Jesus Davila immigrated to the U.S. for the same reasons as many others from Mexico: for educational opportunity, and for work.
Davila, a City College student, wants to transfer to UC Berkeley to study architectural engineering. He talked about the amazing variety of buildings in the Tenderloin, and his eyes grew wide as he spoke of the older skyscrapers downtown.
“I want to have my own building, to design it, and have people pass it by and say ‘wow, who made that?’” he said.
Davila arrived in the states in 1992, and after only one month in California, was hit by a freight train in Oakland. His spine was broken, and he lost the use of both of his legs.
After spending six years in and out of hospitals, Davila felt as though he would never achieve the dreams he had when first setting out from Chihuahua, Mexico. That’s when he found City College of San Francisco, and began taking English as Second Language classes at the Mission campus. He credits his ESL classes with bringing him out of his depression.
“If the classes weren’t there for me, I wouldn’t be here right now. Everything I am is thanks to the school, my family and god,” Davila said, speaking just outside the Rainbow Room at the LGBT center on Market Street.
Davila, now 40, was there to give back to the school that helped save his life.
College closure threatened
City College made headlines recently for being in danger of closure after receiving a scathing accreditation report from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. If the college doesn’t shape up by Oct.15, it stands to lose its accreditation and with it, all of its funding.
While many in the college community—from the chancellor to the unions—say that it’s unlikely the college would close completely if it fails to shape up in time, one possible consequence being discussed is the closure of some of the college’s nine campuses, a possibility if a different government agency were to take over the school.
This would mean trouble for the Latino population of San Francisco, and the Mission in particular. City College has 90,000 students, of which 18,900 are Latino, according to CCSF data from 2010.
With around 38 percent of San Francisco foreign born, according to college statistics, demand for ESL classes is as high as ever. 20,000 students use the school’s ESL departments annually, centered mainly in the John Adams and Mission campuses. Comparatively, the school’s English department only serves 7,000 students a year.
“[The school] might try to downsize the noncredit ESL program down to just full time faculty who can’t be reassigned elsewhere, and let the part-timers go,” said Susan Lopez, an ESL instructor from Mission campus. “That might be the worst case—disastrous. I don’t think the immigrant community would permit that. I think there would be an uproar.”
Save the school
Many of the campus’ community, like Davila, turned up at the emergency town hall meeting to discuss plans to save the school and its campuses. The room was packed with over a hundred students and faculty to hear the AFT 2121 leader, Alisa Messer and city supervisor Eric Mar tell them the fate of the college. Far before the event began, the LGBT center had to turn people away.
Xiomara Martinez was one of the students there that night in support of City College. She and her husband are both pursuing their high school diplomas at Mission campus, while she works as a housekeeper. Martinez said that her two sons, Andres, 4, and Giovanni, 7, keep her motivated in her classes.
“It’s opening doors to success for me,” she said. “If the school closed, I may be forever a worker of minimum wage. How will I care for my kids without a degree?”
Martinez is studying math, and says she hopes to be a teacher one day, perhaps at City College.
When asked why it mattered if the Mission campus itself closed, so long as the main campus at Ocean Avenue was open, Martinez was livid.
“I go there because it’s my community. At Mission you meet people from Peru, Guatemala, Colombia … you see those who are so different and are still family,” she said.
Davila said it was more important than just a feeling of familiarity. The comfort of being with other native Spanish speakers, many near his age, made the road to learning much easier for him. He credits Mission campus with lifting his depression, and even turning him into a leader (He is the vice president of the Mission campus associated student council, and plans to run for president next semester, if there is still a college).
College Board Trustee Chris Jackson was critical of the WASC report, saying that if City College closed any of its nine campuses, which were paid for by state and city bond measures, that it would forfeit any future bonds for up to seven years.
“We need to look long and hard before closing any campuses,” Jackson said.
Closing down ESL classes would also cost the college money Lopez said. There are 67 departments at City College, but noncredit ESL alone generates 15-16 percent of all apportionment at the college. Apportionment is the money that the state reimburses the college for every enrolled student, which for ESL totals about $23 million a year.
“If noncredit [ESL] were cut out entirely, the college would have to find a similarly reliable source of apportionment,” Lopez said.
The battle ahead
Students like Davila and Martinez have promised to continue to rally and advocate for the school across San Francisco. Many are planned in the coming months, spreading through social networks, such as the hashtag #saveCCSF on Twitter, as more students take up the cause.
“How could I stay at home, when there is so much to be done?” Martinez said.
In a city of 800,000, one in every three San Franciscans has gone to the school, or knows someone who has, said college rally organizers.
The crowd inside the room of the rally grew louder, and Davila started to motion that he needed to rejoin the students, and soon was back inside where students and the community were busy planning for the future.
Davila is driven to finish his last few semesters so he can realize his dreams and transfer. The future of the college though, remains uncertain.