Interview by Sheltreese McCoy
Irene Schwoefferman is the Director of the Student of Color Campus Diversity Project of the United States Student Association (USSA). The United States Student Association is the country's oldest and largest national student organization, representing millions of students. USSA believes education is a right and works on building grassroots power among students to win concrete victories that expand access to education at the federal, state and campus level.
Dynamic: It seems like the rightwing has paid a lot of attention to attacking Affirmative Action, especially in education. What are some examples of the ways they are trying to get rid of Affirmative Action?
Irene: A good example of the opposition to affirmative action is Prop 209, which happened in 1995. This got rid of affirmative action policies in university admissions. We realized without affirmative action programs , students of color aren’t in school and don’t have the student support services they need to get to college and graduate.
Attacks on affirmative action don’t just happen on the college level. Another attack on affirmative action is the defunding of federal programs that help youth of color in high school. Programs like Gear up, Upward Bound, and the Trio programs are in our communities, but they are funded at the federal level. We are fighting for funding of these programs. When the federal budget came out this year the president wanted to eliminate the Gear Up program and zero funded it. For communities of color that means many less students of color going into college. This is an example of the types of fights we are having.
There is currently a fight in Michigan that is similar to Proposition 209 in California. The civil rights initiative, which wants to repeal affirmative action policies in the state, has been approved for the 2006 fall ballot in Michigan. The same people who funded prop 209 in California and the repeal of affirmative action in Washington are now in Michigan. They targeted Michigan because of the recent Supreme Court case in 2003. In spite of the court’s ruling they are trying to get rid of affirmative action state-wide, not just in higher education. They want to get rid of affirmative action in hiring and contract policies as well. Students in Michigan are organizing and educating on the ballot initiative and getting people to vote against it. By using the name the “civil rights initiative”, the people supporting the initiative have tried to trick people into voting for it thinking that it is about civil rights. To the people funding this initiative their civil rights do not include affirmative action but to us it does.
Dynamic: How is the fight for Affirmative Action changing? What are the different parts of the fight?
Irene: Affirmative Action is being talked about differently. When I go to campuses and start talking about affirmative action a red flag goes up, and students wonder, “What is she going to talk about? Quotas?” This was the way it was framed in the Clinton years. People talked about quotas and used language that was not helpful to the cause. We are trying to reframe the conversation about what’s really happening on the ground and on campuses with respect to affirmative action. The reality is that affirmative action isn’t quotas, it isn’t general policies and it isn’t taking up seats we don’t have a right to.
The new conversation addresses what the different programs are. Many people don’t know which programs are affirmative action programs and how they affect our access to education. In my mind I view the Trio and similar programs as affirmative action programs. These programs are not tied to a specific admission policy, but they are programs that help youth get into college and through school. When people say they won’t support affirmative action, they are telling our communities and our kids that we won’t fund programs like after school, mentoring and tutoring that help youth of color get into college.
In response to this need and lack of government support, students have been taking these programs up themselves. At the University of Boulder, Colorado, and University of California students have initiated outreach programs, because they didn’t have state sponsored affirmative action. These students decided that they would take it on themselves to help youth of color get into college. Many current students went through different programs in high school that helped them get into college and wanted to carry on that legacy. Each program looks different. Some schools have conferences with four hundred high schools. Students visit the college, participate in mentorship programs, or have mentor programs with the college students. Some programs even bring college recruiters to underprivileged high schools depending on the need of the area.
These are some of the residual effects of having no affirmative action policy and even these programs are being attacked and defunded. The battle is on many fronts and levels but the fight is the same. People need to change their frame of reference about affirmative action because all of these areas are being attacked. In Congress, education gets lumped with the programs that get the most funding cuts, so when the President set forth his budget he cut education all across the board. There were cuts in 48 programs. Those cuts and the lack of prioritizing our education are limiting our options as young people.
Dynamic: We hear a lot about the lack of opportunities for young people and how the military preys on them. How is Affirmative Action connected to the poverty draft and the struggle against military recruitment in our schools and communities?
Irene: I think it is important to connect the issues. When you talk about a community uplifting itself, specifically communities of color, it involves education and access to better jobs to improve their communities. If you are not giving people access to education you are saying they are being forced into low wage jobs or into the military. You are restricting their upward mobility. This limitation confines the communities’ mobility as a whole. In that Affirmative action and counter recruitment are interrelated. It’s important when talking about military recruitment we realize recruiters go into schools with the poorest kids in communities of color. Young people go into the military because college wasn’t an option. The kids I know saw the GI Bill and assumed they were going to school. However, they never got the benefits and got stuck in the military. One of my high school students in Los Angeles said their school offered the Armed Services Vocational Assessment Battery (ASVAB) test as a day off of school. They ignored the high scoring students and went on to recruit the low scoring students. Essentially telling them you have no hope of college, join the military. It’s hard to stop a machine like that.
Dynamic: How are students fighting back and what is the National Take Affirmative Action Day?
Irene: The National Take Affirmative Action Day is an event that happens at the end of October to highlight the struggle to save affirmative action. It is done in conjunction with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education fund, a project of the Americans for a Fair Chance/Student Activist Network NAACP Youth and College Division. National Take Affirmative Action Day (NTAAD) is used to organize students around those issues of access of education that specifically come from Affirmative Action policies and diversity and retention programs. The NTAAD is also a day of solidarity; the work isn’t limited to that day and can be the start of a campaign for campuses to address issues they have. Glen Community College in Oregon participated this year. They don’t have many resources for organizing. In spite of limited resources, the college hosted an event to address faculty and staff of color on how affirmative action relates to their quality of education.
Another school that participated was the University of California San Diego. Since the passage of Proposition 209 that eliminated affirmative action policies in 1995 in California, African American enrollment has dropped from 3% to 1% and out of 400 African American students only 23 of those are men. So they were addressing issues around that reality. The event included an actual funeral procession, and a burial to send the message that diversity is dying without affirmative action programs
Dynamic: How can organizations connect to what work USSA is doing?
Irene: One way to get involved is through Association Work. People can call the office and check the website regularly for new actions. You can sign up to an update list and join in coalition with the campaigns USSA. Our current campaigns include Stopping the Raid on Student Aid, 2006 elections, National legislative conference in March (LegCon), and the National Student Lobby Day. Other ways to get involved are through our mobilizing and education work. These include the Affirmative Action fight, grassroots organizing weekend trainings, Grow sessions and the LGBT queer student of color coalition summit.
To learn about the United States Student Association’s fight to protect affirmative action, visit their website at www.usstudents.org
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