What are we doing and why are we doing it? Those seem to be the questions that keep coming up as I try to differentiate my thoughts from a once thoughtless category of opinion. What opinions you ask? Well let’s start with the obvious narrative of politics and all its rich participants, oh sorry, I meant rich discussions.
“I think a lot of people don’t really know what DACA is. People think [Trump] can’t really do anything about it, but they don’t really understand the difference between an executive order and the law,” she said. “He can literally just take that piece of paper and throw it in the trash and that will be it. It won’t mean anything anymore.”
Fear of a Trump presidency is in fact prompting many to shy away from applying for the program or from renewing their paperwork out of fear their information will be used by the government to initiate deportation proceedings against them.
Growing up in the Valley shaped me. It made me who I am and the problems I’m passionate to solve. Merced is home, and it’s desperately in need of help. Our crime rate is among the nation's highest. Over a third of our people [live] below the poverty line, and our children suffer from epidemics of chronic disease. But we also have world-class resources and, if we do things right, a chance to really reinvent Merced and transform the region that raised me.
Renteria has been working with Students Advocating Law and Education (SALE), a UC Merced group comprised of undocumented students and allies that has been promoting voter registration on campus this fall. A week of registration and voter education events are planned for Oct. 18 through 21, in the lead up to California's deadline on Oct. 24.
“Many of the students I talk to know there are undocumented people, but they just don’t know there are undocumented students,” she says. “Once you find a way to relate it to them though, it’s easier for them to understand the importance [of the issue] and pay attention.”
“It’s really important that the communities who are disenfranchised and have been ignored for so long, turn out and vote. They have power and they can help make a change,” said Brenda Gutierrez, organizing director of Associated Students of University of California, Merced (ASUCM).
The 20-year-old university student spent a majority of her summer going door-to-door in Merced County to help spread the word about several ballot measures and campaigns this year. Her work was part of the ASUCM external office “We Vote” program, a statewide initiative across the UC campuses aimed at getting students more involved in elections.
Though the numbers are grim, perhaps the tide is beginning to turn. A bright spot: on Friday May 22nd, the 52nd Annual Commencement ceremony at Merced College took place and of the 1,180 degrees and certificate awarded, a majority went to Latinos.
I think in California we have a separate dream: The California dream. We have the opportunity to be different than the rest of the nation. And I think we pivot that difference off the fact that we have these great universities, and great state schools and great community colleges. But they can’t be great in name only. It takes substance under that. I think for a long time now we’ve been hiding behind reputation as opposed to what really matters, which is public support.
Aceves says she never thought about her Hispanic identity or the fact that there are relatively few Hispanics in science until recently, when she perused the names and faces of others in her program. “There was no one that looked like me,” she remembers. Indeed, according to the National Science Foundation, Hispanics account for only 10 percent of all STEM-related degrees. Census data from 2011 show Hispanics make up only 11 percent of the STEM workforce. The number of Latinas within these groups is even smaller. It’s something Aceves is hoping to change.
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