Spartan Daily Vol. 160 No. 17

Club fights for Filipino farmers

Student group advocates for a monument to recognize historic Filipino members of United Farm Workers movement

By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER

Students for Filipino Farmworkers is a newly-formed student organization on San Jose State’s campus that aims to bring attention to the struggles Filipino farmworkers faced in the 1960s.

The organization was created as a part of sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences professor Scott Myers-Lipton’s sociology class. In the class, Myers-Lipton tasked his students with launching a campaign around a social injustice of their choice.

The organization was preceded by Asian American Arts and Action, another social-action organization which also wanted to see recognition for Filipino farmworkers.

Applied anthropology masters student Kayla Celest Taduran, also a member of Students for Filipino Farmworkers, said raising awareness to the crucial work of Filipino farmworkers is important,

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Mentors provide guidance to SJSU students

By Dominique Huber STAFF WRITER

Punit Sundar, who graduated from San Jose State in 2022 with a master’s in bioinformatics, is one of the students who has benefited from mentoring during her time at SJSU.

Sundar said she met her mentor Wendy Lee, an assistant professor and graduate advisor for SJSU’s master’s bioinformatics program, at an orientation event.

She said she found Lee enthusiastic, approachable and knowledgeable in her field. These were qualities which motivated Sundar to take advantage of Lee’s office hours.

Sundar said while she was enrolled in one of Lee’s classes, she sought out Lee’s guidance in hopes of learning more about career options in bioinformatics.

“It was a genuine curiosity on my end,” Sundar said. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I just really wanted to take as much advantage as I could of the program.”

She said although she wasn’t explicitly seeking mentorship when she began meeting with Lee, it was helpful having someone like her to go to for information.

“We just developed a natural connection,” Sundar said. “I didn’t really think of her as a mentor at the time. It was more like, ‘This person has worked in the industry before, let me just talk to her.’ ”

She attributes several of her significant scholarly and career advancements to Lee’s help, including having her master’s project published at a conference and the attainment of her current full-time job as a bioinformatician.

Sundar said her advice to students seeking mentorship, especially to those who are unsure of what path to take after graduation, would be to seek out a professor who is approachable and whose work they find interesting.

“Just start off by going to office hours. You could ask them random questions, it does not have to be about your field or even your classwork,” Sundar said. “You could just say, ‘I’m not really sure what to do with my career,’ and I’m sure they’d be able to give you some advice on it.”

She said students may have to reach out to multiple professors before they find one who is willing to give

MENTORS | Page 2

DOMINIQUE HUBER | SPARTAN DAILY

Education counseling and guidance graduate student Ivan, who only gave his first name, works on his assignments at the San Jose State University Career Center on Monday afternoon.

DYLAN NEWMAN | SPARTAN DAILY

Signs in support for Filipino farmworkers sit on a stand at a table on Seventh Street during the CHI Day of Celebration event on Thursday.

FARM WORKERS

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as there is yet to be a large-scale monument on campus in recognition of their work.

“We have [the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice] here on campus, and Filipino Americans, you know, Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, they contributed to the United Farm Workers movement,” Taduran said “But there’s no recognition for them.”

Antonio Gutierrez, sociology junior and member of the group, said the organization brings more of a spotlight onto the injustices against Filipino farmworkers.

Gutierrez said, before he joined the organization, he was unaware of the role Filipinos played in the United Farm Workers movement.

He said the lack of recognition

Filipino farmworkers receive resonates with him, and he said he believes the history behind the United Farm Workers movement wasn’t explained to him as thoroughly as it should’ve been.

Gutierrez said there were two main reasons Mexican Americans were mainly attributed with the credit of enhancing farmworkers rights.

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the time and effort required for mentorship, but the benefits make it well worth it.

One resource SJSU students can utilize if they are seeking mentorship is SJSU2 Mentoring & Meetups, a mentoring program by the Career Center, according to its website.

The program aims to help prepare students for life after college by connecting them with alumni so they can learn from people who have been in their position before, according to the same website.

Anita Manuel, associate director for career education at SJSU’s Career Center, said SJSU2 Mentoring & Meetups can provide the kind of in-depth help that

“When the Mexican farmworkers tagged along with the labor strikes, they had the numbers on their side,” Gutierrez said. “And since there’s a large Mexican American population, or Latino population in California in general, there was more support.”

Students for Filipino Farmworkers is demanding a minimum starting budget of $100,000 for an art installation on campus that represents Filipino farmworkers, an amount calculated from guidance Myers-Lipton gave them, according to a Wednesday Instagram post by the organization.

Taduran said Myers-Lipton told her SJSU spent $300,000 on the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice, and that a starting budget of $100,000 wasn’t unreasonable.

“Having like a similar budget to the arc, because again, we’re trying to get that equal representation and kind of getting the real story out, that’s where [the $100,000] came from,” Taduran said.

Raymond Goni, sociology senior and member of the group, said the organization made it clear that its goal is not to diminish the importance of existing on-campus memorials.

Goni said the class is not a typical lecture, and that the action-oriented components provide a foundation for creating

students may not be able to get elsewhere.

“You can get a lot of information by looking up LinkedIn profiles or a company’s site, but it’s never gonna be as beneficial as someone who was actually in your shoes,” Manuel said.

She said two main things students can gain through the program are advice on how to break into their field of choice and examples of potential career paths.

Manuel said mentors who participate in the program are all vetted to ensure they have genuine intention of providing guidance and support to their mentees.

Students in the program can either engage in short or longterm mentoring, according to the program website.

Manuel said the long-term style of mentorship can be particularly

meaningful dialogue.

“This class is social action,” Goni said. “They’ve had many successful campaigns, one of their campaigns was raising the minimum wage in San Jose from $8 to $10, it started in his class.”

Taduran said it’s inspiring to have a supportive professor and to be able to follow the footsteps of other prosperous campaigns.

Goni said the group has reached out to a multitude of organizations on campus in hopes of gaining their support and wants to build a positive relationship through their outreach.

“We’re trying to just educate people through this process,” Goni said. “Bring people together is our biggest thing, we’re not here to tear anyone down, we’re here to build bridges with everybody.”

Gutierrez said in the ’60s, Filipino farmworkers were getting paid $1.25 an hour for their work.

He said one of the organization’s main goals is to make the history behind the struggles of Filipino farmworkers relevant to people today.

“It’s very important to highlight and remember the history they went through because it’s really difficult to work in the farms as well as, you know, the hot sun bearing down on them – and they were faced

useful for those who are looking to make meaningful connections they can come back to throughout their job searches and careers.

Christine Vega, Chicana and Chicano Studies assistant professor at SJSU, said there is a lot to gain on each side of a mentor/mentee relationship.

Vega said she identifies as a “femtor,” a term she learned from one of her former “femtees.”

She said the term is meant to “feminize the labor of mentorship,” and that it is important to recognize the role gender can play in these kinds of relationships.

“Mentorship falls a lot on the laps of women of color or femmes and gender-nonconforming people of color who are professors,” Vega said. “To recognize the labor, which oftentimes, we do out of cariño or because we love what we do – we end up taking a lot of students in, so that’s also

our reality.”

with deportation,” Gutierrez said.

Taduran said being located on a diverse campus like SJSU adds an extra layer of support the organization might not have gotten in a different location.

“We have the Olympic statues, we have the arc, right?” Taduran said. “So what’s another thing to add on to [campus] – so I’m sure we have a lot of backing being in the bay.”

Business marketing senior Dillon Gadoury said the diversity of the campus and the abundance of Filipino students inspired him to tap into his Filipino heritage.

Gadoury is a member of Akbayan, an organization that strives to increase knowledge of Pilipinx American culture at SJSU and other universities, according to their website.

He said hearing that there’s a new organization on campus looking to educate people on an undermined part of Filipino culture is good news.

“I think it’s great that, you know, we have organizations and specifically this one that will have student leaders empower one another in creating tangible change on campus,” Gadoury said.

She said “femtorship,” a form of mentoring involving reciprocity and effort from each side, is what makes the relationship special.

“They’re also putting in labor to seek out and talk to you and share what’s going on,” Vega said. “That takes a lot, especially for first-generation people of color. So that, to me, is kind of the context around femtorship and also the context around our labor.”

Students such as Sundar, who credit their mentoring relationships with important academic and professional opportunities, are not the only ones who benefit from mentorship.

Vega said when her mentees succeed, it reminds her of why she does the work to begin with.

“That’s one of the things that I love about my job, is to hear back when they get the fellowship – when they

get accepted to Ph.D. programs – when they get the job they’ve been wanting,” Vega said. “That just brings me so much joy [. . .] you put in so much but when you see your students succeed it just brings so much happiness and pride.”

She said for certain groups within the student population, mentorship can be a crucial resource.

“When you’re the first to go to college or university, it’s new terrain, especially when you’re the first to go,” Vega said. “I think creating community is always gonna be important or really hard.”

Vega said her advice to students who need help navigating higher education is to surround themselves with supportive people, including mentors.

Follow Matthew Gonzalez on Twitter @MattG2001

Follow The Spartan Daily on Twitter @spartandaily

BASEBALL

SJSU beats Fresno twice at home

By Enrique GutierrezSevilla STAFF WRITER

After SJSU went 0-3 off a tough series against the Washington Huskies, the Spartans won two games against rival Fresno State Bulldogs over the weekend at Excite Ballpark.

The Spartans were scheduled to play a three-game series, but Sunday’s game was postponed because of rain.

SJSU won Friday’s game against the Bulldogs 5-3 led by righthanded starting pitcher, Jonathan Clark, who tossed 6.0 innings while allowing the only 3 runs of the game.

Clark now has a 2.81 ERA in 16.0 innings pitched with a 2-1 record on the season.

Center fielder Jack Colette batted 2 for 3 and hit his first home run of the season in the bottom of the third.

“It’s always cool to hit a home run at home . . . especially against a rival and a really good pitcher for Fresno State,” Colette said. “I was really excited to get the scoring started for us Friday afternoon.”

Colette said the team had a detailed plan entering the series.

“This week, we had a really good week of preparation for practice going into the Fresno State series,” Colette said. “We worked really hard in the cages all week and we had a pretty detailed plan of how we were gonna go about our business at practice, our drills to get us ready to have a good series offensively.”

Colette is batting .313 through eight games this season.

On Saturday, the Spartans won 6-2 with a solid pitching performance from Micky

Thompson, who pitched 6.0 innings, allowing no earned runs.

This was a bounce back start for Thompson, who gave up three runs against University of Washington.

“After the Washington series, our team definitely had a few pieces to put together,” Thompson said. “With a good start by Jonathon on Friday and our bats putting it together, it definitely gave me the confidence to go out and pound the zone and let them put the ball in play.”

He said he gave kudos to second baseman Charles McAdoo and shortstop Theo Hardy for being great up the middle of the infield all weekend.

His efficient pitching was rewarded with offensive support from sluggers McAdoo and Hunter Dorraugh. McAdoo batted 3 for 4 with three RBIs, while Dorraugh went 2 for 4 and also drove in 3.

“I’m just seeing pitches in the zone that I want to hit and taking my best swings at those pitches,” McAdoo said. “It feels really good to get our first conference series, especially against a rival and, on top of that, a good Fresno team.”

He is the Mountain West conference leader in doubles with 6 doubles this season.

McAdoo is batting .324 with 11 hits and has yet to hit a home run

in 34 plate appearances.

Right-handed pitcher Keaton Chase pitched the final 3 innings on Saturday and earned himself his first save of the season.

“I was very excited and happy to get the job done to help my team secure the series win,” Chase said.

Chase is coming off Tommy John surgery, which shut him down from baseball activity for an extended amount of time.

“My mechanics are coming along and getting better every week as I continue to get live game reps, but I still have work to do to be more consistent,” Chase said.

After Saturday’s game, SJSU head coach Brad Sanfilippo said he was

proud of the team’s effort to win.

“Really proud of the effort today, all around a team win in terms of timely hitting at the times we needed it and we got another good start from Micky Thompson,” Sanfilippo said. “Good all around effort against a really good ball club.”

The Spartans improved their record to 4-4 and have a 2-0 record against Mountain West Conference teams.

SJSU is scheduled to host the University of San Francisco Dons at 1:05 p.m. today, at Excite Ballpark.

ENRIQUE GUTIERREZ-SEVILLA | SPARTAN DAILY

The SJSU baseball team walks off the field after its game was canceled on Sunday after heavy rain dampened the field.

Follow Enrique Gutierrez-Sevilla on Twitter @mtvenrique

Downtown event celebrates women

By Alina Ta STAFF WRITER

From the front to the back of the venue, rows of female artists and entrepreneurs share their art at SJ Makers’ event, Sweet and Street, to celebrate Women’s History Month, on Saturday in Downtown San Jose.

At the back of the venue, graffiti artist Money MGK spray painted white canvases with her all-female crew of artists.

Money MGK said she started doing graffiti art on paper at home when she was in high school.

She said after some time, her friends noticed her artwork and recommended she try out spray painting.

Money MGK said she was hesitant at first despite her friends’ encouragement.

“I thought it was like a sacred thing, like only certain people can do it. I thought you needed, like, a frickin’ pass or something,” Money MGK said. “They’re like, ‘Nah, dude, just try it. Just grab the spray paint.’”

She said after her friend bought her her first can of paint, she’s been addicted to spray painting graffiti art ever since.

Money MGK said after doing graffiti art for years, she wanted to start her own crew of graffiti artists.

She decided to form the Mad Girls Crew, an all-female group of spray paint artists focused on making space for female artists in a male-dominated sector of the art community.

“I ended up making something instead of waiting around for someone to fill me in somewhere,” Money MGK said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to start my own thing.’”

In another tent, Alexis Pacheco, a nail tech and founder of Nails XO Lexi, was applying acrylic nails to a girl’s hands under a bright LED lamp.

Pacheco said the idea to start her own business came from her desire to get her nails done.

Pacheco said she decided to learn how to paint and form acrylic nails on herself during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was a regular going into the nail salons at least once a month, like, I was in there 24/7,” she said.

Pacheco said she learned how to do her own nails when she couldn’t get them done in person.

She said after learning to do her

own nails, she started turning it into a business while she was still living with her parents.

Pacheco said four years later, she moved her business to a studio in Gilroy, where she provides several manicure and pedicure services.

She said she gives props to every female business owner who was at Sweet and Street because she knows how hard it is to start one.

In another tent, Emily Rangeo and Guadalupe Talavera sat down crocheting and making jewelry.

Both women, along with two other friends make products for stitches be trippin, a clothing and jewelry business that upcycles thrifted items.

“I try to reuse and bring life back to things that I find or come across and try to repair,” Talavera said.

She said she continued to make jewelry with thrifted beads after discovering that people have an interest in owning something unique and one of a kind.

“People like things that are different,” Talavera said. “People like things that are one of a kind and because my things are thrifted, I don’t have the same bead twice unless I find it somewhere hidden.”

Talavera said she, Rangeo,

Rangeo’s sister and another friend work together to sew clothes and make jewelry to sell.

She said not all of the women were close friends when they decided to collaborate together for the first time.

“We didn’t really know each other all that well [. . .],” Talavera said. “It was just kind of like, ‘Let’s just connect and sell our stuff together [. . .]’.”

After working and cooperating with one another, Talavera said the four grew closer as a group.

She said they sometimes try to collaborate to make unique pieces to sell.

“It’s just been fun being able to create that kind of stuff, which makes it really easy to create stuff when you’re creating with a bunch of people,” Talavera said.

In the future, Talavera said she and the four girls aim to create workshops to teach people how to use thrifted items to create their own clothing and jewelry pieces.

Emily Rangeo, one of the four founders of stitches be trippin, shows visitors at Sweet and Street a painted and embroidered hoodie by her sister.

CHI Day celebration showcases arts

Students showcase cultural arts

By Dylan Newman STAFF WRITER

Whimsically-spinning dancers and piñata-making crafters kicked off March for San Jose State with the Chavez, Huerta, Itliong Day of Celebration event, bringing Mexican American and Filipino American art and dance to Seventh Street on Thursday afternoon.

CHI Day was celebrated in the name of labor rights activists Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong, three prominent leaders who fought for the rights of farmworkers, according to a series of posts on the Cesar Chavez Community Action Center’s Instagram account.

Craft and club stalls lined the corridor in front of the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice, a monument constructed next to the Student Union Building by Chicana artist Judy Baca in commemoration of Chavez’s life.

The event began with music mixed by Filipino-American singer-songwriter DJ Lex, who grew in popularity on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing over 636k followers.

Jayden Wright, Associated Students events assistant and kinesiology sophomore, said his favorite part of the event was the different cultural performances that were put on.

“You have Akbayan representing the Filipino culture,” Wright said. “Grupo Folklórico Luna Y Sol, all of them, they’ve just been amazing in showing our culture and representing the different people on our campus.”

Akbayan is a Filipino cultural club at SJSU that held the second performance of the day with a Filipino folk dance performance.

They had two pairs of male and female dancers wearing monochromatic cultural outfits, waving around black hand fans and red handkerchiefs.

Grupo Folklórico Luna y Sol De SJSU is a student group that works toward the promotion, education and preservation of Mexican culture through Mexican folkloric dance, according to their website.

There were three separate Mexican folk dance performances put on throughout CHI Day, two by Ensamble Folclórico Colibrí and one by Grupo Folklórico Luna y Sol De SJSU.

Both groups had dancers painting the air around them with flowy, colorful dresses, while performing traditional

Mexican dances in cultural attire.

Ensamble Folclórico Colibrí is a dance group at SJSU promoting LGBTQ+ pride through Mexican Folklórico dance, according to their website.

Furthest from the stage, at the end of the street, stood the LEAD Filipino booth, where local Filipino-American tattoo artists Jeff Quintano and Jordan Gabriel collaborated on a large portrait drawing of Itliong.

LEAD Filipino is a San Jose Filipino American charitable nonprofit

forgetting about,’ ” Goni said. “They need to be remembered and not forgotten.”

The Associated Student’s Community Garden booth offered students the opportunity to express their creativity by drawing on palm-sized wooden pucks.

Matthew Spadoni, Associated Students Community Garden coordinator and environmental studies graduate student, said some of the wood cookies are going to be added to an already constructed collaborative mural of Larry Itliong in the garden space.

“Some of them are just pictures like cute dinosaurs, and others ones have some deeper meaning,” Spadoni said. “After the event, we’re going to glue all these on the side of the garden to make a collaborative mural that was made by all the students who came.”

organization, according to their website. The group’s booth let students write postcards and show their support to farm workers.

Applied anthropology masters student Kayla Celest Combes Taduran and sociology student Raymond Goni stood next to the artists holding picket signs that read “Students for Filipino Farmworkers: Justice for Itliong and the Manongs!!!”

Taduran said they were looking for more Filipino American representation on campus as Filipinos played an important role in the labor movements with no commemoration at the university.

Taduran said there are several schools around California named after Huerta and Chavez, but only one in Itliong’s name.

“Akbayan is one of the biggest organizations on campus and there’s no Filipino representation,” Taduran said. “I come from SoCal, and I see [the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice] and there’s nothing mirroring my experiences or the people before me, it’s a bummer.”

Goni said they were looking to have an art piece installed near the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice to bring representation to the prominence of Filipinos in the farmworker rights movements.

“We aren’t trying to tear down Cesar at all, we’re just saying ‘hey, you have this whole entire group that you are

CORRECTIONS

EDITORIAL

Pre-nursing freshman Julisa Ascencio Galvez and psychology freshman Vesenia Torres pose in their dresses before performing with their dance group Grupo Folklórico Luna y Sol.

ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY

DYLAN NEWMAN | SPARTAN DAILY

Follow Dylan Newman on Twitter @th3dylanproject

Bryan Guzman of Ensamble Folclórico Colibrí whisks a rainbow dress in the air while performing Danza Folklorico on Thursday.

I come from SoCal, and I see [the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice] and there’s nothing mirroring my experiences or the people before me, it’s a bummer.

Kayla Celest Combes Taduran applied anthropology masters student