Sixth annual Education and Ethnic Studies Summit sees in-person return

El Santo Golpe, a group that performs Afro-Latin music, serenades attendees of the April 30 Education and Ethnic Studies Summit while they eat lunch, break bread and line up to get their books signed by event panelists. EMILY PARIS, Staff Photographer

After greeting guests with breakfast April 30 in Beckman Hall, Chapman University’s sixth annual Education and Ethnic Studies Summit kicked off this year’s theme of “Embodied Resistance” with a performance by Redboy Productions, a Native American family dance group. 

Afterward — all before the event’s primary speaker had even taken the stage — participants were led in Acjachemen blessings and land acknowledgments by Adelia Sandoval, the Spiritual Overseer (Púul) and Cultural Director for the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians / Acjachemen Nation.

“I challenge every student to try to see themselves within the ethnic studies framework, within the history of where they exist today and where they’ve come from — to be open to learning the world both from your own perspective and from the perspective of stories that you haven’t yet been told,” Anat Herzog, a former educational studies lecturer at Chapman who helped organize the university’s first summit, toldThe Panther. “I think ethnic studies is for everybody and it is an intentional self journey to see yourself in history in a truthful way.”

The summit took place in room 404 of Beckman Hall — more commonly known to students as the George H. W. Bush Conference Center — which attendee Elias Aguiar Montani, a senior creative producing major, believes bore added significance. The former president’s Global War on Terror catalyzed increased racial profiling of Muslims and other racial minorities — the effects of which, Aguiar Montani said, are still felt among students on campus in modern day. 

“It was very important that we had most of the main sessions in the George Bush room,” Aguiar Montani said. “There’s something symbolic about talking about ethnic studies, the need for it and its importance on a campus that has historically oppressed students who look like me. I think this event is really important because it’s highlighting lots of often unheard groups, especially on a campus here like Chapman.”

After the Indigenous dances and blessings, Ruben Espinoza, the director of Chapman’s Latinx and Latin American Studies minor, presented the event’s keynote speaker: Gustavo Arellano, a 2001 Chapman alumnus, author and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. 

Arellano discussed with the audience how he first got into ethnic studies when he was in college upon realizing how many untold stories lingered in Orange County. The first time he realized this was when he saw a picture in a college book of the Ku Klux Klan that he had previously seen in a high school book, except this time it had a different caption.

“The old caption just talked about the KKK coming back in the late 1920s. The new caption ‘Anaheim 1924’ and it tells the story of how the Ku Klux Klan had taken over the city council in Anaheim.”, Arellano said in his speech. “I saw this, and I thought to myself, ‘Why weren’t we told that the KKK was in Anaheim, even though we’re from Anaheim?’, and then I thought to myself, ‘If they’re not telling us something as simple as this, what the hell else are they not telling us?’”

As part of an ongoing column series Arellano wrote in OC Weekly, the Chapman graduate published a column of weekly profiles exposing figures of social and political stature from past to present for affiliation with the klan. Among the profiles was OC’s founding father, Henry W. Head, which was published March 15, 2011.

Arellano told event attendees how one column he wrote, titled “Profiles in OC pioneers who were klan members” resulted in the renaming of multiple buildings, streets, parks and structures in the county — but also incited severe backlash. 

But Arellano said he’s grown used to receiving responses condemning his weekly column, from people telling him that the facts were fake to people saying that the KKK wasn’t so bad in 1920s Orange County. 

After Arellano’s speech, the summit attendees separated into breakout sessions. There were two separate sections consisting of three optional sessions each. 

The first section’s lectures included a presentation about “Inclusive Literature in K-12 Classrooms” from Chapman’s Kappa Delta Pi, an international honor society for education. At the same time, there was a discussion on “Gender, Sexuality & LGBTQ+ Student Rights in California” by the LGBTQ+ Center OC and a session titled, “The People’s History of Orange County: Over 100 Years of resistance.” The latter was presented by Santa Ana High School teacher Mike Rodriguez alongside his students.

“(In the presentation) we discussed a lot of the rich history of communities of color in Orange County,” Rodriguez told The Panther. “(Ethnic studies scholars) think that local histories are very important, and they need to be central to ethnic studies classes.”

The second breakout session was composed of a continuation of “Gender, Sexuality & LGBTQ+ Student Rights in California” by LGBTQ+ Center OC, “Prospective Educators Panel and Discussion” presented by Chapman Kappa Delta Pi and “The Anti-Mexican History of Orange County” — a youth art exhibition by Valley High School youth and educator Ben Vasquez presented in Leatherby Libraries. 

“I think these untold stories and students coming in and bringing their own stories and kind of talking about them as counter narratives to the mainstream master narrative (is important),” Rodriguez said. “We have a rich history, and the United States would not be what it is without Asian Americans, African Americans, Chicano/Latinos or Native Americans, and it’s only recently that (Orange County has) been exploring that more.”

After the breakout sessions, there was a collaborative closing panel, called “Bring Human Rights Home,” hosted by VietRISE, the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Education Organizers for Racial Justice. The panel discussed a campaign of the same name centered around getting immigrant rights recognized as human rights. 

At the panel’s conclusion, attendees were asked to put a Post-it on a map of Orange County to show where they are trying to make a difference. 

Educators and guests alike were then invited to have lunch and break bread — which expresses sharing a sense of connection and community — while El Santo Golpe, a group that plays Afro-Latin music, performed songs.

A small crowd soon formed a line to receive 50 free books of “A People’s Guide to Orange County,” which were then signed by authors Arellano and Dr. Elaine Lewinnek. Books were provided by Sarah Rafael Garcia, the founder of LibroMobile — a nonprofit arts cooperative and bookstore.

“I think (this summit is important) for so many reasons, but mostly because it’s about community,” Tricia Camargo, a high school ethnic studies and world history teacher, told The Panther at the event. “I think it’s important to know you’re not alone — that there is a community out there and that it’s not going anywhere. (The summit also) helps us question what we can do to better our community and to have a presence in our location as locals here in Southern California.”

The summit was organized by Jorge F. Rodrigues — an assistant professor in the Integrated Educational Studies program, Cathery Yeh — an assistant professor in the Teacher Education program — and students from Rodrigues’ Ethnic Studies Activism class (LEAD 384). The class revolves around discussing ethnic studies and the history of Orange County, but its primary purpose is to plan the annual summit.

“Having shifted to in-person after a couple years online, there was a lot of creative freedom with where we wanted to go with (the summit) — where we wanted to have it was a big thing, how we wanted to structure it, if we wanted keynote speakers, who our intended audience was,” said Claire Smith, a sophomore psychology, philosophy and integrated educational studies triple major enrolled in LEAD 384. “As we (the students in the class) honed in on what message we wanted to send, it became easy to plan out the day.”

The summit has now become an annual tradition to bring together people from Orange County to discuss ethnic studies and its importance. This year’s event was a two-day affair, with the first day being held April 30 and centering around the implications of ethnic studies in Orange County. However, the second day of the summit, which will be held May 7, is more localized in discussion to Chapman students.

““(The event) is kind of an accumulation of what we’ve been working for all semester, what ethnic studies really is and the way it’s been making waves in the last couple years and becoming a requirement across the states,” Elsa Ashraf, a freshman screenwriting major who is enrolled in LEAD 384, told The Panther. “(The summit) also (shines) attention to the fact that people don’t really know what ethnic studies is. (Ethnic studies is) basically telling untold history, which is so important.”

The first time the summit took place in 2015, the event was organized by students and faculty who volunteered in an effort to get Chapman’s administration to see that ethnic studies are important. According to Herzog, student groups and clubs volunteered their time and resources to organize the summit and invited deans from other universities to hold Chapman’s administration accountable for not having any ethnic studies minors.

“That first year, we had a lot of panels where students would invite Chapman administrators (and) deans of other (local) colleges and say, ‘Why can’t we have a Latinx studies minor? Why can’t we have an LGBTQ+ minor? Why can’t we have an Africana studies minor?’' Herzog said. “These (minors) were all things that didn’t exist and that the administration was adamantly against.”

Since then, not only has the summit become an annual event, but Chapman has taken steps to include interdisciplinary ethnic studies minors in its catalog, such as the Africana Studies minor, the Ethnic Studies minor and the upcoming Asian American Studies minor.

“I encourage (all students to) keep an eye out for more ethnic studies (related) things going on,” Aguiar Montani said. “I feel like a lot of the reason why the program isn’t what it could be here at Chapman is because people don’t know about it. I feel like if we could get the word out about the program and really engage, we could create a bigger community, so that our ethnic studies program has more teeth.”

Correction: The names of Adelia Sandoval, cultural director for the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians / Acjachemen Nation, and Elias Aguiar Montani, a senior creative producing major, were misspelled in the original publication of this piece. These errors have since been adjusted.