El Congreso de UC Santa Barbara published a letter of demands to Chancellor Dennis Assanis on April 26 regarding unaddressed construction requests of the El Centro, Arnulfo Casillas and the hiring of a Hispanic-Serving Institution director.
El Congreso continues to advocate for their needs and continue moving forward on their desired projects. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
El Centro, Arnulfo Casillas is an autonomous cultural resource building on the UCSB campus. The building houses various cultural organizations, study spaces and offices.
“[T]his historic building serves as a 24-hour safe space. It is the only location on campus accessible to all students by access card at all times, providing undocumented and at-risk students with a sanctuary space,” the letter stated.
UCSB earned federal recognition as a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2015, exemplified through student organizations like El Congreso and community spaces like El Centro.
El Congreso is a student-led cultural and advocacy organization at UCSB which was founded in 1973 as a result of the Chicano Movement. The activism within the group has helped to establish the Chicana and Chicano Studies department and to address student needs across campus.
El Congreso Records Chair and Chicanx/Latinx Cultural Resource Center peer mentor and third-year history and sociology double major Ashley Aguirre, alongside third-year biology major Maritza Ramos Leon spoke on the updated list of demands for Chancellor Assanis.
According to Ramos Leon, El Centro has needed repairs for years due to continuously “neglected maintenance orders.” In 2022, El Congreso sent former UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang a list of demands that included El Centro’s maintenance, renovations, personnel and proposed projects across campus.
This resulted in Yang allocating $1 million for the building in 2023. $600,000 was dedicated to immediate renovations and maintenance for El Centro while the remaining $400,000 went towards creating a building committee.
In order to start the proposed building project, both Assanis and Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Mike Miller need to approve the building committee that was promised before Yang left.
“It’s been almost a year of this being in his office. So this culminated in us making the [recent] statement publicly. We delivered the letter to his office [and] we handed it to his secretary so he’d have a physical copy of it,” Aguirre said.
Until the committee is approved, El Centro, El Congreso and other involved organizations cannot “touch the money” promised to them by Yang. Aguirre and Ramos Leon stressed the needed haste for this due to the fiscal year that ends on June 30, with fears that the budgets may be reallocated.
“The big concern was that if he doesn’t sign off on this committee and we don’t touch the money or use the money, they technically have the power to just take away that money and put it into something else,” Ramos Leon said.
El Centro’s expansion committee has considered seeking external funding to start this project due to the inaction from administration.
“Buildings are very expensive, and so that money is mostly dedicated to hiring an architect, making the preliminary sketches. The next thing that we need to do is form a building project proposal, which will have the architectural sketches and the budget of costs, which obviously takes a different level of expertise than students have,” Ramos Leon said.
In 2022, the organization requested a full-time coordinator for El Centro; the compromise was to hire a part-time graduate student to fill the role.
“The problem is that our demand was [to] have a full-time coordinator. We got a grad student coordinator and now we won’t even have that because of the budget cuts,” Aguirre said. “El Centro itself doesn’t have a budget. We just work out of here and rely on the good graces of administrative allies [for] funding.”
After the updated list of demands was delivered to the chancellor by El Congreso members, both Assanis and Miller alluded to new plans for student service buildings in their responses. Aguirre expressed concerns regarding the future of El Centro.
“We really care about El Centro staying a space that is open to all that isn’t necessarily under one institutionalized department,” Aguirre said. “Because at its heart, it’s very student-led and all the activism that has been grown out of here has been on behalf of students.”
There is speculation among El Congreso members about plans for a second Student Resource Building or a similar building on campus to house all cultural programs, organizations and resources in one place. Assanis’ response stated, “The Division of Student Affairs is in the process of launching a campus space analysis ahead of a possible capital project to address student space needs.”
In an email to El Congreso, Miller stated similar notions.
“Additionally, my office is engaged in conversations with student leadership around space needs and the concept of proposing a SRB II building. Those discussions are very preliminary, but there is widespread support given the urgent space needs for critical student groups like those housed in Bldg. 434,” the email read.
El Congreso members and organizations within El Centro continue to await a response from Assanis and Miller on their list of demands and approve the building committee.
“This delay in the building committee is not just its own problem. It’s a symptom of the larger neglect to student affairs, cultural resource centers and uplifting those positions, like these spaces that students hold dear and that they use frequently, and this moving quickly without informing students or informing student leaders, despite these promises to do so,” Aguirre said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the May 14 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
