Students must speak up to defend campus ethnic centers

Editor,

As a first-generation Chicano college student, I have always felt a little out of place in higher education. As an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois, I depended on La Casa Cultural Latina and the Office of Minority Student Affairs to provide mentoring, support, tutoring and a feeling of belonging to a family. As a graduate student at UNM, I have found friends and family among other students, faculty and staff at the Project for New Mexico Graduates of Color, El Centro de la Raza, American Indian Student

Services and African-American Student Services. Without the support I have received for my academic, personal and professional lives, I would not be as successful or a student leader on campus.

When my grandparents immigrated to America from Mexico, they could have never imagined that their grandson would go on to get a college degree or eventually obtain a doctorate. For too many years at UNM and colleges and universities across the country, students of color were excluded. Students, families and communities marched in the streets not only for the right to vote but also for the same opportunities to education, health care, housing and other services that they realized would give them the same advantages as their neighbors.

I will participate in Wednesday's Freedom Ride because I know that the state Legislature and the University will have to listen to a group of students from all racial backgrounds who stand up for what is right. If you support UNM's ethnic student centers and programs to continue to address the inequalities of the recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups, then you too should join us on Wednesday in Santa Fe to remind New Mexicans why it's so important to keep higher education accessible and keep fully funding programs that recruit and retain students of color.

Christopher Ramírez

GPSA president