Thread: {SOB}Groups offer solace, support for depressed IAs

Groups offer solace, support
A growing sense of 'familia': As their numbers rise on the UCD campus, Latino students are getting a little help – from each other
By Stephen Magagnini - smagagnini@sacbee.com
Last Updated 8:56 am PST Monday, February 18, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1

Nayeli Uribe, 10, of Davis demonstrates a dance move for teacher Marisol Contreras during the 20th annual Danzantes Children's Dance Workshop at the University of California, Davis, campus earlier this month. The program teaches children traditional Mexican dance and encourages them to attend college.
Autumn Cruz / acruz@sacbee.com


Lisceth Cruz has helped UC Davis students through all kinds of trauma – none hurting more than the undocumented Latina who came to her three years ago on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"She said she was stopped by police near campus and told, 'You're illegal, now go back to Mexico,' " said Cruz, now coordinator of Davis' growing number of Latino programs. "She had to be taken to the hospital but couldn't be treated because she had no insurance – she had to get help from the community."

Today, immigrant students struggling with depression – or those who fear being deported or kicked out of school because they can't afford tuition – can turn to SPEAK, a new Latino club at Davis dedicated to helping undocumented students.

"The number of members has doubled since we started addressing this issue that was very taboo on campus," said 21-year-old Miriam Delgado.

SPEAK – Scholars Promoting Education, Awareness and Knowledge – reflects a wave of Latino activism that's broken over the Davis campus. More than 30 clubs, organizations, fraternities and sororities – 10 more than five years ago – are fighting diabetes and domestic violence, tutoring Latino classmates and teaching classes on college preparation.

"Three clubs aren't going to change the world, so each group homes in on a problem – women, children, high school students – and assesses what's needed and works together to raise money for it," Cruz said.

Delgado, a senior from Mexico, majoring in Spanish and Chicano studies, said she's never seen the campus "this active and socially conscious. There are new groups of students asking, 'How come we're not helping or supporting each other?' "

Among Davis' roughly 30,000 students there are 3,183 Latinos, most of Mexican ancestry. That's 700 more than in 2002, when Cruz started.

"We're starting to see the children of people who were Chicano activists in the '60s," Cruz said.

Those activists pushed for Chicano studies programs like the one at UC Davis that helped Cruz survive when she arrived as a lonely transfer student.

"I was working full time for an insurance broker and taking 24 units," said Cruz, an immigrant from Mexico City. "I felt a sense of 'otherness' and not belonging in so many ways until I found these organizations. I wouldn't be here without this sense of familia that surrounded me throughout my education."

Cruz said the organizations help newcomers stay in school.

"For every 100 Latino students in kindergarten, about 15 will make it to college and seven or eight will graduate," she said.

Cruz helped establish the La Raza Pre-Law Student Association, which has grown from five to 30 members in five years. "We've helped 11 go on to law school and eight get into Ph.D. programs," Cruz said.

With support comes "a big sense of responsibility," she said. Students cleaned houses, washed cars and held fundraisers to establish "Dream Scholarships" for undocumented students, more than $15,000 so far, Cruz said.

Members of the Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority, which opened two years ago, helped raise the money.

Chapter President Karen Tostado, 21, said most of the sisters know undocumented students who couldn't afford to go to college because they weren't eligible for financial aid.

"It's really heartbreaking," she said. "We all know undocumented students that have to work three to four jobs. A lot of times, they can't afford it anymore, so they just drop out."

Undocumented students admitted to public colleges or universities on merit are allowed to pay in-state tuition under Assembly Bill 540, passed in 2002.

A high school athlete from La Puente who got into Davis with a 3.5 grade point average, Delgado said the support SPEAK provides students – both financial and emotional – is critical, given the anti-immigrant sentiment in California. Last spring, Davis College Republicans organized a game of "Capture the Illegal Immigrant" in the quad.

"They made it a joke," Delgado said. "I was upset, but I know they weren't aware of what people live through to come here."

About 40 students from several dozen Latino organizations have been turning out on Friday afternoons to plan La Raza Cultural Days, a weeklong program April 28-May 3.

On one recent Friday, students voted to open La Raza Cultural Days with mariachis and close with samba, then debated the theme of this year's program.

Nominations included "la superasion de sufrimiento de nuestra gente" ("overcoming the suffering of our people"); "mothers' day" and "fathers' day." Consensus was reached on "student struggles and successes."

That resonated with Oscar San Emterio Nateras, whose Latino-based fraternity Nu Alpha Kappa is bringing 600 low-income high school students to campus May 2.

Nateras, a biomedical engineering and physics major who came from Mexico at 14, said he knows what some of those kids are up against.

"My mom, a bilingual teacher, lost her job and went on welfare," said Nateras, 21. "I went to three different high schools, and a counselor in San Jose told me people from Mexico don't go to university."

Javier Ortiz, who once attended UC Berkeley and graduated from UC Davis law school and now teaches in the University Writing Program, said he'd never seen so many Latino-based student groups before he came to Davis.

"They compete with each other as social advocates," Ortiz said.

Not all student leaders see the rise of Latino groups as a good thing. "It's creating some division in the community – who can get the most people, who can perform what," said Rocio Franco, 21, of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán).

When Griselda Castro, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs, joined MEChA as a student at San Jose State University in 1970, "it was considered the umbrella organization – it was the only organization."

Today, Castro said, "the diversity of organizations reflects the diversity of the students – recent immigrants, generations that don't speak Spanish, people from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and geographic areas."

Pamela L. Burnett, director of undergraduate admissions, said Latino organizations have played a key role in bringing Latino students to Davis.

"These kinds of interactions can help prospective Chicano/Latino students (and their parents) shift their impressions," Burnett said. "They realize that they, too, can be part of UC Davis."

That idea is planted early by groups such as Danzantes Del Alma. This month the dance group taught traditional Mexican steps to 100 students, ages 3 to 18, from throughout the Sacramento region.

"I had butterflies in my tummy, but it was exciting," said Priscila Narvaez, a 9-year-old from Woodland.

"It brings them back to their roots and gives them a piece of Jalisco that I can't give them," said her mother, Mary Narvaez. She thanked Danzantes members, who offered to help every student do what it takes to someday get into UC Davis.

"It makes me really proud," Narvaez said.


http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/719797.html

More propaganda.....

It's REAL hard to feel sorry for these people when there are millions of Americans who can't afford to send their kids to college.

She had to be taken to the hospital but couldn't be treated because she had no insurance - she had to get help from the community

Yeah right, the "community" basically means US middle-class taxpayers.
I have to pay for my insurance, and I'm sick & tired of paying for the health care and other costs for people who snuck into our country and shouldn't even be here.

They obviously have no intention of assimilating and want to keep their Mexican roots,even those here legally.

This type attitude will help destroy America and what they love about America will slowly disolve under the pressure of these special interest groups who want to have the USA change to their way of thinking which will ruin the cohessive "One Nation Under God" nature of our great nation.

I lost my job too but I don't get any welfare to keep me hanging on. My mother worked double-shifts as a waitress for years to support us then went on to get a 4.0 in criminal justice and is now an assistant attorney general for the state of Florida. We never had welfare, and she was clearly "above" being a waitress but that's what she did and it nearly killed her. We lived on $5 a day for food for four and lived in an apt that was broken into 5 times while we were in it! No housing assistance, no welfare. We didn't break into someone else's country either - we were in our own.

Is this crap a joke or what? Only in California would someone try to make a case that illegal aliens are traumatized by being illegal aliens?

I hope that this organization "SPEAK – Scholars Promoting Education, Awareness and Knowledge" is screened for illegals, and all of them deported!!!

I tell you depressing.

Depressing is a country that allows illegal invaders to attend a school like UC Davis, thereby essentially taking a spot that should go to an American Citizen who deserves the opportunity!

USPatriot writes:

They obviously have no intention of assimilating and want to keep their Mexican roots,even those here legally.

This type attitude will help destroy America and what they love about America will slowly disolve under the pressure of these special interest groups who want to have the USA change to their way of thinking which will ruin the cohessive "One Nation Under God" nature of our great nation.

The loyalties of these people will always remain with Mexico, irrespective of the opportunities this country gives them. I have never understood this loyalty to a country that does not give a damn about it's citizens and according to them, forces them to go north just to survive.

This is exactly what you get with a third world, uneducated mentality.

Soon, it will no longer be hot dogs, apple pie, and baseball.

It will be tacos, tres leche pastel and soccer!