ASUO Senators Liz Avalos and Alivia Feliciano were publicly confused for one another at a February senate meeting. It wasn’t the first time. The two Latina senators have served together on the ASUO Senate for the past two terms. According to Feliciano, the mix-ups started in October as comical, then became irritating and now upsetting.
“It’s a testament to the culture we have in the senate that ignorance is bliss,” Feliciano said. “These are supposed to be some of the most informed people on campus.”
“This is the second term and people are still making these mistakes. It’s like, how do you not know my face?” Avalos said.
In the upcoming spring elections, students will be voting on a cultural competency ballot measure proposed by Avalos at a February meeting and approved by constitution court.
“Everyone comes from different backgrounds, whether it’s area of campus, area of the nation, area of the world,” Senator Helena Schlegel said. “I think it’s important to at least be aware and at least have an understanding of these differences that you’ll be in an environment with before taking office, rather than already being in these situations and not knowing how to properly behave and act.”
The current ASUO rules regarding cultural competency do not require elected officials to go through cultural competency training before they take office — instead they could be in office for up to five months without cultural competency training.
“We know that cultural competency trainings don’t make somebody completely culturally competent because it’s an ongoing process,” Avalos said. “Culture changes and environments change, we just want this to be an awareness tool.”
Senators Avalos, Feliciano and Schlegel wrote the ballot measure the same day that it was proposed to the ASUO Senate as a result of many cultural competency discussions.
“We were talking with Sam Dotters-Katz about the experiences that I’ve been having and the experiences that Alivia Feliciano has been having on senate,” Avalos said. “We keep getting mixed up a lot, which is not OK.”
Avalos hopes that the ballot measure will make cultural competency a priority for the ASUO. She thinks that the ballot measure will be well received because it’s simply changing the timeline — the requirements for cultural competency trainings are already in place.
There are many student groups on campus that can lead cultural competency trainings. Yasmin Ibarra, a student with the Oregon Student Association, led the last cultural competency training for ASUO staff members back in the fall.
“As a staff member, we receive training through the organization on cultural competency training to be culturally competent to work with the students on campus. In turn, we are able to give that information and trainings to students,” Ibarra said.
According to Ibarra, the trainings are largely dependent on what student leaders and groups want to know more about. The ASUO’s fall cultural competency training was focused on race and ethnic identities, words about policies and issues and systems of oppression and privilege.
“Cultural competency is a range of things, it’s not just a box that we check off,” Ibarra said. “The goals for this training was to have a common vocabulary when implementing cultural competency, being able to provide tools to assess the group and then being able to apply what you learn in those spaces.”