Latino students lived in a couple of places in the 1960s and 1970s. Diana Rivera remembered, "the majority of us were in South Campus, Holden, Wilson, Wonders.” Other students, like Juan Marinez, were not "traditional" college students and lived with their spouses and children in local Lansing neighborhoods.

Eventually, students fought for a culture room in Wilson Hall. African American students had successfully acquired a culture room for themselves where Black students could meet informally. Chicano students wanted the same for themselves. Pedro Rivera and Larry Gayton held meetings with the Residence Halls Association to achieve a Chicano culture room. This would later be known as the CRU room. 

Students had a variety of jobs and many balanced full-time work and courses. For those who worked on campus, the Center for Urban Affairs, where pivotal community member José Treviño, worked, was an important place of employment. One document we found stated that, “The Center for Urban Affairs employed 14 Mexican-American students through work-study in the summer of 1970 to work in the community development program and continued its support of work-study students this past summer.”

Excerpt from 1971; “MSU and the Chicano Community”; Box: 5, Folder 14

Latinos on campus did engage with the Latino community in Lansing. There was a decent amount of crossover at Cristo Rey community center and also Quinto Sol, a base for political organizing, in Lansing, where Latinos from campus would host meetings and could meet for entertainment.

In 1971, members of Mecha transfromed into CHISPA. Students recognized that Mecha, meaning wick, was the beginning of their organizing, but hoped that the chispa, or spark, in English, would propel their activism even further. Chispa operated on MSU's campus for more than 20 years before being renamed to CRU (Culturas de las Raza Unidas) to include all Latino students at MSU in 1993. 

Delia Villegas Vorhauer founded MUM in Michigan in the mid 1970s. M.U.M. was an early Chicana organization in the mid-Michigan area with a mission to empower and secure equal opportunity for Chicanas and Latinas in Michigan.

In 1975, women who experienced machismo on MSU's campus from members of the Chicano community branched out to form their own MUM chapter. 

In the early 1970s, Chicano men played on this intermural baseball team. Baseball was a popular past time with Mexican American communities since the turn of the century. Los Chingaderos is a part of Lansing's long history of Latino baseball teams. 

In the early 1970s, Chicanas played on this intermural softball team. Both the women's and men's teams were another site of community building for the first Chicanos and Latinos on campus. They reported some tense moments with opposing teams that they felt was due to racism. Oral history participants recalled that their complaints to the intermural administrators went unanswered.