DARE TO DREAM BASIC
An Interview with Dream Center Director Angela Chuan-Ru Chen and Basic Needs Director Andrea Mora
Lucid’s Issue 4 Managing Editor, Helen Barahona, talked with Angela and Andrea about the history of their centers and the role that campus student activism played in their development. Herself a DACA recipient, Dream Project Fellow, and volunteer at Basic Needs, Helen took great inspiration throughout her college career from these two powerful student advocates (and women!). A fangirl, Rachael tagged along.
I've been doing the Dream Project fellowship for 3 years—first through the Sustainability Resource Center and now Lucid. I also work at UCI’s Basic Needs Center as a student assistant. Can you each tell us about the work you do in your respective centers and how you got started?
Basic Needs really stems from student leadership and student advocacy. Before we had a campus pantry, students, especially students of color and low-income students, always talked about the challenges in affording the living costs for college, especially food and housing. Ten years ago students started becoming more vocal about food insecurity and hunger. Specifically at UCI, students from the Muslim Student Union, ASUCI, and the SOAR Center started talking about other campuses that had a campus pantry and they really wanted to push for UCI to have its own pantry, too.
Around the same time in the system there was a Global Food Initiative (GFI) being pushed by then UC president Janet Napolitano. And we happened to be very lucky that Sadia Saifuddin, the student regent at the time who was involved in Berkeley’s advocacy efforts to start a pantry, was able to connect the Global Food Initiative that was asking educators to think about sustainability and food systems issues to ask about the students on our own UC campuses. And so she really pushed for the initiative to kind of expand and create an additional kind of work group around the idea of food security and food pantries to be established in all the UCs.
In the summer of 2015, UC President and UCOP provided some seed funding to each UC campus to either start a pantry or expand their food pantry offerings. UCI decided that they needed to hire somebody to create and run the food pantry.
That's how I came into the picture.
I had just graduated from UCI and this was a really good opportunity to realize the vision of students who had been asking for the services for so long.
With the limited funding we had that first year, we established a food pantry at the SOAR Center. The mission really resonated with students and student leadership decided to run a referendum to decide if they should pay more money to the university to expand the pantry. The referendum passed and the office of the President also gave us 2 more years of funds, which allowed us to hire staff and move to a bigger space.
And you were known then simply as “Fresh.”
Yes! We decided that with the renovations complete on our new location, it was also time to change our name. We actually really loved the name “Fresh” and it was hard to let go of it. But throughout the years we noticed that, even as our services expanded, that students would think about FRESH only as a place to get food. In higher education, basic needs support continues to expand so we felt it was time to reinvent ourselves with a new name.
I came across an interview you did in the New University and they mentioned your coordination of the California Higher Education food summit in 2017. What was the purpose of the summit?
At that time, folks leading the food security efforts across the UCs just wanted to get together and try to collaborate with the other segments of higher ed. We envisioned an annual summit where we could bring people together to talk about the challenges and to hear from students. We wanted students and leaders in higher ed to strategize together; we wanted to make sure that this was a community effort and that as we were building pantries and establishing staff positions that we would never lose sight of our student advocacy and student voices.
The first summit actually happened in Santa Barbara. When we held it here at UCI it marked a real shift from thinking about food security to basic needs–housing, family support,transportation, health services. The leadership of the UCs, CSUs and community colleges created what's called now CHEBNA, the California Higher Ed basic needs alliance. The pandemic forced us to scale back from a summit to a learning series, but it is supposed to come back next year. Prior to the pandemic, though, it was actually very important to host the summit on campus because it helped us get a lot of attention. I always think about how that conference actually really motivated our student leaders to then pass the student fee referendum within the next year.
Wow, thank you! Angela can you tell us about the DREAM center and the Dream Project Fellowship?
Yes! I always love Andrea's storytelling. The history and the involvement is so rich. I think it's fair to say that both Andrea and I have been deeply committed to these areas in higher education before anything formal ever happened. I knew Andrea as a student when I was working as staff and I was at UCLA. Andrea was here at Irvine. We are both alumni of UCI and both of our personal experiences as students here really helped us see the gaps in student support and we have invested so much of our personal, academic, and professional efforts to address those things.
So our Centers, both of our Centers, I would say, are relatively new. The DREAM center and the FRESH Basic Needs Center grew out of SOAR [Student Outreach and Retention]. Both had very humble beginnings with no money, no physical space, no budget, no staff.
UCI has had a long history, and maybe even a lot of ups and downs in terms of student organizing for space and resources for undocumented students, and that has not been an easy journey for this community. A decade ago, UCI had the highest enrollment of undocumented students of all the UCs but it was still one of the campuses that didn't have any formal resources, and because we lacked resources we saw those enrollment numbers go down. Now we're back up there as one of the campuses with the highest enrollment of undocumented students in the UC System.
Like Basic Needs, the Dream Center is very much here because students demanded a space. I think what is really beautiful about the origins of both of our Centers and the roles we get to play, as alumni, in helping realize their visions really comes down to the student activism and organizing that built these Centers up to what they are today.
The first iteration of undocumented student organizing was a student organization called “Dreams to be Heard” right Andrea?
It started as “Dreams to be Heard” and then that fizzled out. When I was a student, we brought it back as “Dreams at UCI."
Right. Then “Dreams at UCI” also fizzled out and now we have SAFIRE [Students Advocating for Immigrant Rights and Equity], so there is always a student organization behind undocumented advocacy trying to hold the University accountable.
In 2015 there were only 2 centers in existence in the UC System–one at UCLA and the other at UC Berkeley. UCOP was under Janet Napolitano and she wanted to create seed funding for all 10 UC campuses to create similar, institutionalized resources on every campus. It was really exciting to see that this funding was going to be made available to all UC campuses, and that was the first time UCI received funding to bring on one full time staff.
Think about this: one full time staff member create, build, and run a program, to negotiate space, negotiate a budget. It's a huge undertaking and it was first led by Anna Miriam. So we had student demands and we got seed funding and continued to raise money to help grow it to what it is now. Now we have 3 full time staff and with the new hire of our Assistant Director, we will have 4 full time professional staff. We have 20 student staff on our team now.
What is the work that you do?
The range of services and programs we do is quite extensive, and like Basic Needs we've also been evolving. I think something to realize is that the work is always evolving and in conversation with trends. Students’ needs change, the community changes, the language changes, the approach changes so we're always trying to grow and be relevant and up to date with what we need to do.
And you know the politics are always changing around immigration so we're also kind of always trying to look a little bit into the future and see “Okay, what are the potential challenges down the road? And how can we shift what we do now to match that?” And you know, in higher education—I think I heard this analogy once, It's like you're steering a cruise ship, you know, it's like a giant ship and to even make small changes to pivot, to meet those new needs it takes time, and it takes lots of effort just to shift it. So we're always kind of like steering this giant cruise ship, so that we're meeting student needs that are also meeting the politics.
One of the biggest recent shifts has been to support all students impacted by immigration policy, so that would include students from mixed-status families—students who may not themselves be undocumented but have a partner or parents or siblings who are undocumented. We've also expanded our services to asylum refugee students with temporary protective status. Because there are so many gray areas of immigration, and these folks already come to us—not just students, but staff and community members—we really try to be as inclusive as possible.
And you have also had multiple location changes.
Every space on campus is political, right? The conversation about where you get to be, what kind of space, how much space and I think students really saw that, too. When the Dream Center was literally located on the outskirts of the University in the Lot 5 trailers, students saw their experience as being under-resourced and marginalized. We saw more wildlife out there than people! Sometimes we had ducks, rabbits, and literally students, would look across the street and you're on the edge of campus. I think it symbolically just sort of mirrored the marginalization of our students. It was also very hard to get to. I think if you lived in Mesa Court it was close by, but for students living anywhere else it felt very isolated and therefore inaccessible.
Also we were in a temporary structure and I think that was also symbolically something students really felt. There was an opportunity to move to the student center, so now we're up on the fourth floor of the student center called the RISE Suite and we co-share this space with a lot of our campus partners, and it's been a very communal collaborative space.
The foot traffic here has increased significantly. In comparison to Fall, 2021 when we had about 300 students come through our space, the Fall, 22 quarter had over 1,000 students come through. Our numbers have already tripled and I think it's because now we're centralized, and it’s a nice space. I think we've had a lot of benefits in that transition. But last year was our first year here, this is our second year and there's already conversations about where we're going to move next, so we'll keep you all updated as that next iteration of the Dream Center happens.
And how is the new renovated space for Basic Needs working out?
We are currently located at 800 West Peltason Dr. Right behind the Science Library there is a bridge and students come over through that bridge. That little path takes students right into our center. If you are coming in at the ground level–walking or driving–we are basically on the corner of Peltason and Academy. Many students know there's a shuttle stop on that corner. It's a really beautiful space. We have windows!
The plan for the next year is to get a parking lot built right outside our center. There's a proposal for a 37 spot parking lot that looks like it's getting approved and I've been told it should be ready to go by next fall, so that will definitely be a gamechanger for us, once our parking lot is there–just being able to have more access for our students.
But so far, so good.
I think one of the major differences between the Dream Center and Basic Needs is that the Dream Center is an identity center and therefore a community-building space that really needs to be centrally located on campus, but most of the students who come to the Basic Needs brick and mortar location are coming here to grab groceries, they're coming for an application appointment with CalFresh, they're coming to meet the social workers. Even if our location isn’t in the Student Center, they’re going to show up.
We’ve only been here a short time, but similar to what Angela mentioned, the old location was supposed to be temporary. It was a trailer; it was deteriorating; we had plumbing issues, the floor was giving out.
As a student myself, I want to say that it does definitely feel more accessible. The shuttle line that you're talking about–we call it the M line–stops right outside the building. I'm going to shift gears a little bit to ask Angela about the recent Supreme Court decision in Texas v. U.S.
Whenever these decisions come down, our primary concern is always for the well being of our students. It's really hard to plan your life, and live your life when these legal battles can greatly impact your livelihood, ability to go to school, ability to work, ability to meet basic needs, and even just realize your academic or professional goals. So it's very taxing.
It creates a lot of stress and worry and we're always very selective in how much attention we give the legal landscape. What is important for us is that USCIS is still accepting DACA renewals; that they are [still] not adjudicating new DACA applications and advance parole, and that, for the time being, DACA students have the opportunity to travel outside the country for humanitarian employment and educational purposes. Despite support for DACA from the Biden Administration, we are still in the Trump period: fewer and fewer and fewer of our students here at UCI have DACA. When we look at the Dream Project Fellowship, for example, 70% of our Dream Project Fellows do not have DACA, they do not have employment authorization, which means they don't have other professional opportunities to work on campus and work at UTC and to serve as a TA. And we're seeing the percentage of Non-DACA students grow and grow and grow so next year we believe that the number of DACA students will be even smaller, maybe 25% maybe 15% of undocumented students. That situation is forcing the Dream Center program to expand our Dream Project Fellowship program because of the need for student support. Our program grew by almost 50% this year because of demand, and we always aim for 100% placement. This year we had 87% placement. But the DREAM center is going to need more staffing and more funding to continue to meet the demands, and I think that's where we are seeing some challenges.
There are currently conversations in a movement by students called “Opportunity for All” and this is based on legal arguments made by law professors across the UC System and outside of the UC systems. These are immigration and labor law professors, scholars and they are arguing that the states are not required to require employment authorization for employment purposes. So they are basically arguing that as a state entity that there is no law in place currently that requires employment authorization, They're saying that state entities are making a choice to follow federal policies, even though those policies are not imposed onto the states. So this is a legal argument that's currently being considered by UCOP and if they agree with these legal scholars that means in the future undocumented students or just undocumented employees can work within any state entity without requiring work authorization. [May 18, 2023 update: UC Announces its support to remove hiring restrictions.]
Thank you for that. I actually wanted to ask you both about the developing role of faculty in student support. In my own role as a Unit-18 lecturer who teaches 8 courses a year, it would be easy to overlook the individual lives of my students. How do each of you think those of us who teach can be a better support to our students?
This is a wonderful question, and I think I can answer it from my own experience. I think the role of faculty is fundamental to the survival, the success, and the retention of students. I feel very lucky to have had one really supportive faculty member who did things like walk me to the counseling center when I was in crisis, that referred me to a social worker, that put support services on their syllabus and emphasized asking for support in their teaching. That faculty support really helped me, as a first gen student, understand that it was okay to ask for help.
And it was also a faculty member who, when I expressed that I didn’t want to pursue a PhD, asked if I had thought about working on a college campus in student support. I feel like because faculty spend the most time with students, they have the most opportunities to build rapport and trust and to provide advice as well as connections. Basic Needs doesn’t have that kind of exposure to students.
But I’ve experienced the flip side, too: when I would reveal I was going through a deportation case and I needed an extension on a paper I’ve been told more than once, “tough luck!”
When faculty invite us to do a quick pitch and give us 5 min of their time, or put a statement on their syllabus that there are support services available, that makes all of our services more accessible, and it helps empower students to seek and expect support. Faculty have the power to help normalize the need for support and that is crucial.
As much as I want to eventually feel like we're at the point where we can achieve more lofty goals, I think still a bulk of the work at the Dream Center and I'm sure at Basic Needs is to make sure our students are getting through their experiences, and be able to persist as a student.
So there are very tangible needs. Most of our students have a heavy, sizable out of pocket expense because of their status as undocumented students, meaning they can't qualify for a lot of federal benefits, and by being part of the DREAM Project Fellowship they are able to at least cover the cost of coming here.
Not to put you on the spot but I know you went out of your way to try to find funding to be part of this program. You got a professional development award for the work that you do and you applied that to the fellowship program and we see other mentors who do this kind of work–trying to raise money to support undocumented students.
Andrea is one of our most critical partners in this, too. Andrea has grown her DPF team, like every year. Half of our cohort is in Andrea’s Center!
So I think being active not just at the top, but applying your time, resources. What I've seen is a lot of our faculty who work with us and working with the students are now seeing that there is a whole other reality that they had no idea about until they were working with the students. They're starting to see that this barrier is really ridiculous, why do we have this arbitrary being that prevents, you know, a whole segment of the UCI community from participating? And they start to re-evaluate those things.
So I think really taking action and applying those resources and helping in those efforts. The other thing is that faculty just have such an opportunity to amplify these issues, to amplify the need, to elevate. And so having faculty partners who are willing to say that these are critical things we need to focus on, I think this is super critical. I think that's always appreciated, and not every faculty member is taking that on.
Well it is a challenge. You know it has been very hard for me personally to engage in the work–I am a lecturer with a heavy teaching load and I face many institutional obstacles to my own project building goals. Some of those obstacles are related to accessibility: because I am not senate faculty, there are opportunities for support that I do not even qualify to apply for, but it’s also cultural: because I am not your typical academic success story–I’ve just devoted my life to teaching–I am met with resistance all the time. When I first started this work during the pandemic, I didn’t think I would be met with any resistance. With the intensity of that emotional experience of the pandemic, I was like everybody's gonna understand the importance of this work and be supportive of it and you know, of course, that's not how the world works!
But in terms of lofty goals, for me Lucid is about participating in a post-Covid culture change in higher education by amplifying underrepresented student voices, helping to empower first gen students–who comprise half of all incoming students this year alone–both in and outside the classroom, and to give them opportunities when they don’t feel seen or heard to communicate, whether that is through art and poetry or journalism or something else. If we are to have a truly healthy and robust culture in higher education, we all have to have a more receptive attitude about the promises and possibilities of real change, even and perhaps especially when we have benefited from the status quo.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the funding challenges for your Centers and how you navigated around those changes?
I will say that I am grateful for the leadership of student affairs, because when the news of budget cuts came down, initially the Budget Office was asking for us to make cuts and Student Affairs made an internal decision to protect our state funds and take a bigger cut themselves.
So that was a big deal. It could have been a very different year for us. We did end up taking a small cut in our permanent campus funds, which is a portion of our operating budget. It was an interesting year to experience a cut and we are hearing that the cuts may continue to come for the next couple of years. Because we were experiencing all the added costs of the renovation in addition to just the inflation —our food purchases have gone up, our toiletry prices have gone up, everything has gone up. It was kind of like the worst case scenario, having to combine that with smaller budget cuts that we faced. We have been able to kind of sustain everything at the level that we had last year, and I'm really proud of that.
There is concern, too, of course. Like what does this mean if the cuts continue to happen, or they impact us further. And to be able to combat that, we’ve been applying to additional community grants. We're developing a more thorough fundraising strategy. We're basically trying to do anything we can to try to figure out how to still have a safety net in case things continue to evolve so that we don't have to reduce the level of services. There were a couple of reductions we couldn't prevent. So, for example, or emergency grants, we could award up to $3,000 per student. Last year we gave out, I think it was close to 250 K in emergency grants. And so this year, because the demand continues to grow, we were not able to continue it at that level so we had to come back down to 2,000 max just to make sure that we could fund the emergency grants as well as all the other resources that we're providing to students. But I will say I, I'll give props to our internal leadership that protected us in many ways.
I want to be able to dream a little bit with you here. What is your vision for the futures of Basic Needs and the Dream Center?
When we established the center, and when students helped to establish us, the vision was for us to not exist anymore. We were and still are hoping we can get to a place where students don’t have to access emergency services because financial aid and campus support are enough. I think before the pandemic, that vision still seemed doable; after the pandemic, we are actually seeing more demand for services than ever before. We're seeing students who are faced with more challenges than ever. I want us to get to a place where our services can be more preventative rather than like crisis resolution.
Students right now continue to utilize our pantry services in high numbers. They're always kind of living through these emergencies, and we want to get to a place of sustainability.
This is part of the reason why we are working to help students apply for public benefits and other more sustainable support.
We want to continue to be able to also grow the budget, to be able to do more, and not have to be faced with difficult decisions about staffing. If we have ample staff, we are able to respond more quickly.
And if I can really dream big, it would be ideal for us to have a second Basic Needs Location, near the ARC because then we could service a lot of the students who live on campus from there while serving our commuters from our second location.
Students are always going to need access to food, right? We've been working on trying to get a pantry on Wheels model. We've actually already purchased the vehicle and are waiting for it to arrive! Our idea is to be able to take the food out to the different spaces on campus to have more access points for students.
So those are some of the things that we want to continue to work on, and just being able to continue serving students appropriately, and make sure that they are at the same time—and this is part of the culture change you spoke of—aware that they deserve to eat, to be housed. This is not charity; it’s a human right. Helping students feel empowered to expect and demand food and shelter from their University is part of the culture change you spoke of, and it is a system change, too.
Wow! I hope that those dreams come true.
Angela could not answer this question because we went over time and she had to leave for another meeting. We think that the circumstance of not being able to answer a question about the future in order to attend to the present also speaks volumes about the real challenges in which these two inspiring leaders do their work.
