This crisis has really exposed the challenges we face as a state and the
nation. Everything from access to good public
health, to goods and services, internet
connection. Let's really expose some of the equity
challenges that we knew already that our students face. You
stepped up to help one another during these hard times and many of you
have answered the call and joined the front lines in response
to COVID-19. Our community colleges have been right
there in just about every community up and down the state
working side by side not only to support the response in terms of the nurses, the
EMTs, the firefighters but also opening up the doors of their
campuses. During this time we must double
our commitment to equity or communities of color
and low-income Californians will fall even
further behind. It's about closing that gap,
it's about dealing with the systemic issues that have been
sort of ignored or certainly allowed to happen over time and say
now let's use this opportunity to get some real change.
To those students who are facing hardships and maybe questioning whether
or not they want to continue their education,
I want you to know that you're going to overcome these challenges and that we're
here to help you. The support structure is amazing. My
faculty, reaching out to me seeing if i'm okay.
Access to community colleges alone is already a beacon of hope in
California because community colleges have the
capacity to get so many students and so many people
low-cost degrees, the life lessons and kind of the
life skills that you were taught at community colleges
will translate into the workforce. I really want to applaud the community
colleges for continuing the conversation. It is so easy to say
let's set this aside it's important but we got to deal with the emergency
but we can't forget the path that we are treading on
that says we need to address these inequalities. The inconsistencies and the
inequalities don't go away because there's a pandemic. History tells
us that there is some institutionalized
racism and practices that have been prevalent
in our system for a long time. It is because
that we have been denied equal access to a system that's probably
most important and that's education which
has always been the pathway to success. The nationwide protest demanding justice
for black men and women who have lost their lives to police
violence remind us we face not one but many crises
made worse by deeply rooted racism. It's our shared responsibility to say Black
lives matter through our actions and to put the will
behind better serving Black and African American students.
My office and the college leadership are finding ways that we can support
real change at every level from access to culture and our curriculum. Everyone
has jumped in and that's what makes me so proud of the
California community colleges. We are really part of every community
and our faculty, our staff, and our students do everything possible
to support their community in times of crisis. I applaud the community colleges
again in the midst of this pandemic to stay the course,
uh to keep it top and front and then we'll get through it and we'll be better on the other side.
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