Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

I have been heavily involved with the Pilipino Academic Student Services (PASS), a student-iniated recruitment and retention center on campus. PASS is one of five ethnic-specific recruitment and retention centers on campus that together have formed a coalition, the Bridges Multicultural Resource Center.

As a coalition, the centers work together to educate and empower students of color, from the elementary to college undergraduate level. Through on-site academic mentoring; outreaches to middle schools, high schools, and community colleges; shadow events; college advising; orientation courses for first-time students; retention services; social events; and political empowerment via workshops and involvement in campus campaigns, the Bridges coalition actively works on multiple levels on multiple fronts to recruit, retain, and empower students of color in higher education.

In the area of recruitment, one strategy to attract students to the idea of applying to colleges/universities to is to bring them to campus for a day or an overnight visit. Such events are typically called "Shadow Days/Nights." For high school seniors accepted to UC Berkeley, the Bridges coalition, in conjunction with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA, hosts a recruitment event called Senior Weekend. This weekend allows high school students of color to visit the UC Berkeley campus and also to get to know their respective ethnic communities (ie the Cal Pilipin@ community, the Black community, etc.) while engaging in a multicultural event.

While Senior Weekend allows accepted high school seniors to imagine themselves attending a prestigious public university like UC Berkeley, this weekend also allows us, the college student coordinators and volunteers for the event, to envision what it is like to have our campus actually reflect the diversity we see in the students we host, from ethnic to religious to socioeconomic diversity.

Each recruitment and retention center was founded to diversify the university through increasing student of color admission and enrollment. In 1996, the centers came together under the Bridges coalition in order to continue existing in light of the passing of Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action in the public sector. As communities of color in solidarity, the Bridges coalition will keep going strong until access to education becomes an equal opportunity for all students.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

This blueprint addresses institutionalized racism and the policies that have attacked affirmative action, from the Bakke v. UC Regents decision to the removal of Pilipin@ students from affirmative action status in the mid-1980s, from UC Regents' Standing Policies 1 and 2 to Proposition 209.

UC Berkeley is a hostile climate to students of color. Students of color typically find themselves to be the only ones in large classes, are stereotyped by other students, lack a safe space such as a multicultural center, do not have an adequate number of faculty and classes teaching their histories, and student of color organizations typically have to fight hard to acquire resources from the ASUC (student government).

This blueprint will hopefully increase the number of entering Pilipin@ students this Fall through funding for more students to attend Senior Weekend. Every student of color that chooses to go to UC Berkeley is important and an asset to our already small communities on campus.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community
• Local community
• Statewide community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Bring 15 students to UC Berkeley for Senior Weekend
• Hold a fundraising banquet for Pilipin@ alumni, faculty, staff, and graduate students.
• Acquire $500 from YP4.
• Outreach to 30-40 high school students to ensure 15 will attend.
• Acquire $1000 from commerical banks PASS has previously outreached to before.
• Goal 2: Out of the 15, have 2/3 attend UC Berkeley.
• Match students with a mentor throughout the weekend and to maintain contact after the event is over.
• Check on the progress of students to see if they have filled out a Statement of Intent to Register (SIR) by May 1st deadline.
• Goal 3: Maintain contact with high and low API high schools in terms of college recruitment and student mentorship.
• Conduct outreaches to high schools in the Bay Area, Central and Southern California throughout the school year.
• In the fall, announce PASS' college assistance program to aid seniors one-on-one with college applications. For the spring, also announec PASS' capacity to assist in appeals.
• Throughout the year host students from high schools to come to UC Berkeley for the day or overnight (Shadow Days/Nights).

What is your primary approach? Leadership and Capacity Building

Why did you choose this approach?

The goal of Senior Weekend is to introduce Pilipin@ students to the Pilipin@ community of UC Berkeley. The aim is that when they come here, they will become active citizens and participate in the community through the eight Pilipin@ organizations that work on social justice/issues in a variety of ways, from recruitment/retention, politial awareness, to artistic empowerment.

What will your tactics and activities be?

The tactics will be to write to potential private funders to donate to the Friends of PASS program that will allow PASS to fund students to Senior Weekend from high schools ineligible for university-funding. Letter writing, fundraising dinners, and use of the alumni network are strategies for acquiring funds.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

The idea of this blueprint is to increase the number of students who attend Bridges Senior Weekend. As a partnership between students and the university, state funding is restricted to students from low academic performance index (API) high schools due to current California law. With the funding from this blueprint and private donors, PASS can invite Pilipin@ students from higher API high schools who do not necessarily get the same resources as other students. For instance, there may be a well-off high school with a small Pilipin@ student population that does not have a high college-going rate as the rest of the schoo. PASS wants to target students like that in these well-off schools.

This blueprint would allow PASS to assist in potentially increasing the number of Pilipin@ students who enroll to UC Berkeley for Fall 2008 through inviting them to Senior Weekend.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

In order to acquire funds, I will need to know how to present PASS and Senior Weekend in a succinct and attractive manner. I will need a cleark 'ask' as well as be prepared to field questions regarding PASS and Senior Weekend.

For the actual weekend itself, I will need to be approachable and open to the invited students so that they will feel comfortable in the Berkeley environment and feel welcome by the Pilipin@ community.