Winning and accepting an award from former-President Bill Clinton would seem like a lifetime achievement for some. For Davier Rodriguez, winning the Clinton Global Initiative University award meant something more: the opportunity to share his idea with the nation.
Rodriguez, a downtown assistant community coordinator and masters student in the college of Public Programs and Mary Lou Fulton teachers college, accepted the Clinton Global Initiative University award on Saturday night for DREAMzone, an organization he founded at ASU with PhD student Jesus Cisneros.
CGIU, an offshoot of the Clinton Global Initiative, challenges students and future leaders to propose solutions for global issues. DREAMzone, a program based on creating a network of allies for undocumented students pursuing higher education, was one of 900 submissions to the prestigious program.
Earlier this semester, Rodriguez and Cisneros learned that DREAMzone had made it to the final bracket of the top 16 submitted solutions. From there, the public voted in three different rounds on their favorite programs. DREAMzone maneuvered through the voting process, claiming a spot in the top eight and the top four.
On Saturday night, it was announced that DREAMzone had won the top spot. At Washington University in St. Louis, Rodriguez was called up on stage and presented with the award by former-President Bill Clinton and political satirist Stephen Colbert.
Although DREAMzone was up against tough competition, Rodriguez said he never lost faith in the program.
“From the moment I got a phone call saying we were selected as the top 16, I called Jesus and I told him ‘We’re going to win this. They gave us the opportunity and we’re going to make it to the end,’” Rodriguez said.
The story of DREAMzone began last April when an event called “DREAMing the Whole Story” was put on at ASU’s Tempe campus, inviting individuals to share their stories of what it was like to obtain a higher education at ASU as an undocumented student. After the event, Rodriguez, Cisneros and a small group of ASU staff and students got together to discuss the challenges these students face and what they could do to help them.
The result was DREAMzone, modeled after the ally-based organization “safeZONE” that helps to support LGBTQ students across the country. Cisneros and Rodriguez’s goal was to create a network of allies composed of student leaders, staff and faculty to help undocumented students as they move through the process of earning a higher education.
One of the reasons DREAMzone wanted to create this network was so that undocumented students could have a safe place to ask for help, Cisneros said.
“There can be a distrust for authorities that these students have as a result of their immigration status. Because they are a vulnerable population and because they have no control or no power to change their status, there is this pervasive fear that they can’t go and ask for their support from staff and faculty,” he said.
Despite the lack of visible support systems for undocumented students, the DREAMzone team recognized that there were plenty of people at ASU who wanted to help.
They began to organize workshops on all four of ASU’s campuses to educate and certify these providers as allies. Since their first workshop in October of 2012, DREAMzone has certified over 200 participants, 70 percent of which have been ASU staff members.
Elizabeth Cunta, the Executive Coordinator for Comparative Border Studies in the School of Transborder Studies, is one member of the DREAMzone team who has helped facilitate workshops. Cunta said the entire team is grateful for the encouragement ASU has shown toward the program, especially in a state where immigration can be such a controversial issue.
“I think it speaks wonders to the kind of people who work here and the people who want to make ASU a positive education experience for all students,” Cunta said. “Perhaps if we had people that weren’t so supportive on campus it wouldn’t have gone so far.”
Now that the organization has won, Rodriguez said he hopes it will encourage other schools to discuss the trials and barriers undocumented students face.
“What I’m hoping is that it increases the conversations about undocumented college students across the country and hopefully the world,” said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez said he is also hoping that the limelight will bring them more donations and funding so that they can travel and help implement the program in other universities. They have already received requests from the University of Florida and New Mexico State University, coincidentally the alma maters of Rodriguez and Cisneros respectively.
“Our goal to getting to the top solution, it wasn’t even the recognition or being on stage,” said Cisneros.
“It was mobilizing other universities … If two individuals can do this and implement this initiative at the largest institution in the country, there’s no reason why other institutions with even more political climates can’t implement it as well.”
Contact the reporter at linnea.bennett@asu.edu
