“There should be collaboration and communication between all the Affinity Groups so that we can better support each other… We should have annual meetings where all the Affinity Groups get together,” commented Adrianne Silva, a member on the Executive Committee of the Latina/o Staff and Faculty Association.
Adrianne works with graduate students here at California State University, Bakersfield. She promotes networking to all her students and encourages them to get involved in Campus Life. This led her to taking her own advice and signing up to be involved in the Latina/o Association but what she didn’t know is that she was signing up for a position on the executive committee. The process of getting accepted into the association, and committee, was fairly easy. An email is sent out and they send an email back with a response that she was in. However, she waited for an extended amount of time, around six months, before she was contacted and asked to come to her first meeting.
“There wasn’t anything for me to do… They had it all figured out… It felt like I was just there for moral support,” said Adrianne.
The meeting encapsulated the year’s events. The events for Hispanic Heritage Month were already planned out before the meeting, which was later revealed that the events were mostly an exact replica of past years events. The committee seemed to break away, and drift apart, when Dr. Faust passed away last year. The events last year were mostly shouldered by Jorge Villatoro and Rubicelia Gomez, some of the “powerhouses”, as said by Adrianne, on the committee, but it seems that this year is different. The executive committee for the Latina/o Association will be getting new members and co-chair, who have yet to be identified or determined. In past events, Adrianne would just be a helping hand.
She would help with passing out food and drinks to the students of Cal State Bakersfield. She would also try Commented [AT1]: I would say something more like “Inside the Life of Adrianne Silva: Executive Committee Member of the Latina/o Staff and Faculty Association ” to get passersby’s to take a moment and partake in the events.
She commented that she brought a new perspective to the table when discussing the events for Hispanic Heritage Month. She was asked if she could get the word out to her graduate students so that they could come to the events that were planned. However, all these events were planned to be during the day, which wasn’t viable for graduate students who come to campus in the late afternoons. This seemed to stick with the members that were planning the events for the month, as if you look at the calendar for this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month there are events that are set to start at a later time. Everyone celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month in different ways. Adrianne celebrates it by going to different conferences for the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). She attends these conferences put on by the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), which takes graduate students to conferences in San Diego and Puerto Rico to show them other places that they can go for graduate schools and to network for higher education.
Claudia Catota, Chief Diversity Officer and Special Assistant to the President, mentioned that CSUB is a part of HACU as the requirement is to have 25% Latina/o enrollment and there are around 67-68% of Latinx students enrolled. “The HACU travel cohort is a competitive pool and I am glad that it is…”, Claudia said.
HACU started back in 2016-17 with one participant and has grown exponentially as the years have gone by. They had the largest delegation of students last year and beat California State San Bernadino by one student. Adrianne is able to take part in HACU conferences by helping facilitate and chaperone 20 to 30 undergraduates. This is able to happen as Cal State Bakersfield is considered a Hispanic Serving Institution. These undergraduates are receiving the Hispanic Excellence Scholarship, that pays for them to go on this trip to the HACU conferences. This is an incredible opportunity for them as it not only introduces them to new experiences and opportunities. It allows them to meet with different groups or institutions that are trying to diversify themselves, such as the CIA, FBI and higher education institutions. These experiences plant the seeds for consideration of branching out to different places for graduate schools, which most of the time the students take advantage of. Adrianne left me with one important parting thought that everyone should take into consideration, “Go out and participate, don’t just go for the food, go and be a part of it, both students and staff… be more open-minded, people of all ages.
