The graduation ceremony of the Chicana and Chicano studies department was originally cancelled this year.
Low projected participation and budget cuts prompted Alicia Gaspar de Alba, the chair of the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, to send a memo to the graduating students informing them of the cancellation, she said.
But the graduating class ““ the department’s second ““ was able to reinstate its June 13 graduation ceremony by raising money selling mugs and coordinating student support.
Mónica Hernández, a fourth-year history and Chicana and Chicano studies student, said she created a Facebook group the night she received the news that the graduation would be replaced with a barbecue.
The Facebook group was intended to allow students in the department to take action.
The group gained momentum and currently has 443 members. The students drafted a letter to the department faculty expressing the impact the cancellation has had on them, Hernández said.
Hernández said the graduation ceremony for the department is more intimate than the ceremony for the College of Letters and Science and is structured differently.
Each student is allotted 90 seconds to speak about whatever they’d like, which would be an impossibility for the Letters and Science ceremony because of its sheer size, Hernández said.
Amelia Fay-Berquist, a fourth-year Chicana and Chicano studies student, said she had already planned what she wanted to say in her short speech prior to the ceremony’s cancellation.
Ellie Hernández, the department’s student affairs officer, said that the students themselves are considered keynote speakers rather than the guests invited to speak.
The letter the students drafted said they were “dedicated to doing whatever it takes to raise the necessary funds” for the ceremony.
Gaspar de Alba said she was pleased upon receiving this response letter from the students, adding that rather than complaining, the students understood this was a decision prompted by the budget cuts and that they had a role to play in the reinstatement of the ceremony.
Gaspar De Alba suggested to the students that they sell departmental drinking mugs. The mugs have been available for purchase at departmental events.
The students set an initial fundraising goal of $1,000, said Olavo Michel, a fourth-year Chicana and Chicano Studies and political science student.
The students exceeded this goal after two days of selling the mugs, he said. They had raised $1,100 as of Monday, he added.
The graduation was paid for not only by the students selling mugs, but also the faculty and staff of UCLA, Gaspar de Alba said.
Although the graduating class has already met its goal, the fundraising organizers said they will continue to sell the mugs because they are concerned for next year’s graduating class, said Ester Trujillo, a third-year Chicana and Chicano Studies and political science student.
“The budget cuts will get worse. If we can’t ensure courses, then how are we to secure graduation?” Trujillo said.