Berkeley Talks: What are Berkeley’s Latinx Thriving Initiatives?

[Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Intro: This is Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Friday. Also, we have another podcast, Berkeley Voices, that shares stories of people at UC Berkeley and the work that they do on and off campus.

[Music fades out]

Angelica Garcia: Bienvenidos a todos. Welcome to our Latinx Thriving Initiative podcast, where we take on the question of what it means for UC Berkeley to become a Hispanic Serving Institution, and the direct impact it will have on its Latinx campus community. By bringing together Latinx identifying faculty, students and campus organizations, we create a conversation with the university to center the needs of the Latinx community on campus.

Welcome, everyone. Bienvenidos a todos to our first podcast episode of the Latinx Thriving Initiative. I’m your host, Angelica Garcia with two special guests. Today I have the pleasure of joining in conversation with Dania Matos, who is the vice chancellor, and Fabrizio Mejia, the associate vice chancellor for the Division of Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley. Welcome, Dania and Fabrizio.

Dania Matos: Thank you for having us, Angelica. Hola, saludos a todos.

Fabrizio Mejia: Thank you. Great to be here.

Angelica Garcia: In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the effort and plans behind the Latinx Thriving Initiative, UC Berkeley’s effort to becoming an HSI, a Hispanic Serving Institution.

I wanted to begin by asking both of you about your educational journey and how that has led you to the position that you hold today.

Dania Matos: I think this is so important because the power of storytelling and having people hear themselves in this podcast is really important for that. I always say education started in the womb for me, and so I started … I was born to a single mom who raised me to know that I was inheriting a struggle and I had a responsibility to do something in the world. She always also said education’s one thing no one can take from you, and that was really powerful for me, because I saw her actual sacrifices to that. I was born in Puerto Rico and we moved to Miami when I was two because she wanted to finish her college education and be an example to her 2-year-old daughter. When I say it started young, it started really young and just seeing my mom take me everywhere, maybe places where I wasn’t even supposed to go before there were student parent centers.

My mom was that student parent building systems for herself because not all systems are built for us. We left my whole family, she left by herself, and so that courage and that fearlessness is something that’s been within me. So for me, it’s just been one of those places where I knew that my education and my fulfillment really started at home. I was educated in spaces where the textbooks weren’t really reflecting my story. They weren’t honoring the colonial relationship of the United States and Puerto Rico, and I was getting that from my mom and my abuelita, and I’m so grateful to them because in many ways I should have paid them the money that these schools were charging because they were doing that so much more powerfully.

I also knew I had a big mouth and I picked a career that would help me get into some good trouble. So I became an attorney because I wanted to translate the law for my communities. I saw it harming my communities in so many ways. For those of you who are go to law school, when you get to criminal law cases, a lot of the cases will have United States vs. Ortiz, which is what my family’s last name is, or United States vs. Menendez or United States vs. insert Latina last name or Latinx last name. That was really hard to see that we were often the defendants. When I was one of the first or the only, people would often looked to me. I was dreading the day that there was going to be United States vs. Matos because I was going to have to sort of explain that. Really having that zealous advocacy became really, really important.

My journey took me to there, to law school, to many different spaces and places. I was helping my single mom pay for my younger siblings’ education and so I started my career in corporate law because they pay well, but it wasn’t really where my heart was. So when we talk about sacrifices, sometimes it’s being able to do those things too. Then when I wrote the last check to my brother’s school, I said, “I’m going to go do me.” So federal public defense was where my heart was and really, really gratifying. The thread in my client’s story is that oftentimes there was no one to see the greatness in them when they didn’t see it in themselves. At the time, I was doing consulting for my undergrad in this work of equity, inclusion, belonging, justice and diversity and I really took the time to realize where’s my heart?

My heart was there. How could I make it when I’m not celebrating one less sentencing guidelines or one less day in jail, but I’m actually celebrating them not being impacted by this system? Because let’s be real. Higher education is another system, but for me, that’s really kind of … the educational journey doesn’t end. That’s kind of a little bit of the pathway and hoping to do more learning and growing now here at UC Berkeley.

Fabrizio Mejia: That’s a great question. My pathway, I also started with my mom. She came here as an immigrant at 17.

Dania Matos: Shout out to the mamas.

Fabrizio Mejia: The mamas, yeah. She had a vision. She had a vision that her family, whenever that was established, was going to live a better life, and she saw that through education. Even though we didn’t know how to navigate higher ed, even though we didn’t know what that would entail, how we were going to pay for it, we just knew that that was just a given. You’re going to college and whatever else you think is important to you, figure it out. We’re going to do that as a family. So fast-forward, and I watched my mom navigate being a leader in the union, navigate her queendom at home or what I would call … and then have to act different as a woman of color, being a custodian and being a leader.

That would always piss me off, that the dignity of our parents, they can’t always live that in some of these structures. I saw that early on and I was like, “That’s bullshit, and I got to do something about it.” So then fast-forward, I came to Berkeley, didn’t know as an undergrad and really had no sense of how I was going to make it here, how I was going to pay for it, had a real sense of imposter phenomenon, imposter syndrome, what they call it, because I felt like it was so much on me, that if I didn’t do this thing that was from my family, how would I go home and look them in the eye? There was a real sense of anxiety and anxiety a lot that I didn’t share until I finally did. For me, the program, some of the programs like EOP and other folks here were really that first space where I was able to talk about what it meant to be a first generation college student, what it meant to navigate a system like Berkeley that wasn’t built for us.

That’s where the seeds of this work started for me, even though when I graduated, I went to go work for a law firm and decided that was not my avenue and came back here and said, “You know what? I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” to my former counselor and he’s like, “You know what’s interesting? Everything that you do on the side, peer advising, peer counseling, mentoring, why not counseling?” I was like, “Oh, shit.” I went home and applied for my counseling masters and applied for a job here eventually and became an EOP counselor. Then the imposter phenomenon followed me there. As a professional, first time any of us in my extended family, 13 brothers and sisters from my dad was in this kind of work. I remember my dad used to say, “Mijo, you made it if you work in an air conditioning. If you work out of the sun, you made it.”

So here I was as a counselor. Berkeley didn’t have air conditioning because we didn’t have climate change at that time, but the point was I wasn’t out in the sun. I was working in a job that was a little more safe. We didn’t have to worry about getting fired for no damn reason like my parents did and had to face, but I had to navigate being a first generation professional. So everything that I did from there was to really think about how do I set up structures and systems and programs where our people don’t have to navigate that by themselves, that it’s intentional, it’s built with us in mind, is changing the nature of it?

And I’ll say, I did not see myself as a leader then. I saw myself as serving the community in whatever way I had to. It wasn’t until, and I’ll fast-forward, someone made me understand that the kind of leader I was was needed too, that an introvert, somebody that can really understand people, read situations, communicate things, bring perspectives together was an equal skill than somebody that can come in. We are all needed in our various ways of being on … whether it’s introverted, extroverted, or ambiverted, in the middle somewhere and it wasn’t until I began seeing myself in that light that I saw, “You know what? I do have something to contribute” and that confidence in me and being a leader grew. That was a little bit of my journey.

Angelica Garcia: Thank you so much for sharing that and being able to share something like that because it’s not easy to share the things that we go through, that imposter syndrome that doesn’t stop following you. I feel like, I mean, even myself just thinking of how I’m an undergrad right now, and obviously imposter syndrome hasn’t left, and just to think that after I graduate, it won’t leave me. I remember I saw a quote, something about how you never get rid of imposter syndrome, but you just learn to cope with it. You learn to have it there as your companion at all times. You befriend it because that’s always going to follow you. I really like how you said, Dania, that it started in the womb. I feel like based on what you both have said, our mothers are … they’re so powerful. They’re chingónas.

There’s a lot of things that go on within our educational journeys that do bring us to the positions that we’re at, the position that I hope to be in the future hopefully as an adviser at a high school.

But thank you so much for sharing that and just creating systems, creating spaces and things like that where we can thrive is definitely something that is the topic of what we’re discussing today. Now with that being said, I want to move forward to asking both of you all questions about the Latinx Thriving Initiative and where UC Berkeley finds itself on the path towards an HSI designation. To start off, what is the Latinx Thriving Initiative?

Dania Matos: I wanted to go back a little bit to what you were saying, Angelica, about imposter syndrome and maybe some of the shifting in narrative. You’re right in that it’s important to have language that carries with us and stays with us and recognizing it to interrupt it, but also the recognition that systems and institutions weren’t built for us, so the institutional syndrome and naming that becomes important.

That’s a little bit of what we are building through the Latinx Thriving Initiatives. Emphasis on the S, y’all, because it’s a plurality of things. It’s not one single answer that’s going to address it all, but it’s really thinking about what’s the institutional syndrome here at UC Berkeley, and how have Latinx communities not been centered or thriving in these ways? It really becomes important in that way. I talk about this often as a legal scholar practitioner. The federal government doesn’t always designate us the way we choose.

There’s a practical standpoint of this that’s about becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution. That’s why you’ll hear HSIs a lot, and it’s important in that naming and framing. Dr. Gina Garcia is a sort of national expert who talks about this, but for us, it’s really taking it beyond that. Because becoming an HSI is about 25% enrollment of undergraduate students, which by the way, the federal government does not count graduate students, and we care about graduate students here too, and then the Pell. So 50% Pell, and that’s just target and points.

For us, we’re thinking about, to really build this ecosystem where we are honoring, bringing in more Latinx community, but also honoring the different ways of knowing and being, which are so counter to the way U.S. higher educational system is done.

You think about it, it’s one individual. It’s a GPA, it’s not a community effort. It’s learning from a lecture or someone speaking at you vs. speaking with you. Those nuances become so important.

Latinx Thriving Initiatives is a multifaceted campuswide effort, but not just campus. It’s really thinking and honoring our mission of a public institution and how do we center community in that? We’re not just a community center that people come to or get admitted to and leave from in four years, but a place where they’re having an impact and creating that. As you can imagine, it involves all the things that is Latinx thriving, but as we shared in our educational journey, it also becomes really personal.

Being a part of my community, it really matters to me that I get to be everything my younger self needed, and I get to be in a position of privilege now where I get to say that, “You know what? This would’ve been really good.”

Those moments where I was crying because a professor said something in a classroom or I explained the cases in my criminal law class, it would’ve been really great to have a professor contextualize that so that my classmates were not walking away with, “Oh, folks with this last name are all criminals.”

It’s all those nuance points and it’s the collective effort that it’s going to take all of us. I really love it and at the same time, it’s really soul filling in the way that I get to do this now for not only myself, but everyone across this community.

Fabrizio Mejia: I’ll add that I think there was intentionality. I know there was intentionally, I don’t think, in adding the S to “Initiatives,” it’s collecting all the work that is happening, honoring that historical effort, that ongoing effort, but also asking ourselves what else? What does it look like to have a Latinx student body, Latinx staff, Latinx faculty that are all thriving from the moment they conceptualize, “Is Berkeley a place for me?” to the moment they land on the campus and say, “Where do I see myself in this environment? How do I meet my aspirations? Am I getting the support all the way through?” Then that there is intentionality in design in how folks develop themselves through that. I think a lot about Professor Tara Yosso, who talks about community cultural wealth, and I won’t get deep into it, but she breaks down … I believe it’s seven different ways to measure community wealth, that there’s a way to measure wealth around money, around education, around blah, blah, blah, blah.

But there’s also a way, if you want to center Latinidad, Latina, Latinx folks, that you lift up particular ways of measuring wealth, aspirational wealth, the ways in which we build community wealth, etc., etc., etc. This gets to Professor … Professor.

Dania Matos: Soon to be, thank you.

Fabrizio Mejia: Soon to be. Vice Chancellor Matos’s … this take that, it’s really a broader look at what do you center as excellence as what we want to achieve? What’s the outcome? When you come to this campus, you’re transformed into something or you transform it. What does that interplay and what does that mean and what is centered in that transformation? Because if we let the narrative be dictated for us, it’ll continue to center whiteness as the outcome.

Dania Matos: I also wanted to name that part of it is that as we are dismantling things and honoring the Latinx community, it doesn’t mean we’re taking away from others, that as we are sort of being able to say, “Actually this communal learning or community way of learning is more responsive to centering community, that benefits everyone.” That scarcity mentality is exactly what white supremacy culture will have us think.

So really thinking that it’s a benefit for everyone and that there’s enough for everyone. I like to live in a world of abundance and possibilities and making it so. It’s really important to see the Latinx Thriving Initiatives is really something to benefit everyone. Where we say to be Latinx thriving is also to address anti-racism. It is to address disability justice. It is to address our STEM initiatives. It’s to address our LGBTQ+ community so that they’re all connected, because we know just everyone around here listening has so many stories and there’s so many parts of who you are, that these initiatives are really cultivated for you by you and that there’s no one individuality to it. I thought it was important to name that.

Fabrizio Mejia: I’ll give some examples of that. I think when we think about the kinds of things we’re lifting up in the LTI, it’s looking at culturally relevant outreach. That’s something that’s just not Latinx focused. You could think about that from an API perspective or an African American, Black community perspective. Or if we think about culturally relevant counseling, psychological services, that’s across the board. All the communities are saying, “We need to do that. We need to have that.” Or if we think about representation at the cabinet, that’s an across the board issue. The structures we’re trying to build are addressing that across the board, but also in unique ways. What is it about the Latinx community in terms of how that’s needed to be done? That’s kind of the secret sauce for that particular one when we talk about issues.

Angelica Garcia: Thank you so much for sharing that. Going back to the part where you talk about how this isn’t just … the Latinx community, you can’t define it in one sentence. It’s very inclusive. There’s a lot of different identities within the Latinx community. So going off of that, who is on this committee and who are the different voices in LTI?

Dania Matos: That’s really important. As an Afro-Latina, it’s even more important in terms of visualizing that and addressing anti-indigeneity through that. First of all, come one come all. We are always recruiting. It is open, so we really want people to engage in this effort, lti.berkeley.edu. I’m sure there’ll be a link with that. But we were intentional in the design and so in about 2018, our chancellor, Chancellor Chris, announced the bold goal that will come in HSI by 2027. In that there was a really robust HSI committee and task force report that came out from that, and that’s to really recognize … we hear the phrase that “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams”, or “I want to make my ancestors proud” and recognizing that one day we will be someone’s ancestors, and the Latinx Thriving Initiatives will be that, that this work really stands on the shoulders of so many, and it certainly predates my arrival of August 2021.

I really want to honor that and acknowledge that space, but also that it’s been intentional in design and flexible and a living initiative because of the people that embody it. From the task force report, there were 12 recommendations including what committee recommendations can look like. Right now, we have a steering committee and an implementation team, and there are more to come, including things like an external advisory board for fundraisers. I want to turn it over to Fab, who’s one of our co-chairs of LTI steering committee to share a little more, and to recognize that it was important for me to do open calls to the community.

In our engagement, recognizing this is an all campus effort, there was always the opportunity for people to come and sign up. Sometimes you hear that people were appointed and all those things, so it makes it feel a little more closed. But even in the way and the process in which we’re building out the initiatives, it’s to identify and honor all those things that we talked about. So Fab, I’ll turn it over to you.

Fabrizio Mejia: I think there was, I would say … well, I know there was a lot of intentionality in what we were trying to achieve with each body. As Dania mentions, the steering committee, myself and Vice Provost Lisa Garcia Badoya and the group really thought about who do we need to have buy-in on this committee? Usually what’ll happen, and I’ve been on these committees for many, many years since I started professionally in 2000, I believe, is when I started, and one of the things that I saw was it was the usual suspects. So we were always saying, “Well, here’s what we need to do,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, but we didn’t really think about, “Well, who do I need to have at this table? I need to have somebody from the vice chancellor of finance, I need to have somebody from development, which raises all the money. I need to have somebody on the academic side of the house that’s really making decisions around faculty,” so that each need was being looked at in who’s the decision maker for that.

When we thought about the steering committee, we did it with that purpose in mind. You know what? Let’s not have it be just an E&I thing because it needs to be across the board. Let’s make sure that if you’re missing from this, that says something about your dedication to this goal. It was helpful to have the chancellor say, “We want this to happen.” So Dania was able to take that and say, “I need somebody from your area representative here.” Then from that, it’s thinking about … what happened is the steering committee put together all the recommendations, all the things we needed to make happen, and then we put together what would be an implementation team, which you see being launched right now, which is the 12 short term things, the things that we thought could be done within a one-year timeframe and the implementation is being put together with that in mind.

If the recommendation is X, and let’s say it has to do with HR and the way we recruit or X, Y, and Z, what’s that small action team that needs to be put together to be able to bring, “Here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re going to do, and begin moving that along.” Then the steering committee, which we continue to sit on, holds the things that are beyond a year, things that are a policy and practice that we need to change that maybe they take a little bit longer than a year. We’re going to need to involve Dania and others and the cabinet folks that are a little more complicated to move so that we’re moving on parallel tracks. What can we get done within a year, and then what is still moving on the other track as well at the same time?

But as Dania said, it’s very open-ended. As we’re realizing we might be missing this perspective, we’re going back and iterating and saying, “Can we find somebody that represents that particular need?”, bringing them in. But it’s something, for instance, when we think about students and the different pockets of students, the undergrads and graduate students, professional schools and not professional schools, we can’t have every single perspective. We’re trying to build what sits on the committee and what are feedback loops that we can have at all times so that a community member could find their way to give their perspective if that’s what they want.

Dania Matos: One of the things I love is that you could hear the word initiatives and you’re like, “OK, when they accomplish that, it’ll be done. It’s over.” But we’re really out here changing the sustainable structure so that this outlives me, this outlives you, Angelica, this outlives all of us and it really is the ecosystem of how Berkeley shows up in its way of doing and being. As you can imagine, that’s not a one-year thing, that’s not a three-year thing, but there are things in the interim that can be done and to serve student needs. Really all those committees that you’re hearing is really embodiment of community members, students, alumni, faculty, staff. So really recognizing that it takes everyone and I think oftentimes people will hear a committee and think, “Well, I’m not at a level high enough to do that”, but recognizing that leadership is not title driven and that you are a leader, fight from where you are. I always say you are the expert of your own experience.

So recognizing that and inviting that in is also a different way of doing things that I think is really important. So people will hear me, I’m like hashtag sustainable structures, hashtag sustainable structures, because that’s what we need. I really want this to outlive me and so many of us.

Fabrizio Mejia: I’ll also add that what I’ve heard before is the concept thriving and this whole thing of are we saying we’re there because we’re not? Dania and I would tell you we’re not there. The concept of thriving is where we want to go and an iteration towards that. It’s a challenge to our community to say, “This is where we need to be, and that’s where we’re moving towards” because I want to be clear, we have never said that we’re there. There are pockets that I think are there and provide that sort of signal that that’s happening and we’re on the way, but there’s a lot of work to be done, and I want to be careful about that.

The other thing I hear is often we think about transformation as an end goal or as a noun. It’s actually a verb. It’s a constant in motion because once you think you have one thing done, something else shows up and you have to be willing to understand and have the humility to say “We’re going to continue moving until it’s all of us or none of us.” It can’t be, “Well, I got mine and I’m good now.”

Dania Matos: The reality is that our community evolves and changes and so we can’t say that what we’re co-constructing and building now will be what serves students even a year from now, our faculty and staff. So really recognizing that it needs to have that flexibility and that growth and that fluidity that only happens by building and nurturing communities. That’s why it is really initiatives that really center the community because the community knows best how they want to be served and how they want to thrive. I always say, “We don’t speak for others. We create the room for people to speak for themselves.” So the Latinx Thriving Initiatives is creating that room for people to speak for themselves.

Angelica Garcia: I mean, you basically kind of answered the next question where I was going to ask you about what does it mean for UC Berkeley to be a Latinx thriving institution? But just like how you said, it’s creating that space for other people to have a place at the table, to be here and be able to transform, which is constant. It’s not something that just stops. I want to go back to the point where you talk about how you’re doing these changes that are happening that can happen within a year or so, and then also more. If you could talk a little bit about that. What steps has the university taken to include and support and ensure the thriving of Latinx students? Again, considering that thriving is something that’s continuous, it’s something that needs to become a reality because again, going back, the institutions were not made for us. They were not meant for us to be here. So what steps has Berkeley taken?

Dania Matos: There’s been so many and I’m going to invite Fab also to answer. As you know, our Latinx student resource center is really one of those opening and inauguration of it, of really recognizing a space for people to come to. We talk about spaces in so many different dimensions. There’s the third space, but physical space and all of those things that becomes really important. One of the things we’ve been doing and engaging is I’ve really engaged my team. I call it lateral engagement for collective impact. Sounds really fun and we can put it on a t-shirt, but what does it mean to really also interrupt hierarchy, which institutions are really good at, hierarchy of power and recognize that that power lies laterally and that this is going to take everyone engaged in that. I’ve started with my cabinet colleagues and my cabinet of dean colleagues really bringing them their data.

The question is, How is the Latinx community doing in your respective areas? Do you know? Don’t worry, I got you, we got the data, we can bring it in. But also, what do you see? Inviting them to really bring their analysis to it, but also their co-construction of it. You really want people to feel like they’re owning this piece of it and that their leadership in it to help guide it. I always say data drives decisions, but storytelling drives commitments and you need both. How are they bringing the data and the storytelling to drive those things together? It’s working with those folks, department chairs, students, all of these things. The interesting thing is it’s happening everything everywhere all at once. While we’re building those out, that doesn’t mean that other needs don’t arise. How are we responding to the real time needs that come with that?

Those are some good examples. Right now, we have some really great partnerships with our office of undergraduate admissions of our Thriving Initiatives. We meet every two weeks, and we are going out traveling and creating spaces for Latinx students to come together who’ve been admitted to Berkeley, but who can also talk about and navigate that and see themselves. We co-host a Power and Community day, which is just for first gen, underrepresented, low-income students. Again, to ensure that they know that they belong, that it was not luck that got them here, that we’re grateful for them to be here, and that they make an impact, that we didn’t do anything special and that they belong.

Oftentimes families and chosen families want to know that the most special thing in their life is going to be safe here and that safety has multiple dimensions. I always say, I can’t promise that nothing will happen, but I can promise you that they have people and those people are right here in this room. Oftentimes those people may speak the same language as you. They may be from the same city as you. They might rock the same t-shirt you wear. So that connection becomes so important in that. Those are some of the real-time examples. We’re working also really closely with our UDAR team, which is university development and alumni relations, on fundraising because commitment without currency is counterfeit, so we’re bringing that currency, like, yo quiero dinero, and so really building out what’s the story of the Latinx Thriving Initiatives and what will it take?

Not only needs for the immediate, but that sustainable structure really becomes around that, and how are we ensuring that even who we’re asking and engaging are not just Latinx identifying people? I want to just mark here that we’re using the term Latinx because that’s what’s our community wants and embody. I know there’s Latina and all those things, so I’ll put the asterisk in podcast world that that’s why you’ll hear us using that term throughout. But Fab, I don’t know what you want to add.

Fabrizio Mejia: I mean certainly a lot of examples come to mind of what we’ve either done or are working on. I also want to say that for us, what we’re doing to support students is also tied to how we support our faculty and staff. For instance, when Alianza was the staff organization, is working very closely with us on articulating what they need, what kind of support would be helpful for them to feel like they belong, but also feel like they can move through the organization and promote if that’s something that they want to do, etc., etc., etc.. I think the thriving ecosystem really thinks about how those things interplay with each other. From a student perspective, I would add that we’re looking at both services that are strictly for Latina or are built and centered around Latina or Latinx community, like the LSRC as was mentioned, and other spaces, but also which services either also serve a large percentage of the community and need to be built out.

I think about the Student Learning Center, I think about EOP, I think about the transfer center. So data-wise, which is really important is for us to understand and on the website, lti.berkeley.edu, you will see a lot of different data dashboards because we want the community to understand who are we at this point and who are we becoming, from the perspective of how many of us are first are low income, etc., because those have implications. When I think about the basic needs center, I not only look at who communities are, but who is accessing resources. If I know for instance, that community X is not accessing the basic needs center in a way, I’m going to go and figure out who are the leaders of that community and figure out what’s the disconnect here, because we think this is a service that you could utilize, but something that we’re doing is not working and we need to shift it because to me, the student is never the issue.

It’s the structure that we have that’s not meeting the student where they need to be. So we look at that in our data as well and how we build out the services. I look at things like disability. We gone from 1,500 students in DSP, the disabled students program, about six or seven years ago to over 5,000 students, which a large percentage are Latinx. If we’re not doing that work in a culturally relevant way, if we’re not bringing in staff that represents the community, we’re doing something wrong. We look at all intersectionalities, all those needs and try to get really complex in the way we’re building out these solutions and the culture that we’re trying to transform here.

Dania Matos: We’d be remiss if we didn’t say we’re at the research university, so ensuring that the incredible work of the Latinx Research Center and centering Latinx research becomes a pivotal part of it. So thank you, Fab, for naming staff and faculty too. I didn’t mean to make sure they’re not named, but that is such an integral part of this too, to recognizing that we always say, “OK,” we’re here to serve the students. Absolutely true, but if we’re serving the students and not addressing the serving of the faculty and staff and the thriving ecosystem in which we all exist, then we’re doing a disservice because everyone here is a part of community and no one person is sort of more important than the other in that. So absolutely, faculty, staff, students, alumni, todos.

Fabrizio Mejia: I’ll give one other example too, that I think about the partnership we have with graduate division. I can’t remember what they’re calling it, but it is basically a house on Channing that’s being…

Dania Matos: Inclusive Excellence Hub.

Fabrizio Mejia: Inclusive Excellence Hub. It’s a house being built out that is centering graduate students of color in the spaces that they have, the community that they build, the writing, resources that they have to be able to finish their dissertations and their graduate degrees. But it’s also centering transfer undergraduate students because we know that that is … the runway for transfer students is shorter, as we can imagine. We want to make sure that they are in community with graduate students of color from jump and that we’re creating those opportunities for that to happen intentionally. You don’t just put people in a house and say, “Let magic happen.” You create programming that is going to center those things and make that happen by design.

Angelica Garcia: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. When you talk about steps, just like how you said, it’s from the beginning, this starts way from the beginning, from what the structure is, but also when students are being admitted, I think it’s like a hug. It’s like that hug telling them, “You know what? You’re meant to be here. You deserve to be here.” That’s something that’s very important as well as I remember … because I started college during the pandemic, and I remember my mom saw Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, which is the one that leads the studio. She saw him on the Zoom for EOP, and he started talking in Spanish. My mom was like, “Tu profesor habla español.” She was like, “There’s someone at Berkeley who speaks Spanish.” Then it was really funny because Dr. Pablo Gonzalez’s dad was a welder, my dad was a welder. So I was like, “Wow, there’s genuinely community, people that I could find at UC Berkeley.”

That’s what’s needs to be told to students that are coming in. Again, it’s like this recruitment and retention type of thing. You admit students, you make sure that they finish their degree and that they go onto the world, but that you’re still able to provide them support services even after they graduate, whether they choose to become a grad school student. Definitely the grad student community is someone that needs … we need to pay attention to that community. There needs to be community building within undergrads and grad students as well as transfer students. I’ve met a lot of transfer students that they’re so amazing the way that they talk about their journeys and things like that.

Everybody has a unique journey. Again, quoting, but I really liked how you said Dania, about how we’re the experts of our own experiences. Nobody can tell us, “No, you didn’t go through that”, or “That doesn’t sound true”, because it is. It’s still pretty crazy because a lot of people who still have the audacity to tell you that, that it’s not true. But I really appreciate being able to discuss about these steps and things like that. I do want to move forward to second to last question, which is as part of the Latinx student community on campus, how can we students participate to make sure that our voice is heard and implemented in this process?

Dania Matos: I want to emphasize that students have incredible power, and sometimes I see them not seeing it or not recognizing to your point, Angelica, I remember it wasn’t until a magazine published that I was an expert that I was like, “Oh, I’m an expert.” Then I was like, “Heck yeah, I’m an expert.” But I couldn’t believe that I had to wait for outside validation for that and not recognizing that. Again, this becoming the person I am today is really a process and all those things and interrupting all those, frankly, decolonizing myself being from as a colonial subject of the US still, but also recognizing those pieces. I want students to know the incredible power they have and that it comes in so many forms of that and that your voice is incredibly welcomed and your presence and the recognition that as the institution, we have to take on the labor that so many student efforts have driven and gotten us to this point.

I mean, we’re in California, at UC Berkeley we’re ethnic studies and the Chicano labor movement, all of those things were really student-led, union worker led, like Fab, and you have people at the Latinx Thriving Initiatives who have that in their stories. So it becomes important. We can’t say enough, lti.berkeley.edu, if you can’t. You have contact information for connecting with all of that and everyone, but also seeing your stories. I remember I went to a Miller Scholars presentation, and one of the students was presenting his research on how are Central Americans included into this HSI. I was so inspired that I asked the student to then present at our next LTI town hall.

Look, I’m one person. I can’t get to all the things, so really, I would love to know and hear what are the faces and possibilities? What ideas do you have? When I say I, there’s a we to that too. So reaching out to me, any one individual on there and really connected, because one of the things we’re doing is also there have been so many efforts for so long, how do we build the centralized place where this work can all flow, that we can really recognize and build the resources to that? Because I often say, “Look, when you’re asking external people, sometimes they don’t know the difference.” One group will go and then they’ll say, “Well, we already gave you money. Aren’t you this like group or whatever?”, when not recognizing the power of the Latinx piece to that.

Students can join the website, find me, I’m in Cal Hall, come say hi, but also engage in any other way with that that becomes important. Just recognizing that they are the reason that we do this, and then knowing that we don’t know everything that’s happening or what you’re navigating. The more we know, the more we can immediately address that. Because your point on, Angelica, OK, getting here, finishing, but I want you to have a meaningful experience here. I want you to have a transformative experience here and not feel extractive in the way that sometimes it can.

Fabrizio Mejia: I agree. I think in thinking about … there are formal ways being part of the committees, when you get the call, the campus call, we absolutely want people to apply to that, students to apply to that. There are the informal ways, which is to send your feedback directly to Dania, to our [email protected] email. It’s also a lot of the things that have started started as a result of a student raising an issue. I think about our program for formerly incarcerated students, underground scholars, that started when two formerly incarcerated students started to be in conversation. Then I got involved and they were expressing their need, and my job was to listen to them and help them articulate how we turn that from a vision and an idea into a formal program, which is now what it is, which is a full-fledged awesome program with all kinds of resources and folks involved.

But they did that. They’re the ones that had … they expressed the need and then they were invited to articulate their vision. If we built something out, what would that look like? What would it change? What kinds of things do you want to see in practice that gets you to that outcome that you want to see? That’s the invitation that we have for students is don’t assume that all leaders know what’s happening. Even if they have a sense of what’s happening, don’t assume that they have the idea of what it’s going to look like to be different. I think once we have that, once we have good ideas and a sense of where we need to go, that becomes a little easier for us to begin to move things forward as an institution.

Angelica Garcia: Thank you so much for sharing that. I think with students, it’s again, this whole thing of the Thriving Initiative that’s transforming, that’s always changing. It’s like how you said, it might not apply to me. It might not apply during my time because it takes a lot of time. It takes money. As much as we don’t want money to be part of it, it’s everything. I really interpret this Thriving Initiative as something of like you’re not selfish. Obviously, we all want the benefits for us. We want it to make our experience a little bit more bearable and just not so traumatic because sometimes there’s a lot of students who have traumatic experiences, but just thinking about how this could apply to my brother when he goes to college or my kids in the future, just future generations, it really does highlight how this is a continuing progress and process too.

Dania Matos: Angelica, can I give you one example that I forgot? I stopped the Miller Scholar story in a little bit. The Miller Scholar who presented, ended up presenting at one of our Latinx Thriving Initiatives gatherings and to that, the Latinx resource center was then having a reception. Our gathering was on Zoom and to the reception, the student invited their mentor from Laney College Community College. At that reception, I met that mentor and he said, “Dania, how can we do this at Laney? What does that look like?” We just recently hosted the leadership of Laney College with the leadership of UC Berkeley around Latinx Thriving Initiatives, and now are working in possibility of what does community colleges Latinx thriving to UC Berkeley look like? And that all started with a student.

So really thinking even who you are, and that invitation of community became so important and so much respect to community colleges and all the work and labor that happens there. Now we just have a world of possibility that started with that connection and that student and their idea and their invitation.

Angelica Garcia: Then this whole thing of Latinx Thriving Initiatives and institutions, it’s just not in college, it’s community college, it’s high schools, it’s just K through 12 overall. It’s the whole system as a whole, but we’re taking steps like that. It’s nice to hear how there’s people at UC Berkeley, both of you who are actually working towards this and seeing like, “Hey, we’re going to do everything that we can, everything that’s in our hands to make this happen.” I really appreciate that. I do want to move forward to our last question, which is basically just is there anything else that you would like to add that you think the audience should definitely know about the Latinx Thriving Initiative?

Dania Matos: I love it. See, we’ve already transformed you. You’ve got the S going. God, there’s so much. When you were sharing your story about visiting universities, I remembered not being able to afford visiting everywhere I got in and my mom kind of scrambling money together, jumping in the car, driving as we could. Oftentimes our students are housed, but she couldn’t so she had to stay at a hotel really, really far away because it’s all we could afford and really coming that. Again, I think recognizing that so many of us are addressing things that we didn’t have becomes really powerful, and that this work is hard, and it does take that sort of emotional labor and still picking myself back up after that and recognizing that I may never meet the people that this is going to impact, but man, am I going to give it my all. Or person, am I going to give it all, to be gender inclusive.

But it’s really thinking about that and it is to think that we often tout the number one public research universities in the world. I want it to be the number one Latinx thriving university in the world. That’s what I want and that hope and that possibility is what allows me to lead with love and give it that heart, which we don’t often see in these spaces, and that that is valued. Don’t get me wrong, degrees are needed in all of those things, but I think who you are really matters a lot and how you make people feel. So that sense of belonging, not just sort of how they experiences, but the fact that they have access to co-construct. You talk about the table, the tabla, building the tabla. You get to pick the color, how many legs and all those things. That’s it’s so much more that we can imagine and that we’re kind of building for generations to come.

Fabrizio Mejia: I’ll only add that I think about this as a lot of the work that we do is to change this deficit framework, this notion that students need to be college ready, and that was the mantra for a long time. When in fact, it’s the college that needs to be student ready. Who’s coming in? How do we set up structures? How do we do that? We’re not saying, and I think I could speak for Dania, we want students to be challenged, because in the challenges where growth happens, where you’re pushed beyond your boundaries to do something that maybe you didn’t think you could do, we don’t want students to be hazed. We don’t want them to go through basic needs and security. We want to have a particular floor to make sure that you are in a place where it’s safe enough that you can go to that challenging learning space for yourself and push yourself beyond that boundary. I think that’s a delicate nuance.

As I said before, what’s centered at Berkeley is privilege, and not just whiteness, but class privilege, economic privilege. That’s hard for people to understand sometimes, that the thing that they think is just for granted, it’s not for all of us. It’s not for granted that $50 fee over there is nothing for us. That was a big deal for my family to have to pay what other people thought was, “Oh, it’s not a big deal. It’s only …” Even back then it was like 10 bucks and for me, 10 bucks was like, “OK, I could buy a couple bags of beans and eat, or I can go drop that class.”

Dania Matos: Oh, my God, Fab, you’re taking me back and I don’t get much time to party at Berkeley so I don’t know if y’all have parties, but those cover charges, I remember even those $5 being like, “Man, that means I’m not going to eat,” and I had two to three jobs. Really thinking about we shouldn’t be excluding people even from social experiences because that part of it. Yes, every dollar counts and we should be able to provide that, so it’s not just like access to classroom, but as we know, learning happens outside of that too. If I remember my most impactful moments, no offense to my alma mater, but it wasn’t in the classroom. It was what I learned outside of that. So man … and also we should just eliminate cover charges.

Angelica Garcia: I think, again, this whole experience goes beyond the classroom. It goes in these spaces, community spaces, the dining halls, the housing, everywhere. So thank you so much. I want to take now the moment to thank Dania and Fabrizio for having the time to join me in conversation. I appreciate it. Muchas gracias and it was great hearing about your job and your support and effort in this.

Dania Matos: Thank you, Angelica. You are brilliant, so I look forward to more superstardom from you.

Angelica Garcia: The conversation does not stop here. We encourage our listeners to share what they have heard today with their peers, friends, parents, and community members. Keep an eye out for the next episodes. In solidarity, the Ethnic Studies Changemaker team.

[Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions]

Outro: You’ve been listening to Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.