CYPRESS : Latino Students Ask for Special Program

Cypress College students seeking to take advantage of a program that helps Latinos transfer to four-year colleges and universities have taken their cause to the top.

Students have been pleading for help from the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees to get the Puente program started at their campus. The program helps a number of Latino students prepare for four-year institutions with special counseling and writing courses at 27 community colleges throughout the state.

However, their efforts have been stymied, students Geoffrey Richards and Cassandra Cortez said.

The problem is that no English professor wants to volunteer to meet a requirement of the program. An instructor must teach 27 Latino students writing skills and use culturally relevant literature in the classroom.

Puente also requires that a counselor help the Latino students by guiding them and monitoring their progress. One counselor has said he would participate in the program.

Trustees said they would support the Puente program but have accepted the English Department’s program that presently offers a course concentrating on multicultural studies, which is open to all students.

“I think it’s a wonderful program,” board member Barry J. Wishart said. “It addresses the issues of diversity that we have in our community and includes all ethnicities. . . . To get the Puente program, you have to find someone who wants to do it. We can’t tell faculty, ‘You have to do this.’ ”

He said imposing Puente with a reluctant teacher “may satisfy the political demand, but you’ll end up with poor teaching.”

Still, students have vowed to keep trying.

“We’re not giving up even though the English Department doesn’t support us yet,” said Richards, 19. “The English Department’s course doesn’t even compare with Puente.”

He said that several students are planning to attend the board’s next meeting, on Nov. 9, to ask for a letter stating that it backs the Puente program and reasons why. Richards hopes the letter will sway an English instructor. He concedes, however, that chances are bleak.

However, there is a job opening for a full-time English instructor at Cypress College that will be filled by December. Students said they will try to get the new teacher to be part of the Puente program.

That’s what it will take to get the program, Wishart said.

“We just want Puente so we can better the community and get transfer rates up so Latinos can return as mentors and leaders after we earn our degrees,” Richards said.

“Our fight is not yet over,” said Cortez, 24. “We haven’t even begun.”

College officials said the English faculty has scheduled a meeting Friday to discuss the Puente program.