Xochitl de Anda | Contributing Writer

As the year comes to an end, I think back on SDP’s history. We have had many struggles to overcome and many changes have come to the department. Currently we don’t have an official director, but soon this will change. SDP will be different once again. However as one of the members of the graduating class I feel the need to share some of the stories that have led us to be where we are today. One of them is being invited to the Scholarship Recognition dinner.

Upon arriving on campus my freshman year I quickly learned that as a Multicultural Scholarship Recipient I was not going to be part of the prestigious dinner and I would also would not be considered to have a prestigious scholarship. A former student wrote an opinion article criticizing the scholarship, my scholarship. However, this writer forgot to mention that the scholarship comes with a lot of expectations. Recipients from my class and the younger generations are required to hold executive positions within SDP ant to also be involved with organizations outside of SDP. Most of us are busy and involved students who are contributing to the campus without much recognition. Last year, this lack of recognition lead some of us to begin to write letters to President Moore in order to find out why Multicultural Scholars were not invited.

It is my understanding that those who are invited get to meet their sponsor. However, my scholarship does not have specific sponsors. This is why in previous years recipients of this scholarship have not been invited to the dinner.

Long story short, somehow we got invited to the dinner without having to send President Moore any of the letters. One of our biggest reasons for writing the letters and requesting to be invited was to finally receive some of the recognition that we deserve. Thus being invited to this dinner became an important landmark in our SDP journey, especially to Multicultural Recipients.

The recent scholarship dinner for some unknown reason failed to recognize with accuracy most recipients. I am not aware that this was done intentionally. Though, upon seeing that most of my fellow scholarship were not listed it left me upset. I felt insulted that we have been fighting to be recognized for our hard work and there were people listed to have the Multicultural Scholarship when in fact they did not have such scholarship. They were also being misrepresented and they were not being given the proper recognition.

SDP has had many changes throughout its history; many periods of uncertainty have come along in this journey. Thus, as I begin to prepare myself to leave this place and SDP, I can only hope that the battles we have fought for, such as the one described above, will not be forgotten by SDP members or the rest of campus. I can only hope that the generations staying behind will continue to fight for the recognition they deserve.