At the University of California at Santa Cruz, a large-scale multicultural brouhaha erupted over a routine decision about a college dinner menu. By the time it was all over, it had widened to accommodate professional vendettas and caused several besieged and demoralized administrators to resign.

Two colleges, Crown and Merrill, share the same dining facilities. Weeks ahead of the incident, Merrill had chosen an Asian theme for the dinner menu, but a Crown assistant Kyoko Freeman, a Japanese-American alumna, noticed that the dinner happened to fall on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. She brought this information to Crown staff members, who, mindful of the memories that day evoked, decided that there would be better times to celebrate Asian-American relations and chose a non-ethnic theme for the night.

Merrill had recently redefined the meal as Filipino, but this failed to materialize because Filipino students failed to supply the food manager with recipes. Some Merrill students started to pass a rumor through the dining hall that the staff at Crown (which has more Asian students than any other UCSC college) had refused to serve Filipino food because they blamed Filipinos and all Asians for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Late that evening Crown's Provost Peggy Musgrave was roused out of bed by a phone call from City-on-a-Hill Press, the student newspaper. The reporter demanded to know why Crown had refused to follow Merrill's choice of menu. Having just heard about the issue for the first time at the dinner itself, Musgrave reiterated the reasons the college staff had given her concerning Pearl Harbor Day, which she thought sensible. The newspaper mangled the Provost's statement beyond recognition: "Musgrave implied that for one day each year, Asians should not express their 'unpatriotic' culture, but instead eat all-American to denounce that shameful aspect of their history." The article also linked the events at Crown to the Japanese internment in U.S. concentration camps during World War II.

Over the next few days, fliers blanketed the campus that denounced the Crown administration as "racist." Crown staff members were besieged by angry student delegations and phone calls, including death threats. One observer later testified that "half the staff was in tears on a regular basis—the place was like a morgue."

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