“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,” said 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. 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 planning of the year’s events for Hispanic Heritage Month— events that were already planned out before the meeting, and we’re almost exactly alike from prior years.
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. They were 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 has not been 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 to get people passing by 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 part of HACU as the requirement is to have 25% Latina/o enrollment. Currently there are 67-68% Latinx students enrolled at CSUB.
“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 University by one student.
CSUB 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 opportunity for them to be introduced to new experiences and opportunities. It also allows them to meet with different groups or institutions that are trying to add more diversity into their programs, 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 students take advantage of.
“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,” said Silva.
