The Latinx Caucus at UC Berkeley submitted a letter to Chancellor Carol Christ on Jan. 12 regarding the needs and issues facing Latine students. The letter emphasized finding a new temporary space for the Latinx Student Resource Center, or LSRC, which has been without a meeting space since Dec. 8, alongside demands for financial aid reevaluation, affordable housing and further retention efforts.

Ana Jimenez, co-internal development facilitator for the Latinx Caucus, helped lead the campaign, including the first letter to Christ and a second letter to the community about the current state of the LSRC. Jimenez recalled that the LSRC, originally located in a basement in the Hearst Gym, has closed four times in the past year and a half due to flooding issues, with a steam leak causing the most recent closure. 

“(Campus) wants to be a Latinx thriving institution, be federally recognized as a Hispanic serving institution and receive funding for that,” Jimenez said. “Yet, they can’t even provide us with a space to gather and hold community. I mean, for crying out loud, they gave us a basement and it still failed.”

Jimenez also alleged the space lacked windows, a bathroom, air filtration and a heating system. She added that she heard no notification that the center was closed other than a flier posted on the door.

Jimenez’s co-facilitator Julissa Moreno expressed her frustrations as a marginalized student entering college with “imposter syndrome” and her hope to find a sense of community on campus.

“By arriving to a place that did not have a proper space for me to confide in, it simply made my time at first not so welcoming,” Moreno said in an email. “If I had had a place to go to from the start, maybe then I would have felt supported by the university that brought me here in the first place.” 

The Latinx Caucus has a regular meeting with the chancellor each semester and reached out to the administration in November to schedule one for the fall. Due to the UAW strike, the chancellor was no longer available in person, and the Latinx Caucus decided to wait instead of meeting over Zoom. The caucus scheduled a new meeting with the chancellor for Feb. 7, which was canceled due to a medical procedure, according to campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore.

The caucus will instead meet with campus administration on Feb. 7 from 5 to 6 p.m. in the Multicultural Community Center to discuss the demands in the letter, with the intention of meeting with the chancellor before the end of the spring semester. Dania Matos, Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion, released an update last Thursday in response to the letter stressing that finding a new space is the administration’s priority.

“Coming back this semester and hearing … that they had made no progress at all in finding us a new center or repairing the center to begin with was very devastating,” Jimenez said. “I came back, and I automatically felt lonely.”