“Keep ya head up, ooo, child things are gonna get easier
Ooo, child things are gonna get brighter”
Often, I am asked about my thoughts on issues in higher education, and my frustration won’t allow me to share how I really feel because we often are talking about big-picture ideas and initiatives, which are important. Still, many students we serve at Compton College are not thinking about AI or environmental initiatives; many are wondering how they are going to survive right now. Their survival is my motivation. I can always talk about the big picture and initiatives because that is what many of us do as presidents of institutions of higher education, but what I care about the most are the people we serve. As a Real College President, I want to talk about issues that impact our students right now and find some of those solutions.
As professionals in the community college and higher education space, we are all too familiar with the transformative power of postsecondary education. Regardless of your background or the challenges you face, an education is a powerful tool that can never be taken away from you.
At Compton College, we believe that education should be accessible to all, regardless of where you come from. We are committed to providing quality education to everyone who enters our campus.
My motivation today is that I received an email last night from the Compton College Police Chief. Attached to that email was a letter from the Restoration Diversion Services (RDS), which serves as a vital refuge for victims of sex trafficking. That attachment – “Compton College: A Beacon of Hope for Human Trafficking Victims” – describes the College’s partnership with RDS and how we engage with them to enroll the individuals they’re working with to help them on the pathway to a better life. Our police department, in particular, is instrumental in ensuring these prospective students receive all the support and services we have to offer right when they need them most.
But what moved me most in the letter was a current student who came out of the RDS program. I can’t imagine what that person must have experienced in their past, but I was truly moved by reading their testimonial and how it described what Compton College meant to them, now on the other side of a better life. That person said they gained a renewed sense of self-respect and pride from this experience and now advocates for Compton College to others who have fallen on hard times. They actually told someone about us at a homeless shelter, and that person had just enrolled at Compton College for the fall semester.
Our police department established this partnership because they wanted to help human trafficking victims who are near our campus. They reached out to campus departments for support, and they are looking to recruit more prospective students through this partnership to enroll at Compton College. I was talking with our Police Chief this morning about how we can utilize some of our work-study programs to hire the student above to serve as a paid advocate for the program. The Police Chief was so excited he was ready to talk to the program managers from the work-study programs to get this moving today. As I mentioned to the Police Chief, my job is to support but, more importantly, connect the programs and resources to strengthen our work in support of student success.
This work is powerful and transformative. We practitioners know this, especially those of us who are advocating for greater access to higher education, whether that is in the form of offering free college, eliminating fees, eradicating standardized testing (I have a lot of thoughts on this), addressing housing inequity or one of the many other ways we practitioners are chipping away at barriers (see my Freedom Dreaming for a comprehensive list). This work is about so much more than a degree; it’s about lifting people and communities up for self-determination. This is about breaking down the structures that keep people locked into poverty, recidivism, student loan debt, and beyond. This is about Freedom Dreaming for all.
As Tupac said, “ Keep Ya Head UP.” To all you practitioners reading this message, this is for you. This academic year, let’s be bold, innovative, and unapologetic with our leadership in support of student success. I will do my part by continuing to strongly support this partnership with RDS because these students need Compton College right now.