Dream Eater

This blog is inspired by the comments of Ethan Singer, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at San Diego State University.

For the last three months there has been resistance from the community against the removal of the SDSU local admission guarantee policy. The guarantee allowed all students in the SDSU service area, who were CSU Eligible, admission to the university.

According to Singer, changes in the policy were to ensure the admission of students with the highest level of academic preparation. Some screamed academic elitism others cried institutional racism, but most recognized that the policy would undoubtedly deny access to Latino students who reside within the service area. A true tragedy in the fight for access to higher education.

Singer continued, “We have great students from the San Diego area, but we also have a mass of students that are really underprepared, in the same classroom with people with 3960 eligibility and above.” 3960, is a number that refers to the eligibility index which is created with high school grades and SAT/ACT test score. Singer commented, “You have to look at academic preparation even more so than you have in the past.”

So the focus is on academic preparation.

Latino and low socioeconomic students have consistently seen years and patterns of subordination, exclusion, and marginalization by K-12 educational institutions. Equal educational opportunities is non-existent in our public education system. For many Latinos the system has failed them through serious underfunding, inadequate facilities, lack of instructional equipment, untrained teachers, and various other reasons.

Our communities to continue struggling in order to create the changes that many earlier civil rights leaders dreamt about and fought for in the past. Unfortunately, their dreams, especially the dream of equal educational opportunity and full access to college, are not yet a reality. Drop out rates continue to hover around the fiftieth percentile for Latino students on a local, state, and national level. In addition, many Latino students from lower socio-economic communities do not have the luxury to leave their communities and enroll in universities away from home.

In spite of economic difficulties, educational inequality and lack of academic preparation in middle and high school, Latino students have enrolled, persisted, and graduated from the CSUs. It is the resiliency of our community that has helped Latinos overcome the inequities and succeed. The removal of the Local Admit Guarantee policy has united the Latino community and remind us of the struggle we are still in to create true equity in our society.

I do not write this in frustration or anger, but with optimism for the future. This is a call to action, this is a response to the dream killing policy SDSU has enacted. I am a Latino who was academically unprepared, one who could not afford to leave my family, and attended my service area CSU. There I found an opportunity to succeed, I thrived, and became the first college graduate of my family. I am a product of the CSU system and I advocate for its affordable and quality education it provides. I believe in the saying "Education is the true equalizer," I will continue to work for access and success for my community and help them progress through education.

Esta La Victoria Siempre.