By Ewan Toledo
El Plan de Southwestern College has not gone as planned.
Time for El Plan B.
MEChA’s 10-point proposal to create a Chicano Studies department got the “once over lightly” from college administrators and faculty leaders, according to MEChista Julia Woock, one of the student leaders who advocated for the plan.
Based on the seminal El Plan de Santa Barbara, the Southwestern College proposal outlines a vision for a modern Chicano Studies program for a fronteriza campus—America’s closest college to Mexico. Student leaders have argued that colleges and universities around America already have modern Chicano Studies programs and curriculum, but not their own college that is between 65 and 70 percent Latino.
During the pandemic, SC student Myriam Ortiz collaborated with MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) on the plan. Ortiz said she was motivated when she discovered she had to take an additional class at Mesa College not offered at SC to fulfill her degree requirements as a Mexican American Studies major. She said she created El Plan as an assignment at Mesa College and presented her outline to former SC MEChA advisor Dr. Francisco Fuentes. With his support, MEChA finalized El Plan de Southwestern College and collected 1,347 signatures on a student petition.
In March 2021, members of MEChA presented the plan to the Academic Senate during a Zoom meeting. Ortiz was joined by ASO President Sonja Camargo, Anna Sanchez, Christian Sanchez and Woock. Each student explained two points of the plan.
Unfortunately, said Woock, the Academic Senate rejected most of the plan and college administration rejected all of it. Woock, now at UC Riverside, said El Plan hit a wall and frustrated SC’s Chicano students.
“I don’t think people know how much we discussed this plan and the hours it took,” she said. “It was well-conceived and relevant.”
Ortiz said SC’s proximity to the border ought to make Chicano Studies in Chula Vista “a no brainer.”
“It shouldn’t be something that students fight for,” she said. “It should be a given.”
Fuentes said the college implemented only two points of the plan to pacify MEChA but not with the intention of helping students. Fuentes said administrators asked newly hired Dr. Gerardo Rios to create additional courses, but they refused to hire other new faculty. One part of El Plan called for binational students to pay local rates. That has since happened, but it was California state legislators that drove the change, not campus leaders.
Broad goals of El Plan are to increase transfer and graduation rates by becoming more culturally responsive to the needs of the dominantly Hispanic student population, said Fuentes.
“(MEChA) wanted administrators and employees to take institutional responsibility for the planning, but it has fallen on the students,” he said.
MEChA prepared to launch its first Raza Graduation in 2021, Camargo said, but the club’s successful effort to bring legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta to campus that May caused the postponement of Raza Grad until 2022.
The first binational graduation ceremony allowing students to graduate in San Diego or Tijuana was held last month for the first time, said Camargo.
“It’s a huge accomplishment, especially in the Latino household,” she said. “It’s something you live for.”
All California community colleges require students to take at least one ethnic studies course to graduate. SC came into compliance in the fall of 2022.
Dra. Angelica Gonzalez became the second full-time Mexican American studies instructor last year, following Rios.
Gonzalez said it may not be the best time to break away as a standalone department because it would be difficult for new hires to chair their own department.
“We still have things to work out and we don’t want to prematurely do something that will hurt us in the end,” she said.
Although SC recently brought new hires for the Ethnic Studies department, Gonzalez sees the need for more faculty trained in Mexican American studies.
“Every semester I’m bombarded with so many students trying to bypass the waitlists,” she said. “We have the capacity of having more sections than we even offer.”
Camargo said she plans to have MEChA present the 10-point plan to the governing board next year.
“There’s nothing wrong with us wanting to represent who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going because that’s what it’s all about.”
