Hispanic serving grant fails in serving Latinos

More than a year ago, Cal State Long Beach was designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution and a five-year development grant was awarded to help expand the university's capacity to serve Latino students.

With the specific purpose to improve retention and graduation rates of Latino students, the U.S. Department of Education provided our university with a unique opportunity - one that - it seems sadly to be squandering.

The award of $570,000 per year for five years is no paltry amount, yet there appears to be little to show for it thus far. Going into its second year, the grant money should have accomplished much to centralize assistance for Latino students with dire academic needs. But this wasn't the direction administration chose to follow, against the advice and insistence of the Latino campus community.

The administration argues that the university must carefully develop its HSI activities. They claim that the main goal is to promote diversity for the different populations on campus, and to develop programs that "will seek to be inclusive and will not embrace exclusionary practices that may be deemed impractical for a public higher education institution such as ours", according to President F. King Alexander's Oct. 16, 2006 op-ed in the Daily Forty-Niner.

At best, the program services are floundering and the questionable use of the HSI funds has caused deep resentment and divisions due to the university's misuse of these resources to build its infrastructure, rather than to dedicate entirely the funds for its intended purpose: to assist specifically and only Latino students.

In fact, this misallocation of funds was so appalling that a letter of "no confidence" over the grant, signed by 13 of the 17 Chicano/Latino studies department's faculty, was sent to Alexander a year ago. Unfortunately, the president has refused to reply and has ignored the concerns that were offered in good faith.

This action may have been perceived only as a symbolic gesture of disaffection, but nonetheless deserving of a reply given that the faculty attempted to make him aware that this matter may jeopardize the grant and the university's image.

The CHLS faculty vote of no confidence expressed that "...the CHLS department cannot in good conscience participate in processes that lack transparency, fail to meaningfully include Latinas/os, and that operate in a dismissive and autocratic fashion"

The vote of no confidence from the faculty came after assurances by former Provost Gary Reichard that the department would be fully involved in a central role. To their great disappointment, they realized that there was no intent to create a coordinated one-stop delivery of services for Latino students or to include the department, nor any other representative Latino entity in the implementation of the grant.

There's a dark cloud that hovers over our campus, casting a shadow that reflects a gloomy reality: the HSI grant is serving the university, but CSULB is not a Hispanic Serving Institution.

Until the president answers the CHLS "no confidence" letter and the university provides full disclosure, accountability and legitimacy regarding what has been done with the HSI funds thus far, there will be gloomy days at "The Beach."

Nelly Suazo is a senior Chicano/Latino studies major.