Evelyn Repass / The SWC Sun
If you’re a student at Southwestern College, you have a voice in the school’s Governing Board. And that voice goes by the name of Orlando Vicente-Lazo.
Elected by the Southwestern College student body in spring of 2026, term runs from June of this year into May of 2027. As a member of the board, he helps make important decisions that impact everything from classroom sizes, to how the budget is spent and even what classes are offered. During his brief tenure on the board, Vicente-Lazo has focused on advocating for students who live south of the border and for autistic students.
Vicente-Lazo’s journey to Southwestern is far from traditional, yet familiar to many students who attend Southwestern College.
For Vicente-Lazo, the two years away from education served as a period that ultimately shaped the way he viewed his own education and future. He credits his sister as the main reason he returned to school, and it is at Southwestern that he found a path towards representing other students.
Moving between Irvine and Tijuana gave him experiences that are commonly recognized among Southwestern students: life between communities and the navigation of a college environment that serves students who come from vastly different circumstances. Those experiences became more than a part of Vicente-Lazo’s personal story, they became the foundation of his approach to student advocacy.
Vicente-Lazo was asked to speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for new buildings on the Southwestern campus, followed by another ceremony honoring Chula Vista Police Chief Roxana Kennedy.
As he became more involved, the idea of becoming Student Trustee came from the people around him. ASO president Gian Marco Zuno, and Vicente-Lazo’s girlfriend encouraged him to run for the student trustee position.
Before running for Student Trustee, Vicente-Lazo never got into politics. He thought he’d go into finance like his father did.
“I thought I would end up in some job that would fall under the umbrella of finance,” he said. “But then I realized that I had stumbled into political economics.”
One of the issues he has focused on is representation for binational students, many of whom cross the U.S.-Mexico border to attend Southwestern.
“I have a responsibility to the binational students,” He said. “I have a responsibility to the students that are in difficult situations that I don’t find myself in.”
For Vicente-Lazo, the issues that surround being a binational student are personal. Before becoming the Student Trustee, he experienced long wait times just to cross the border, sometimes spending hours just to cross into the U.S. for school.
Vicente-Lazo advocated for the Coordinated Access Program, which provided designated pedestrian lanes for students at the Otay and San Ysidro border crossings. Effectively reduced his crossing from hours to less than 10 minutes.
His approach to advocacy is also shaped by his experiences living with autism. Vicente-Lazo spoke about the barriers he faces as a student with autism, sharing that sometimes he would need to remove himself from a room due to anxiety.
He pushes for the idea that accommodations for students with disabilities should be treated as requirements rather than something that can be questioned.
“I just want people to see me as… being just as capable as everyone else. He said. “I’ve never been discouraged by it, so I don’t want any student to be discouraged by anything.”
With the remainder of his term, Vicente-Lazo said that he wants to continue working on the issues he has already taken on.
