Translate student voices into change

Earlier this week, Mi Gente published a letter in The Chronicle announcing their decision to cease working with the Admissions Office on Latino Student Recruitment Weekend. The letter also leveled complaints at campus and administrators for dismissing the needs of students of color with ten demands listed for the administration. The demands ranged from financial aid expansion for undocumented students to the creation of a Latino Studies department.

The need for a larger permanent space on campus harkens back to their initial acquisition of the current space last spring where Mi Gente’s former co-president made it clear that it was “just a temporary space.” The desire for physical meeting space is shared with a number of groups on campus, including graduate student groups, with their frustration heightened by construction priorities focusing on other campus buildings. From this and their other demands, the lines of tone and irritation can be clearly drawn to the many demands made last semester. As we did then, we harbor implementation concerns with what is being asked for. Many of these changes take multiple months or years of surveying, planning and doing by multiple parties. Ultimately, the letter from Mi Gente utilizes a tone that highlights the lack of relationship between Student Affairs and student organizations.

Regularly used channels of communication between students and administrators are essential. Fleeting periods of half-hearted standing meetings do not contribute to the institutional memory required to make progress on recurring concerns. Because most students are in and out after four years, every class tends to encounter the same problems over and over again as student leaders rise, learn and graduate. Official and regular meetings between administration and student organization leaders must be scheduled with recorded minutes as part of a sustainable approach to change. It is a shame that the momentum of these movements fade and the best suggestions for change become hackneyed. If the relationship between student leaders and administrators does not improve, the cynicism developing on campus will only grow with time. The onus of shifting campus culture should ultimately burden administrators to come together with students.

However, this is not to absolve students from all responsibility. As Mi Gente’s 2007-08 Co-President Alexandra Villasante-Fricke pointed out in a letter to the editor last week, change is brought through “contagious excitement” for ideas and meeting with leaders “across the campus.” For example, our Student Government tasks itself with being a relay between the administration and students, and we believe this job extends to linking student organizations and administrators. The Committee for Equity and Outreach has been and will continue to be a perfect megaphone for these particular student interests to grab the ears of administrators. While DSG is vulnerable to the same institutional memory problems as any student organization, it has a key role to play in representing not only student interests but also organized student interests on campus.

Student groups the campus over have demanded change and are struggling with why little has occurred thus far. The demands being made now compared to the work of Villasante-Fricke in her time at Duke are a product of some failing in linking up with Student Affairs and administrators. If discussions are being had, it is imperative that they be publicly recorded for students to see and learn from and that obstacles to progress be dealt with in an accountable fashion. On the flip side, student leaders need to adopt a positive, solution-oriented attitude in their approach to administration. Even if changes require years to be implemented, our voices should not require years to be heard.