ASSU President Michael Cruz ’12 recently took over the position of Chair of the Community Action Board (CAB), replacing Aracely Mondragon ’13, who stepped down from the post in mid-October for personal reasons unrelated to her work on the Board. Cruz said the split was amicable.

 

Mondragon declined to comment on the issue, citing the personal nature of the resignation.

 

“While it is a loss, we still have a strong group of leaders… who are working as a whole to make up those shoes,” Cruz said.

 

The ASSU Executive formed the Community Action Board during spring quarter of the last academic year with the intention of creating a body that would “foster further celebration of the culture of diversity and identity that already exists [at Stanford],” according to Cruz. The Board features representatives from 23 different on-campus communities – and, more informally, members of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate Advocacy Committee.

 

According to Cruz, the Executive team thought it would be “a natural fit” for him to become the Board’s chair since he had worked closely with Mondragon prior to her resignation. Cruz noted that the Board was a component of his campaign platform with ASSU Vice President Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13, and that he remains particularly passionate about the project. Cruz said the Board is one of the Executive’s top priorities for the year.

 

The Board took a temporary hiatus following Mondragon’s resignation. It resumed its work on Monday, Nov. 14 during its normal biweekly meeting.

 

“I took a little bit of time to regroup her notes and transition,” Cruz said. “I had been mostly focusing on vision… so it took a little bit of time to transition to including the implementation steps of that as well.”

 

Dane Bratz ’13, who represents the interfraternal Greek community on the Board, agreed.

 

“We were kind of in flux until now,” Bratz said. “We’ve kind of got back started on what we were doing, and we’re going to really approach the issues more in the winter and spring quarters.”

 

The Board has recently refined its goals for the upcoming year, choosing to focus its attention on three main projects, according to Cruz. These include collaborating with Tommy Lee Woon, director of diversity and first-generation programs, on a series of race and identity talks; working with Residential Education on the development of its new spring quarter course for Resident Assistants (RAs); and holding an all-campus event to celebrate diversity in the spring, during which the Board plans to present and publish a student report on diversity.

 

Cruz said the Board has also recently engaged in conversations with the Stanford Department of Public Safety (DPS), hoping to establish a forum that would strengthen the relationship between the student body and the police. He said this has become the fourth project the Board hopes to have completed by the end of the year.

 

In alignment with its first goal, the Board has entered into discussions with Woon and plans to launch a diversity “ally program” at the beginning of winter quarter, Cruz said. The focus of this project will be exploring how someone can be an ally to a community that he or she does not identify with, according to Cruz. He gave the example that while he identifies as Filipino, the program may explore how he could support the Native American community.

 

Cruz said the Board has also started to talk with Dean of Residential Education Deborah Golder and other ResEd administrators about the spring RA course, hoping to incorporate issues about diversity and identity into its curriculum.

 

“The campus really sees RAs as a bastion of Stanford culture,” Cruz said. “RA training has historically been viewed as a way to really make an effect on Stanford culture in a positive way.”

 

Bratz said many of the Board members have provided input on how issues affecting their community could be represented in the RA course. For instance, as the representative for the interfraternal community, Bratz said he might examine how the course could address residents’ interactions with social events thrown at Greek houses.

 

The Board is still working on how the data will be collected for the student report on diversity, according to Cruz. He said the report may consist of a mixture of polls, numerical data, information about current policies and the stories of individual community members. Students prepared a similar report in the 1990s, according to Cruz.

 

The report will be presented in the spring during the Stanford Showcase, an all-campus event being organized by several student groups.

 

“Because of the leadership transition change, the Board hasn’t accomplished that much thus far,” Bratz said. “I’m really excited though about getting to work on these initiatives during the spring and winter quarters. I think over those two quarters, we can really accomplish the concrete set of goals that we’ve set forth, and I think those by themselves will hopefully make a difference on the campus.”

 

According to Bratz, the Board can be deemed successful at the end of the year if it follows through on the three projects it has planned for itself. He said he hopes that if the Board delivers on those projects, it could become a permanent fixture in campus life.

 

“This is a unique thing that hasn’t happened with the ASSU Executive Board before,” Bratz said. “We’d really like to set up a foundation for having a body like this, so in the future, it could maybe do even more ambitious things than what we are contemplating right now.”

 

Other representatives on the Board contacted by The Daily either did not respond in time for publication or declined to comment.