With President Trump talking about potentially phasing out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act- commonly known as the DREAM Act- Winthrop University sororities Zeta Phi Beta and Zeta Sigma Chi are hosting a cultural event to educate students on the act as well as the implications of repealing it.
DACA is a program that was introduced during the Obama administration that allows immigrants who were brought into the country as minors to receive deferred deportation in two year periods. Betty Green, the president of Zeta Phi Beta, said that they decided to put on the event in light of the talk from the Trump administration that they are going to phase out the program. “Seeing what is happening in the news with DACA and Trump’s decision about it, we thought it would be a good event with very current information. A lot of people don’t know about DACA and some people probably don’t even think about immigration and people who are going through that,” Green said. The event will feature a speaker who will talk about immigration as well as the DACA program, followed by an open questions session at the end. Originally, Green said she had hoped to get students to share their stories with DACA, but decided against it to protect students who may be in vulnerable situations. The main goal of this event is to educate Winthrop students on the hardships that immigrants face when they come to America as well as the hardships many more will face if DACA is repealed. “We want students to gain more education on the subject and also see how DACA helped people and how people may need to deal with DACA being taken away if that happens. We want them to understand how it will affect people and their families if it is going to be taken away,” Green said. The event counts for both a global learning event as well as a cultural event. It is free and open to the public.
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Benjamin Tillman is a name that has been a subject of great controversy and caused protests among students, including the die-in at Tillman Hall that occurred in the fall of 2016. The die-in was spearheaded by a few student groups that push for social change, and all of the students who led these organizations graduated in May, leaving new leadership to hold up the legacy of the people who were trying to destroy the legacy of Benjamin Tillman on Winthrop’s campus. While the Socialist Student Union does not technically have a president, Ana Castellanos is a member of the group and has helped organize events in the past and plans on continuing to help organizing events in the future. Castellanos said that the effort to change the name is evolving from a protest standpoint to a call-to-action standpoint. “We will keep fighting for it, but it is not going to be in the same way as we did before. We want to get more people to get together to call their representatives and write letters because unfortunately, South Carolina has a law that says that any public school cannot change the name of a building unless the South Carolina legislature votes to do that. I think the Tillman occupation was a good way to start getting that anger out there and getting more people to know about it, but now we can start to get those people mobilized and doing political actions that are going to work,” Castellanos said. Winthrop College Democrats new president, Frankie Zellers, said the he plans to lead the organization to continue to push for the name change as well. “College Democrats at Winthrop and across the state believes that campuses should remove vestiges of racism on college campuses in the South. It’s unfortunate that so many of our buildings have a racist lineage and we are certainly going to apply pressure on the state legislature and governor McMaster to revisit legislation such as the Heritage Act which has prevented so much progress in our state despite a wide base of public support,” Zellers said. I am one of the few hispanics who don’t speak Spanish.
According to Pew Research, the amount of Hispanics that speak Spanish at home is 73 percent, which is down from 78 percent in 2000. Although it has gone down, I’m still a minority as Hispanic who doesn’t speak Spanish. Growing up, I’ve never really seen my inability to speak Spanish as an issue. My Abuela speaks fluent English and my father has lived in the states since he was five. My dad could’ve taught us to speak Spanish, but he would have had to teach it to my mom as well, who is white and unable to say simple phrases correctly. For us, speaking English is the way we communicate; it allows everyone in our family to take part in the conversation. But as I grew older, people began to question me as I started in Spanish class in eighth grade. “Why are you in this class? You already speak Spanish” my classmates asked. “So then you’re basically white, right?” they’d ask after I explained I didn’t speak Spanish. Nothing is more infuriating than having your culture erased just because you don’t speak the language that is spoken in your ancestor’s’ homeland. Just because I don’t speak fluent Spanish doesn’t mean that I don’t still have Hispanic blood coursing through my veins. It doesn’t mean that I still don’t have a huge family full of tias and tios who listen to lively Spanish music at family gatherings. Not speaking Spanish doesn’t prevent me from being looked down upon by certain people for my skin color and it doesn’t make me more likely to get paid as much as my white male counterparts. Me not speaking Spanish is a result of being born in a country where speaking Spanish makes you a foreigner or an illegal and conformity is key. According to Gallup News, about one in four Americans have the ability to hold a conversation in a second language. So why am I being berated for not being able to do something that three of four Americans can’t do? Articles about Winthrop Spirit Squad Dressing in Costumes deemed offensive (set of 2 articles)11/9/2017 Winthrop Spirit Squad members dress in culturally insensitive costumes:
http://mytjnow.com/2017/11/03/winthrop-spirit-squad-members-dress-in-culturally-insensitive-costumes/ Educating on cultural appropriation: http://mytjnow.com/2017/11/08/educating-on-cultural-appropriation/ |
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