program....to quote her "we didn't start it but we carry it on with love." She is also the Chapter Leader for the newly formed Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) chapter at UC Santa Cruz.
Oxbow opened me up to what was out there in the world to go out and grab, and gave me so much that I take with me everywhere I go, with everything I do.
— Nina Palomba, Spring 2008
I learned to drop all previous assumptions I had about people because I had never met anyone like the other students at Oxbow. For the first time, my peers and their insightful thinking inspired me. For example, during the ‘Einstein’s Dreams’ presentations, I kept looking around the room thinking, I can’t believe all of these students are talking the way I think.
— Sara DeLong, Spring 2010
The art that goes on in most high schools is usually relatively skill-based. At Oxbow, there is more emphasis on looking and seeing and more critical thinking about what you are doing, the human connection, that personal element. Through art you can begin to understand yourself better. That may be the biggest eye-opener for students. It is almost a preview of college. Get out of the mechanical factory high school education and get into something open, new, and invigorating in a small environment.
— Bill Barrett, Former Oxbow Board Member, Former Executive Director of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD)
A School Like No Other