Cal Poly Pomona Presentation

Written by Tam, UCLA Alumna and Community Advocate

May 2, 2008



On May 2, myself and four other students drove to Cal Poly Pomona to talk about the book. Cal Poly Pomona's administration has been very supportive of undocumented students and even has an assigned AB540 counselor that works only with undocumented students. We were invited to come and speak about the formation of the student support group for undocumented students, IDEAS at UCLA, after they found out about the new book. The administrator of the Asian American student club and an Asian American Studies professor at Cal Poly had heard the story of how IDEAS was formed and wanted to do the same at their university.

IDEAS was formed by a UCLA administrator who invited all the AB540 students to his office and from there they formed a group and have gone on to fundraise, organize conferences and workshops, organize politically, and also to support each other socially and emotionally. Because of this, the administrators at Cal Poly, in turn, invited the AB540 students they knew to this meeting. After sharing our stories, one of the professors actually bought a book for each Cal Poly students there. The students were really inspired and we even connected on a level where we have gone on to work on other events together. I even met another undocumented Asian student. He is majoring in Construction/Engineering and immigrated with his parents to Mexico from China. When he was about eight years old, he moved to the US with his uncle but has been unable to legalize his status. He said he was really happy to see non-Latino immigrants being represented in the book.