Rebecca Beavers: Hello everyone. This is your host, Rebecca Beavers, and welcome back to the Bridging the Gap Podcast. Today I am joined by two alumni of DMV colleges. My guests. Will you introduce yourselves?

 

Afriasia Bermudex-Crespin: Hi, I'm Afriasia. 

 

Rebecca: What school did you go to? 

 

Afriasia: Oh, I went to the University of Maryland, and now I currently go to American University for my master's.

 

Oscar Nzekwu: Hi. My name is Oscar, and I met. I did masters in George Washington with doing media and strategic communications.

 

Rebecca: So just warming us up in getting us into the feel of this episode, can you both briefly share your path to college and the barriers you faced getting here,

 

Afriasia: I guess I'll go first. So I am a first generation college graduate and first generation teacher. So in terms of barriers in the way of there was a lot of a lack of knowledge and filling out the FAFSA in under, in navigating standardized testing, like that, SAT and ACT, most of the barriers were academic and a tiny bit of financial, but didn't really hope that I had not just a support system with my parents, but also my friends and the school community that I went to, having gone to a private school, and the resources they had, which really helped me find my bearings through high school, and I could go to different tutoring that the school offered by and I also could take different classes that maybe other students at other schools couldn't. But also, there were also some barriers for me socially, going from a small girl school to and by the time of the senior year, it was like I was a big fish in a small pond to UMD being such a large state school with people from all types of different upbringings, all types of backgrounds that definitely going from big fish to small pond to itty bitty fish in a wide ocean or even a big lake, that made it harder to also find my footing. Just like finding people had things in common with people. I found other first generation people. I found other Latinos. But even then, it was that was hard to navigate. I saw navigating finding internships, deciding my major, feeling like, oh well, most of the other people I was surrounded, I was surrounded by were like, going into more quote, unquote, practical major. So it felt like, well, I'm not in a major that's gonna make me a lot of money, but it's okay. Here I am. There were a lot of times where I was maybe one of two Latinos or the only Latina in a lot of my classes, and that was definitely something that was difficult to navigate. 

 

Oscar: I would definitely say some barriers I faced, it would be definitely FAFSA and finding out applying for different colleges. I think I kind of bridged out my horizons, some that are in state, some that are out of state. But that's also the same time I was kind of thinking, what would be the cheaper option, bang, and I don't want them. I don't want to stop people from going to what school they want to go do. I think that. But that but that was just one of the one of the barriers for me. But I think during college, definitely, on a social level, that's definitely one of the barriers. Because, again, I didn't know who I was gonna click with. I don't know who I was gonna click with, so it's all about exploring. You're gonna meet people who you like, you're gonna meet people you don't like. That's just part of life as for majors, I would say you have a lot of time. Everybody has their own pace on what major they want to do, because I'm the amount of people who I met were undecided. It taught me that a not everybody thought about what they're going to do, but they're willing to explore what they're interested in, what they want to study for. So there's also that internships are definitely a barrier. It took a long time, but you have a career center and guides to help you, and that also goes for extracurricular stuff, because if you're also interested in a lot of stuff outside of education, you can also explore to see what clubs or organizations there are that you can join.

 

Rebecca: Moving on to the next question. This relates to diversity, equity and inclusion program. So if this does not apply to you, just let me know it doesn't apply to you. But were there any programs going into the admissions process that you were learning about, and if you took this path, did you decide to apply for it?

 

Afriasia: So I have a funny story, and you kind of already know this story. For the audience, Rebecca and I ran into the same high school, and so she doesn't, I don't know if I've told the full extent of the story to you, however, going even going into high school, and I had no idea until my senior year that I was automatically placed because of my last name, because I'm Latina, onto a Latina scholarship for my high school. And it was, it lasted all four years of high school. So our tuition was reduced. I know we paid something. I don't remember what we paid, but we paid something. We had it reduced because on the amount of money my family makes was would have been too much for full coverage. But and then senior year was really when I found. Out about different not just a specific scholarship, but also other Latin, other Latino specific scholarships. I was finding out about the Taco Bell scholarship, the Coca Cola spot, McDonald's. I was finding out more about other ways that a lot of my Latino peers didn't decide to go straight to a university. They decided to go the associates route and go two years and then go to a four year school. And my ambition, no, I'm going straight to four year. Oh, so I did all this research to find out about Latino scholarships, because they have scholarships for everything, for people who wear glasses, for people who have some form of a disability. And unfortunately, the only scholarship I did get was the pretty big one that was from the high school. And it's funny, because as much as it helped, it actually came there's a little bit of, yeah, I call it what it is. It was a little bit of a racist undertone. It was because she sat down and told us that he, the person who created, who funded this scholarship and created it and gave it to us was someone who did this because he saw Latinas in Texas who couldn't afford to go to college, and pitied them, and then, in turn, pitied us when he saw, Oh, look at these young women in this school who got here on their merit, but then they're still going to Use their merit to get into universities and colleges. But we're not going to do this based on the merit. We're going to do this because I pity them and because I and it was I want them to see opportunity. But it was also not out of the goodness out of my heart, but mostly because I'm he pitied us, and I'm like, on one hand, I was grateful for it. I was grateful that I didn't my parents and I didn't have to we take out as many loans or take out as much as other people have, but it also was, it's a sell out to the face to what I did to earn my place in that college of Well, I'm just here off the back of my last name. I'm just here off of somebody pitying me, off of some white person's guilt, and that at the same time, didn't feel good. And I spent every year of college, bold.org, class, Gleb, college Express, all these scholarship websites just looking for other scholarships, just in writing these essays, just to feel I'd actually earned money for school, and not just oh well, we feel bad for you and your people. So we're gonna, we're gonna get you money. And it's funny, because I didn't fully see the extent of it until 2020 and there's a lot of stuff  happening with with Black Lives Matter and everything. And there was, again, I'll call it for what it is, a racist incident involving one of the administrators of the school, actually the administrator of the school me, and of course, this happened after we got raided, but it was a big topic, not just among students at the time, but even among us, because it was Whoa. Now we're getting into what happened while we were there, and feeling the young black women who went there, the young Latina women who went there, starting to feel well, did we actually earn our places, or were we just pitied? 

 

Rebecca: Oscar, would you like to add? 

 

Oscar: I did feel the loss of I get, I think I felt the loss of being included. If that makes any sense, no, that does, because it makes sense, because I remember back in undergrad, if you know UMBC, UMBC is a freaking stem sess pool. 

 

Afriasia: I know like UMD. I've been on a tour there, and it was, number one, it was small, yeah. Number two, there was nothing they gave me. It was giving nothing for the arts. There was even, BC, is not for us.

 

Oscar: No, because, yeah, I didn't feel included going to that school because of what I was majoring in, and I was a media, communication major who minored in theater, and most the career fairs that I would go to I only went to once, because I only went to a career fair once, because all they offered, there was just them jobs, and only time they offered an arts fair, there wasn't even a lot of arts careers. There weren't even a lot of art career jobs for that UMBC offered, and it kind of bothered me away. It's like, I know you're a STEM school, but at least make everybody else feel included.

 

Afriasia: Yeah, no. Luckily, being UMD, being such a big school, they had a dedicated STEM career fair, but they also had dedicated they called it arts and humanities career fair. And I still kick myself for not even going to anything related to for not connecting myself with anything related because I was a double major English communications. I'm like the communications career fairs were all right there, and I just connecting myself to everything. The funny thing is, I was connecting myself to I was unintentionally connecting myself to everything related to teaching. I was, I had a tutoring job on campus. I was when I was looking for jobs, I was actually starting to look for other tutoring jobs, other teaching jobs. Look, I was still looking for stuff in communications, but it was almost like an afterthought, even if it wasn't, because it was like, What am I doing? I. Have this major, but I'm ending up on this path here that I said I never, ever wanted to be on.

 

Oscar: Yeah, that's it was crazy. I just wish that schools at UMBC would be more, show more equality to other majors other than stem and let them know. Look at us. Our majors are also important. I was the one editing the video. We're interviewing people. We're collecting statistics. We had it hard, man.

Oh yeah. Well, I'm telling you, without the arts and humanities, society would be bland. It would honestly.

 

Rebecca: I'm just gonna interject here because you guys are making a lot of really good points. And I'm taking this from the HBCU side of things. Their dei isn't what it is the way it is at pwis. It's not the same at an HBCU. So when they say Dei, they're referring to people who are coming from abroad. They're referring from white kids from rural areas. They are referring to maybe that one or two students from the hood. Who they want to make an example out of that is their dei or the one or two? 

 

Afriasia: Look, I'm gonna interject again, because, no, because it's true, or the one or two Latinos, yeah, I had to explain it, because there are none on the East Coast, and we trying to, we not trying to do out of state tuition Exactly. So our next, our next best thing after if she didn't want to go to a PWI, that's her prerogative. If she wouldn't want to deal with the same thing I dealt with more colors, where the Latino population is majority. And even with a Hispanic Serving Institution classification, that doesn't mean it's historically Hispanic, like in age they're all schools who wear historically white. And then eventually we're like, okay, we're seeing the increase in Latinos. I guess we got to help them too.

 

Rebecca: And my whole issue with people complaining about non black individuals entering black spaces, I don't mean to be that person who says this, but the reason they are entering these spaces is because the spaces that they're originally coming from are like super like, microaggressions everywhere. And I'm not talking about white people when they say this. That's a whole different discussion for another day. But when it comes to Latinos, when it comes to Asians, when it comes to my mind is blanking. But other races, when it comes to those races, and they come to historically black environments, it's like they're coming because they're experiencing too many microaggressions from every other direction. 

 

Afriasia: That is why they're just because I'm very much because I grew up here in PG County, literally my whole life. So I've always been like the one population that I've consistently grown up around, gone to school with, been not just high school, elementary, middle school, high school, up until there now, because AU is not diverse. Has been black people and Latinos, and now I'm literally working.

I literally work. So I see kindergarten and I work at Martin Luther King Jr Elementary in southeast DC. So there's literally two Latino kids in the whole building, two Latino staff members in the whole building, and then and then, but it's I still I don't feel out of place. I don't feel I don't have anything in common with the other adults, because it's the same culture I've always grown up with. They literally no one has an issue with me speaking Spanish. Nobody has they make we all make jokes about it with other, and suddenly blocked up when me and other, when me and the Spanish teacher were talking, we're having a conversation is managed, and one of the staff members is, oh, this so much. So finally, fast buddy to nearly talk to, but it's kind of true, because we have that language in common, but outside of that, me and this person are from two very different countries, two very different Latino cultures. But it's the truth because but it's also come at a point where I've already had kids ask me, are you black or are you white? How do you explain that to a five year old? You're both, but you're also on top of that, you have a dash of indigenous because the white people colonized and wiped out an entire indigenous population. They don't understand that they're not gonna know when they don't know what Native American is. So I don't blame her for having that. I don't blame these kids for having that question. I I'm playing a system that prioritizes that currently prioritizes trying to force us out 

 

Rebecca: What changed for you when you found out you were selected for it. Well, you already went through this, you said, but kind of changed for you when you found out you were selected for this.

 

Afriasia: Yeah, I say it like I was proud, but then I felt a sense of pity, especially during 2020, and it came to my head. But after that, coming into my masters, I was, I need to. It came down to now I'm actually figuring out. And it's funny because my program, because I'm not just going to AU as a master today, I'm going to AU via this other program called City teaching Alliance. But anyway, so they have a specific scholarship that initially was for black, black students coming into the program, so there were no other so it was literally intended for but not out of pay, out of merit. And they had told us, oh, this is last year. It's just going to be for black educators. They're expanding it to Latinos and other other races, other ethnicities, too. And because of my experience with the Latino scholarship, I had asked the group of people, I happen to be a group of black people there, and I asked, Oh, you guys feel at all like tokenized or petty because of the scholarship, or do you actually feel like you earned it? I spent the entire winter and spring not just prepping for the test to actually start in the program, because the practice test you take, it you take multiple practice tests to be an educator. So I just spent, I also spent in looking for scholarship, because masters are expensive, and even though it's discounted, because au decided to discount it for us, for our for our program, $45,000 is still a lot of money for two years. Yeah, 25,000 for Yeah, for the whole two years, that's still a lot of money, and that's a lot of loans to take out.

 

Rebecca: So that concludes this episode. Tune into our next episode, where we talk to our student, administrators, and faculty who help our students every day when it comes to diversity and inclusion. This is Rebecca Beavers, and together, we are Bridging the Gap.