Whether it was attending various workshops or hearing key note speakers senior Joel Iboa remembers being among the 400 high school students that attended the Raza Unida Youth Conference hosted by the University of Oregon and MEChA. He remembers being advised by his high school counselor to attend this conference and learn about the various things. Now Iboa is proud to host his very own workshops in the conference that taught him a lot and influenced him to attend the UO.
“The focus of this conference is to provide students (Latinos) an opportunity to visit a college campus,” Iboa said, “To high school students who perhaps have never stepped a foot on a campus before.”
May 13 marked the 10th annual year of the RUYC and welcomed 260 high school students on campus. In the past the conference welcomed anywhere between 400 to 500 high school students, but due to the EMU construction the number of high students admitted had to be reduced. RUYC is an all day event that brings together various Latino high school students all throughout the state of Oregon.
Iboa believes that the RUYC provides essential information to students and much of what is taught in these workshops students aren’t learning in high school. He believes showing them the various resources that high school students have available to them helps.
“Most schools don’t stress to students about the importance of taking the SATs or telling them about priority dates,” Iboa said. “A lot of students don’t know how to approach it and we hope that when students attend this conference we can plant a seed and motivate students. We can show them that there are students who are similar to them.”
At the conference Iboa’s workshops focused on a session of ‘Know Your Rights.’ At these workshops students learned about their rights as individuals and how they can manage situations that involve the law enforcement. For example he talked about various issues as well like immigration in Oregon and what rights illegal immigrants have.
“We don’t assume that students are undocumented but we assume that they at least know someone who is,” Iboa said.
While the conference’s big focus is on the high school students it’s also an opportunity for current and past Mechistas to come together and chime in together and support a big event like the RUYC.
RUYC coordinator Kimberly Mejia was one of the two in charge of coordinating the conference, and this year was her fist time planning it.
“I want to impact the students and make a difference in their lives,” Mejia said. “A lot of the things they are being exposed to I wasn’t exposed to and we want to provide the resources and knowledge. We want them to know si se puede (you can do it) and overcome obstacles.”
MEChA recruit and retention Julia Martinez-Plancarte looks forward to the high school students being on campus.
“I’m excited to see the students and show them that higher education is a must,” Martinez-Plancarte said.