Note: To see the interview, please click the link above. In order to upload the clip in the size we wanted for blogger, some of the sharpness was lost. I shrunk the file into an mp4 onto my google drive because it is six minutes long and it would not upload directly onto the blog. I apologize if it isn't as clear as it will be on Medici, but the important piece here is the beautiful storytelling.
The whole story here lasted about 15 minutes, but for the purposes of the class blog, we picked a powerful six minute piece. Before speaking to what you have watched, let me give a little bit of background to how Elena Herrada ended up visiting her college advisor and the ombudsman (click the link for a definition). In the first few minutes of her story, Elena shared with us how her grandfather always motivated her to get through school. After completed her credits as a student in the Chicano-Boricua studies program, a co-major, Elena found out that 60 of her 180 credits would not count. Therefore she was told that she would need to complete 5 more semesters of college credit in order to finish. Feeling low, Elena returned back to her grandfather's house with "a baby on [her] hip" to tell him that she couldn't do it. He subsequently told her not to return to his house until she graduated and that it was unacceptable that she thought to drop out. He said, "Do what you need to do. Don't come back here and tell me you're not going to graduate." Elena felt that she and her classmates, considered experimental students did not count.
Then we arrive at the clip linked above. Elena arrived to the advisor and refused to leave. He showed her to an ombudsman, who eventually went through each of the courses and made sure they counted. It might not seem like a big thing to us, who see DAAS and AMCULT here at University of Michigan counted as majors and minors. But for Elena and her classmates, Wayne State did not believe in the validity of the program, of Latino history. Elena did a powerful and brave thing not only for herself, but for her classmates, and ultimately for other programs in the state. It was powerful to listen to her speak because I can't imagine what it would be like if structurally, we were unable to obtain college credit for our cultural studies classes, which are just as real as any other courses. In fact, learning the narratives of other histories can often be harder to us emotionally in conjunction with a challenging workload, which is certainly understated in our campus culture.
The end of her interview where Elena describes how her grandfather showed up to the graduation in full revolutionary regalia was so vivd. I imagined him walking in and cheering for her "Viva Herrada! Viva Herrada!" and the emotionality of that experience. During that part of the interview, I actually teared up a little bit. He was so important to her, and his motivational tactics pushed Elena to perform a risky, yet important action.
The ombudsman with the roses? Put that image into your mind. What a sincere act of thanks.
The last sentence of the clip really summarizes so much of Elena's interview: "through death, and birth, and absolute grit of my grandfather."
What do you feel when you listen? What do you hear? How do you relate to the interview personally? Look forward to seeing the rest of her interview describing involvement with the Black Panthers, the death, the birth, and the grit of not only her grandfather, but the other people around her.
This was one of the highlights of the interview for me as well (hearing from the other room).
ReplyDeleteSomething else that doesn't come out explicitly in the interview is when she asked the advisor "who made that policy?" and "who decided that?" Those are questions that come from her activist history. The idea that there must be a person out there in the bureaucracy that decided that your courses would count or not, and that you should talk to that person to convince them to change the policy! That's a much different way to approach the problem than a student who might say "I didn't know about that policy so you have to give me credit."
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