Voces Oral History Center Interview with Jesus Ruiz

1306_Ruiz_Jesus_NIU_1

Wed, 7/8 3:51PM • 1:07:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Anglos; Low Socioeconomic Status; America; Mexico; United States; Coronavirus; Economic Impact; Education--Distance Learning Applications; Education--Online-Learning; Essential Worker; Facility--Hospital; Language Barrier; Medical Field; Mental Health; Pandemic; Public Health Measures; Social Distancing; Stimulus Check; Undocumented; Zoom;

SUMMARY LOC SUBJECT HEADINGS

African Americans; youth; College students--Education; Discrimination in higher education; Diversity in higher education; Colleges; Degree-granting institutions; Higher education; Minorities in higher education; Racism in higher education; Latino Americans; Latinos (United States); Hispanic Americans--United States; Coronavirus infections--Diagnosis; COVID-19 (Disease); Quarantine--America; Social interactions--United States;

-- Dana 00:09

Hello, today is Thursday, July 2, 2020. My name is Dana Yarak, and I'm interviewing Jesus Ruiz for the Latino Oral History Project Voces of a Pandemic project at the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at Northern Illinois University. This project is in partnership with the Voces Oral History Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. Please know Mr. Ruiz that this interview will be placed in the Northern Illinois University Libraries and shared with the Voces Oral History Center at the University of Texas at Austin. If there's anything you do not wish to answer or talk about, I will honor your wishes. Also, if there's something you do want to talk about, please bring it up and we'll talk about it. Because we are not conducting this interview in person. I need to record you consenting. So, I'll ask you a series of six questions. And please say yes, I agree or no I do not agree after each one. There are several questions we need to make sure you agree to before we go on. The Center for Latino and Latin American Studies wishes to archive your interview along with any other photographs or other documentation at the Northern Illinois University Libraries. Northern Illinois University Libraries will retain copyright of the interview and any other materials you donate to the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at Northern Illinois University. First question, do you give the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies consent to archive your interview and your materials at the Northern Illinois University Libraries?

-- Jesus 01:46

Yes, I consent.

-- Dana 01:49

Do you grant Northern Illinois University Libraries right title and interest in copyright over the interview and any materials you provide?

-- Jesus 01:57

I do Yes.

-- Dana 01:59

Do you agree to allow Northern Illinois University Libraries to post this interview on the internet, where it may be viewed by people around the world?

-- Jesus 02:07

Yes, I do.

-- Dana 02:09

Do you grant the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies consent to share your interview and your materials with the Voces Oral History Center at the University of Texas at Austin, for inclusion in the Voces of a Pandemic oral history mini project, which will include posting the interview on the internet?

-- Jesus 02:25

I do yes.

-- Dana 02:27

We have many questions in our pre-interview form that we have already filled out. We use that information from the pre-interview form to help in research. The entire form is kept in a secure Voces server at the University of Texas at Austin. Before Voces sends it to the Benson Library and NIU Libraries, we would have stripped out any contact information for yourself or family members. So that will not be part of your public file. Your public file will only be accessible at the Benson Library and in NIU libraries.

-- Jesus 02:57

Great.

-- Dana 03:00

Do you wish for us to share the rest of you interview in your public file available to researchers at the Benson and NIU Libraries?

-- Jesus 03:07

Sure.

-- Dana 03:08

That refers to the pre interview. On occasion, the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies and Voces receive requests from journalists who wish to contact our interview subjects. We only deal with legitimate news outlets. Do you give consent for us to share your phone numbers, your email with journalists?

-- Jesus 03:27

I do.

-- Dana 03:29

Okay. So, tell me a little bit about yourself who is Jesus Ruiz?

-- Jesus 03:46

Jesus--originally from Mexico I was born in Guanajuato, just in the smack middle of the country, and I am part of a, an immigrant family. My father used to work in the US as an undocumented worker for many years, so he would spend half his time in the US half his time in or three quarters of his time in the US and he would go back to Mexico for just a few weeks to see his family once a year. Um, I grew up in Moroleón, Guanajuato -- Uriangato, Guanajuato, it's the same thing. And I, my mom was alone most of the time over there with me and my dad's family. And after a couple years, she decided that she needed to come to the states to give her children a better life. And we did, we immigrated as an undocumented family back in the '90s. And after a couple years, we were able to get uh residency, permanent residency, through my father and the 1986 amnesty act. And um, throughout my stay in the US I've been I really wanted to make something of myself. I decided that school was the way out of poverty for me and my family and that all of the teachings my mother had done with me as a young child telling me her stories about poverty and struggle--I did not want that to repeat themselves in my life. And so, I really place a lot of value in education and making sure that I did better than than my parents did, academically. I am a graduate of Waukegan High School in the northern suburbs of Chicago. A very underserved high school in a high Latino and African American city. I did very well academically throughout my years in high school and middle school, and many of my teachers basically tracked me into a college pathway as a young student. I applied to um, a scholarship or a program called Project SEED through the American Chemical Society when I was in high school, and I was selected to do biomedical research at a very, very young age. I was a sophomore in high school when that happened and began doing biomedical research at what used to be called Finch University of Health Sciences in North Chicago. I was very passionate about science and my mentors began talking to me about becoming a physician. And I bought into that dream and decided that's what I wanted to do. I did research with that university for many years throughout my high school and college career. I ended up going to Loyola University in Chicago and wanted to do have a bachelor's in chemistry. I thought I was a great student. I had a pretty good GPA, I was doing biomedical research, but when I got to Loyola, there was a stark reality of being unprepared for college. And that's the story that I think repeats itself with many of our Latino students who are coming from underserved communities. My high school did not really prepare me for the college level classes that I was going to be taking. And I was about to drop out that first semester. I was taking classes with students that were very well prepared for college, and I was one of those few that just was not ready. My GPA was not at par with what or did not reflect the actual knowledge and skills that I needed to be successful in college.

-- Jesus 07:41

Uh, I started with wanting to get a Bachelor's in chemistry. I remember that I was struggling in my Organic Chemistry class and decided for the first time ever to search for my professor's help in doing that. And for the first time, the first time that I went to her office, she greeted me. And I handed her my exam of my first ever exam with a lot of red marks. I had gotten just a horrible grade on it. And I said, you know, I really need help. I'm not sure where you know what, what went wrong, but I, I failed the exam. And she looked at me within the first minute and just said, "You know, Jose,"--she called me Jose, by the way--she said, "You know, Jose, I don't think that this is the program for you. I think you should think about switching majors." And I was appalled, because there was this professor who knew nothing about me, although I had years of biomedical research on my back, I had a published a paper before I graduated high school--and she was telling me that basically science was not for me. And I decided that yeah, I would switch majors, but I wasn't going to give up on science. And so, I switched to bio, biology, and I ended up graduating with a GPA that was not a competitive enough for medical school. So, I, I took a little break and decided that I was gonna work so I could pay myself for an MCAT prep course. Because the MCAT was gonna prepare me for medical school. And I started working, and my first job I was making twice as much as my father was making. And so that led me to feel a sense of responsibility towards my family and saying, you know, I really can't stop working now because I'm making twice as much as my father and we really need the money. And so, I that one year that I was going to take off became three years, three years, four years and became just a long time and I never made it to medical school, I've never made it to take the MCAT.

-- Jesus 10:02

Um, after a couple years, I got the opportunity to get a job at the Lake County Health Department doing social research. And that was kind of my first introduction to working in my community doing grassroots work with the people that I lived and shared schools with and a community with. And that grew my passion into working with community. I decided that that's what I wanted to do. I was doing teen pregnancy prevention with African American and Latino families. And the grant that we got from the federal government was a huge success in regards to engagement, when lots of people told us this is not possible, you have a bunch of families that really don't engage with any governmental entities and especially not those with federal grants. The team that was put together and myself we were able to engage a large number of families, large number of kids in that program. After a while, I got the opportunity to get my Masters free of charge at Northeastern Illinois University through the Enlace Program, and I decided that that's what I wanted. I continued to see education as a way out of poverty, and education was something that I really, really wanted to pursue. I got my Masters out of there and decided that because it was education, I need to get a job in education. So, I moved on to find a job at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, which actually used to be Finch University where I started my career doing research. And so, I started as a community engagement specialist, and I truly enjoyed working there and making connections with the community, working with agencies, working with students, and I spent eight years of my life there working towards changing the pathway that we use for Latino students to get to medical school. I helped in the creation of programming and got the highest number of Latino and African American students ever to get into medical school in my tenure there, which is awesome. And just recently, I got a got a job at the College of Lake County as a dean, I'm the Dean of the College of Lake County Lakeshore campus. And I'm currently doing my PhD in at Illinois State University in Educational Administration of Foundations. I, I am also very involved in the community. I serve in several boards and have dedicated a big part of my life towards serving the community that I grew up in in Waukegan.

-- Dana 12:53

So, talking to you earlier, I think there's three areas that we want to cover for sure in the interview, so we'll go through those and then anything else after that. I know you have a particular story to tell about COVID's impact on your family. And also, your role as a college dean in this crisis and your experience as a doctoral student. So, let's jump right in and talk about your uncle. Before we talk about what happened to him with COVID, tell us a little bit about your uncle. What kind of person was he?

-- Jesus 13:27

You know, he was in his 50s, 59 years old, and an incredible family man, hard-working man that loved to have fun. You know, he was the life of the party all the time when we would get together. He was probably one of the most approachable people in our family. There's always frictions among family members, but he was the one that would bridge those frictions. He had an incredible family also, who relied on him for support, and for advice, and he was always there for that. He worked for a school district in doing maintenance, HVAC maintenance. And he had been in the states, in the US, he came here as an undocumented immigrant way back in the 1970s. And he worked his life to provide to his family, you know. He was, he enjoyed Mexican music, he enjoyed, you know, drinking and partying with the family. Very responsible man. He was actually finally about to get paid off from all those years of working. He was building a beautiful house in Mexico, where he wished to retire in just a couple years, and it's--you know, he's the traditional Mexican father that would give anything for his kids and his family, and beyond that his extended family. So.

-- Dana 15:09

So, tell us what happened with your uncle and COVID-19.

-- Jesus 15:12

So, my uncle had underlying, an underlying condition, he was a diabetic. And he had been sick for a couple weeks before he decided to go to the doctor, which is very common among Latino men who will dismiss a lot of illnesses as oh no, they'll go away on their own. But my uncle had been coughing and had had a fever for a couple of days. And this was early in the pandemic before you know we were actually on the emergency status that we were as a nation. But I remember the conversation with my cousins where they said, you know, he was fine, he was walking fine, he was feeling ill he got dizzy at the house and almost fell. And so, we decided that we needed to take him to the hospital. The youngest of his kids drove him to the hospital in Waukegan. And he said that, you know, they were talking through the way there, and he was telling him what the process was going to be. Because they were not allowing family members to come into the hospital because of exposure issues. They were just allowing the patients to walk in. And he was planning out with him what the process was going to be. He was telling him, you know how he was going to drop him off, he was going to walk into the hospital, go to the front desk and follow directions, that they would tell them where to be and where to stand. And he said, you know, within an hour, I'll be back and I'll pick you up. Just call me. Call me and I'll come and get you when you're done. As my uncle came into the emergency room, he was walking on his own, and we never heard again from him. We never saw him again alive. My cousin was hoping that he would come in and get him after an hour. But after two hours, there was no phone call. He finally called the hospital and the hospital said, you know, he is in, uh he's in a coma. He collapsed in the emergency room and we had to hook him up to a respirator. Of course, it was shocking because he was walking, he was fine. And all of a sudden, he was collapsed in a coma, in a coma and hooked to a ventilator within just a couple hours.

-- Jesus 17:35

Um, the conversations that I had with his family were basically that of desperation, they could not be by his side, they could not see him, they could not do much. But they would get into their car every morning and drive to the hospital parking lot. And they would just sit in the car, hoping that they would call them with good news. The good news did not come. His organs began to fail little by little after two weeks, hooked up to a ventilator. The third week, they got a phone call, basically telling them that he wasn't going to make it, that there was going to be no resuscitation attempts. And they had, they had taken away the ventilator and he was not able to breathe on his own. So, they hooked him up again. And he passed out, or he passed away after three and a half weeks hooked up to a ventilator. He died alone. He died away from the people that he loved the most. We don't know whether he was conscious. They did a FaceTime with the family for the last time before they unplugged the ventilator. And they were able to see them, the rest of the family did not, but his kids did. He of course, was unconscious. And they spoke to him hoping that he would be able to hear them. But I think it's not that it was painful that he passed away the way he did, but the fact that his family was not able to be with them, that they were not able to hold his hand, that they were not able to speak to him by his side or be by his side, that was the most painful piece. And I think you are left with a feeling of emptiness, of incompleteness, of even though he's gone, I wasn't beside him. And that is what, what's most difficult for the family, I think.

-- Jesus 19:45

After a couple days after his passing, they arranged for a funeral. The funeral home, of course, was under COVID rules for the state of Illinois, and so large gatherings were not allowed, or inside at least. And so, they came to an agreement that they were going to do the funeral on the street, basically on the alley behind the funeral home, and I had never experienced anything like that. Usually, funerals are very private family events. This one was something else. I remember getting a text message saying, you know, are you going to go to the funeral for your uncle--I was actually working on my comprehensive exam when I got those, that message. And uh, they had a specific hour, I think it was like from 10 to one or something like that, I got it an hour before. And I said, well, I'm under the impression that we can't go, I mean, it's, they're not allowing you to do that. And they said, well, he's on the street, the casket is open in the street and you can just drive through with your car. I called my brother and I called my sister and I said, do you want to go together? We all got into the car. And we drove and as we turned into the alley, we saw the casket, a brown casket, opened in the middle of the way, with a bunch of family members around, around the casket with masks and uh a band playing some of his favorite songs. But as we drove by, we were also afraid because it was at the peak of the Pandemic, and we kept asking ourselves, is this the smartest thing to do? You know, being gathered, even if it's outside, not respecting Social Distancing, and we decided that we were not going to get off the car. We were just going to drive by, lower the window, talk to the family quickly and move on. And that's exactly what we did. I think um some of the, some of the people that were there probably looked at us and did not see us with good eyes as not coming down and giving the family a hug or, or any words of encouragement. But I, as we were talking in the car, my brother was adamant that he was going to get off. And I said, you know, you have to take care of your family too. You have to take care of your parents, my grandmother that was living with us, and just being exposed for something like this, I mean, we're not going to change the reality that he's gone. Let's just give them our support and text them and tell them we're here for them whatever they need, but I don't think it's worth it for you to get off the car and expose yourself, and he did not, and we, we, we moved on after that.

-- Jesus 22:57

A month later, after this event, we started talking to my cousins again, and they were telling us that they were having a very difficult time getting the body to Mexico. And among the family, we started saying, you know, it's been a month, he's been on a freezer for so long, why can't they just cremate him and wait for Mexico to reopen the border and take him in an urn, in ashes. And the response from the family was no, that's not what he wanted. He, before he died, a couple months before he was having a conversation with my grandpa, and he had told them that if he ever died, he wanted a certain type of funeral that included a music band, that included a velorio or, you know, actually being, having a funeral service in his home in Mexico, in his living room, the brand new house that he was building, and uh, that's what his kids want to do. Honor, they wanted to honor his wish. And they waited for over a month to finally get permission from the Mexican government to repatriate the body. And once they did, they all traveled there. My family did not, but his immediate family did. They did the traditional Mexico funeral with a wake, full day wake, full mass in our hometown, and the procession that took the casket from the, from the church to the cemetery with a large number of people following the, following the procession. And again, you know, questions arose as to whether this was the best thing to do in a COVID world, but that's what the family decided, that's what the friends decided, and they buried him after quite a few weeks of him passing. And right now, well, you know, I keep looking at my cousin's Facebook pages, and every single day there is something that reminds them of their father. There's photographs, there's songs, there's--social media is an interesting place where, you know, you are not able to forget people that easily and so every time I see my cousin's social media, I see their pain reflected on those postings. That's, that's the story of my uncle.

-- Dana 25:32

Was there any consequences to those events for the people that participated in them?

-- Jesus 25:40

Not that I'm aware of, at least not within the immediate family. We have not heard anything like that. But I mean, the fact that there was a large gathering on this ,on his funeral here and then a large procession in Mexico, and a lot of family that I really don't know from his wife's side, from his, you know, in-laws. I really don't know whether it was anything like that. I do know that you know our hometown was shut down shortly after that with not even visits allowed in the cemetery. So. You know.

-- Dana 26:23

Thank you for that. Let's switch course a little bit and talk about your role as a college dean. You're a dean at the College of Lake County in Waukegan, Illinois. Can you tell us, you already told us a little bit about Waukegan, can you tell us what your college represents for Latinx students in the larger community?

-- Jesus 26:44

The College Lake County has three campuses around the county. I am the dean for one of them. And two of our campuses are in primarily white communities, one in Grayslake, the other one in Vernon Hills, both of them well-to-do, mostly white communities. The one in Waukegan is the Lakeshore Campus, which for many years had been basically forgotten. Disinvested and basically left to fend for itself in many aspects. Classes had been stripped from that campus, activities were non-existent. It was a dying campus. A couple years ago, our president Lori Suddick came to College of Lake County, and she decided that they needed to revive the Lakeshore Campus. The Dean retired, the previous Dean retired, and for a year and a half, there was no dean at the helm of that campus. After a very tough interview process that lasted quite a few months, I finally got the news I had gotten the position. I had interviewed with the president and the deans and all of them, and one of the things that they kept saying is the need that we had for an advocate for that campus, the fact that they needed somebody at the table that represented the interests of the communities this campus was supposed to serve. And um, they were actually very proud that the first Latino Dean would actually be from Waukegan. And that you know, the helm of the campus was switching from a primarily forgotten campus to something that could actually have potential--there was potential for a new building that is actually going to be built in the next couple months. And they thought that it was very significant that the first Latino dean would be serving under those circumstances when a new building is about to be built in this campus. A lot of investment has happened in regards to classes and bringing bringing faculty into my campus through the president and she's done an amazing job in getting that done.

-- Jesus 29:05

But there's still a lot of work to be done. Most of the people we serve at the Lakeshore Campus are people of color, African American and Latinos. But when you ask them, why are you coming to the Lakeshore Campus, they would probably tell you because I could not find the class at the Grayslake Campus. We are the last choice for any student because we are an urban campus and we are landlocked--you know, it's not the beautiful campus that we have at the Grayslake site, with beautiful gardens and pathways and large parking lots. We have three buildings in downtown Waukegan that are pretty much in disrepair, that need a lot of upkeep. And so, it doesn't really look like, like what you would imagine a college campus would look like. However, the communities that we serve have to travel half an hour to the Grayslake Campus, and even more than that if they're taking a bus, and so my dream is to have a campus that serves those communities at the same, with the same expectations and the same kind of facilities that we have at Grayslake, where people will walk in and feel proud that that's their college, and that's the vision that that I have for the Waukegan campus. I think we're at a crossways, with a new building where the perception of our campus will change. But I am, my position as Dean is very symbolic, I would say, because we've never had a Latino Dean, and Waukegan is now a majority Latino city. And the large majority of our students at that campus is Latino. And so, College of Lake County continues to diversify, continues to grow, and we are now at a place where in just probably one or two years, it would be a minority majority campus.

-- Dana 31:10

So, tell us about the challenges that you faced as a college administrator during this COVID crisis.

-- Jesus 31:19

So, I um, I began in September of last year. And as COVID hit us I was just a couple months into my position, I was barely getting the helm of what my position until then, what possibilities I had as a dean to make changes to the college and my campus specifically. I began traveling very often to the Grayslake Campus because that's the center of decision making. That's where all the administrators meet, and that's where decisions are made. And so, I spent a lot of my time traveling there to meetings. As we moved on to Pandemic in the early months of 2020, the college began to think about what was going to happen. We were adamant as administrators that we will ride it out, that we would take our precautions and there would be no need for us to close our schools or our campuses. There was a lot of criticism towards administration because we were one of the last educational entities in the county to close. Some school districts closed earlier than we did, very much earlier. We did not close until the governor actually made us close. And there was a lot of hesitation to close for a couple reasons. One was an equity issue. We knew that if we close, the students that would have the hardest time adjusting would be our Latino and African American students because of the lack of technology access and the lack of experience navigating the online resources that we had. We also had a large population of English language learners that, you know, had very little experience working on a computer, much less navigating the software needed for online courses. And so, our president was adamant that if we could stay open, we would stay open. We did not want to disadvantage those that were already disadvantaged, by bringing everything online. But beyond that, there was a large effort to begin to transition to 100% online learning environment before we were asked to shut down. The vast majority of our professors have very little experience teaching online, most of them were face to face, there were a short number or a small number of them that were working online, we do have an online campus. But, you know a lot of people complained about the software that we were using and the fact that the environment was not very welcoming. And the video conferencing piece was basically non-existent for a lot of those. Within the last, before we closed the Pandemic, a week before actually, we closed, the college, enacted a contract with Zoom, which was, was basically a godsend because we were, we had been working on that for a couple months already. And we finally got it together and it was signed, and enacted a week before we closed.

-- Jesus 34:47

Um, the challenge in regards to my position was twofold. One, it was it was a challenge for all of us. It doesn't matter if you were new to college, or if you had been there for years. This was something that had never happened. And so it was something brand new--challenge was part of life if you worked at the College of Lake County, in higher education as a whole, but for me it was, I think it was even more difficult because this was the first huge challenge that I had as a dean. How do I organize my employees to make sure that they are going to be productive through the Pandemic? We don't know how long it's going to last. we thought it was going to be for 15 days, maybe a month, never that it was going to be for this many weeks. But a lot of decisions had to be made. Who do you keep on the payroll? Do you pay your employees, as they, you know, as we go home, or do you ask them to use their time, do you lay off employees? What is it that we're going to do, and thankfully the board and the president were wonderful and they said, nobody's going to lose their job, we'll continue to pay everyone. But the fact that we were sending people home without a clear plan of how they were gonna keep engaged in their positions, and how we were going to be supporting each other through the process was a little nerve racking. It wasn't until probably a week after that we came up with a plan that we were able to solidify ways in which our employees were supposed to keep engaged, and expectations as well.

-- Jesus 36:34

Um, the communication process was also an issue. I had employees that were very much connected to the online environment, I would send an email and they would respond right away they would call me I would call them and it was wonderful; but I also had employees that completely disconnected, that I did not hear from them for weeks and weeks and weeks. And even though you know we we tried to reach them, they were, they were gone, basically. And, you know, there was, HR got involved and all of that. But I like to think that our humanity during a pandemic shows up, we were incredibly patient with those employees trying to understand the kind of situations that they were going through. And even though all of us were going through some of those, I remember the president just saying, you know, we, we need to be human and we need to put ourselves into other people's shoes and understand that not all of us can deal with things the same way. And so, some of our employees were dealing with depression or they were just dealing with fear, others were just dealing with, with with panic of, you know, engaging with the world outside.

-- Jesus 37:51

And as we thought of all of that, we said to ourselves, just think if you as a professional are going through this, what are your students going through? What are your students dealing with? If we as professionals are having this many issues, think about them, and how are they going to deal with their classes? And how are they going to be able to work through--some of our students live in a one-bedroom apartment with three kids and their parents, how is it that they're going to be able to get this, they can't go to a library, they can't go to our campuses to get away. And decisions were made to support our students as much as we could, we made emergency purchases of laptops and gateways and hotspots to provide Internet access to those students. But as I talked to some of my students, one of the some of the biggest challenges was, I can't study at home, I can't do any homework at home. I have people here all the time. We are in quarantine and I can't concentrate, and as much as I try to get away, I can't, and you know, there was no place where they could go. And so, decisions were made at the college where, you know, we would offer reimbursement for classes for the spring to students that asked for them. We would follow ICCB directives in regards to grades and there was some leniency in that; there was concerned from faculty that we were just being too lenient, and that that would not represent the best interest of the students if you give them a passing grade. And so, there was a lot of discussion regarding that.

-- Jesus 39:37

But I think one of the things that we started thinking about was the mental state of our students, faculty and staff at the college. And as the weeks passed by, that became even more urgent. Students made some of their voices heard. We had a couple town halls where we listened to them, and same thing with faculty and staff. But I think the mental health piece was something that we could have done a better job with, as a college and as a society. The social isolation piece took a toll on all of us and quite honestly, it still is, still taking a toll on all of us. But for students, it was incredibly challenging, and that was something that I lived through, through my own experience. Coming up with protocols for accessing the campus, making myself available to faculty that needed to access the campus for making videos to post online for their students, dealing with mail delivery, dealing with security pieces through the Pandemic was, was something that was new to me. And as I was getting comfortable, this threw a wrench into my entire planning, and my entire budget and all of that, so, I was, basically it was trial by fire as a dean. I had a very supportive team, and my other deans and the administration. But I don't think anything could have prepared me for something like this. It was incredibly stressful, incredibly challenging. And adding to that the fact that I was a PhD student and I needed to finish a comprehensive exam was just very stressful, incredibly stressful.

-- Dana 41:50

As we're living through this pandemic, we're also experiencing a historical resurgence in social movements in this country, I wonder how that's affected you and your Latino and African American students.

-- Jesus 42:05

You know, um, the college and our student body has been affected widely. And it's something that we are still dealing with as of now. I think the social movements that we've seen has, has given people the the security to voice their concerns and make some of those concerns known to the administration. In the last couple of weeks, we've heard from students, horrible stories of discrimination within our college, both from other students, as well as faculty and staff. And we are currently dealing with some of those things. But I think the fact that people are finally speaking up and they feel comfortable enough to do that is a welcome change. However, that also brings in a lot of other issues because now you have to deal with that: how do you change the culture? That you know, we began changing before the pandemic before the social movements, but now there's an urgency, now there is something beyond that. We have students that have actually told us you know, I don't feel safe going back to campus, even if you open it up, I'm not going back because of what I've heard from other students, and the stories of discrimination and the stories of people being called names by other students and you know, the college lack of action in regards to white supremacy and, and all of the other issues. There's a particular group on campus that is very conservative, and some of the things that they've done border hate speech, you know, and so we have to respect their first amendment, but at the same time, you know, they are making other people uncomfortable at our college. And we, as a college, I believe, have been very lenient in acting and making that change. But now students are up in arms, basically demanding that we do something, and it's because of the social movements. So, we are we are still dealing with that--it's fairly new, just a couple weeks old, this whole social movement, but I think, I think this college will never be the same, you know, because our students are feeling empowered and our students are feeling that they are, they need to speak up for themselves. And for those generations that are coming after them. The college needs to change, as society needs to change. And so, we'll see where that takes us, but it has been stressful for an administration that is still trying to recuperate and plan and act in response to COVID, now has basically two fires that they need to put out, the COVID piece and the social unrest that is happening within our student body.

-- Dana 45:26

How about the relationship between African American students and Latino students? Has that brought out any new wrinkles?

-- Jesus 45:37

Not within the College of Lake County. I think that we have a very good relationship between those two groups that are at the college level, but at the community level, we certainly have had those stresses. And if it happens in the community, I'm sure it's still going on somewhere in the college because we do represent that community. During the social unrest that we saw couple weeks ago, Waukegan was an epicenter of that, was an epicenter of violence, was an epicenter of looting, was an epicenter of peaceful protests also. But within the Latino community, I think we have a lot of work to do in regards to racism and stereotypes, and understanding our history as a nation and understanding why is it that the African American community is where it is right now? I think a lot of us sometimes think of ourselves as having different interests than the African American community. Think of ourselves as having more privilege. Um, because we are some of us are passing Latinos, for example. Some of us are lacking the understanding the historical context of where the African American experience is and why is it that way.

-- Jesus 47:04

Um, but within our own Latino community, we have rampant racism going on all the time. You know, within my own family, I've experienced it. I recently was in Mexico and I saw it, and as a kid, I remember it. You know, I, I have the privilege because it is a privilege to be of white, whiter skin than most Mexicans and have green eyes and that, from a very young age gave me privilege in school and with my teachers and how society saw m. Because if you are white with green eyes, in a town like mine in Mexico, you are usually the person that comes from a wealthier family, that has social capital, that is able to navigate society differently than most darker Mexicans, and I think that replicates itself in the Latino community in the US. And, you know, we tend to think of ourselves as mestizos. And somehow being mestizo, a mixture of white and native, somehow makes us better than natives and somehow makes us better than African Americans--and that needs to change, that vision of you know, it's "them" and "us" needs to change. We have a community that is struggling for the same reasons, you know. I have a lot of friends who have actually been working in creating those links with the African American community. I think it's so important that we join forces and that we work towards changing our society together, as opposed to in pieces, you know. And there's been different themes that has had been brought up, for example, there was a post that I saw from one of my PhD peers that spoke about how Latino families are oppressed by ICE while African American families are oppressed by police, and how it's the same reality, it's the same fear it's the same issue. And so, when you analyze it, it is a single community, a single society that needs to find that unique way of collaboration and make those changes together. I don't think that it benefits anybody to work as islands.

-- Jesus 49:34

And, um, I'll tell you that, for example, in response to COVID it's the same thing. You know, we have a, right now I'm part of a working group with the Lake County Health Department, a Latino working group, and they decided that they would have a community grassroots effort to fight COVID, and so they separated the groups into a Latino group and an African American group. And, you know, I'm not sure that that's the way I would have done it. But they decided that's how it needed to be done. And so, the Latino group is run in Spanish with mostly Latinos at the table, or all of us Latinos, and the African American group is run in English with all of them being African American community leaders. And when you start talking about resources, you have the African American group fighting for their own resources, and you have the Latino group fighting for their own resources and saying, well, the Latinos are the majority in this county and the city and so we should get a bigger chunk of the pie, and the African American community says well, yeah, but look at us we need the money with, with more urgency, and so they do their own thing and you know, we've been able to bridge some of those gaps. But it seems that even without noticing, the way that we decide to do things pegs one community against the other, whether it's done intentionally or not, that's what we've done throughout the Pandemic.

-- Jesus 51:06

And even the social unrest, you know, with Latino businesses not understanding the Black Lives Matter Movement, and basically seeing them as a threat to their own survival. And, you know, there's been a lot of discussion among even my own family as to whether the social unrest has been warranted. And I feel that, again, it's a lack of understanding of the historical context of what's happening. But, you know, I've had the experience of just sitting down with my cousins and just talking and telling them the reasoning behind that, and the numerous acts of oppression and violence that has happened over the last decades, against the African American community, and peg them towards those that have been happening to the Latino community. And basically, painting a picture of it's not just them, you know, we are feeling the same thing, but they are more vocal and they have, you know, a sense of more urgent need to change society than we do because we are fragmented as a community. As Latinos, you know, we are fragmented, you have the Cuban community that is very different than the Honduran community or the Mexican community. And so our interests are different. For the African American, they have a unified front and it's a little bit, you know, I think it's a little bit better organized than any Latino organizational effort we've had.

-- Dana 52:46

Waukegan is a COVID hotspot in Illinois. Why is that and how has that impacted the Latino community in particular? Has there been any singling out or blame of Latinos as there has been another places?

-- Jesus 53:01

I've not heard that, um, yet. I've not heard anybody single out Latinos as the culprits of the pandemic spreading in Waukegan. But it's certainly a fear that we have. Waukegan is a blue-collar community. Most of the people that are working here are frontline workers they work in retail, they work in sales, they work in food service, and so they are the ones that you know are working the factories, the meatpacking factories, that are working on technology factories that, medical supply factories. Lake County as a whole is a hub for medical supply industry. And so, we have Abbott, we have Medline, we have Baxter, we have a lot of pharmaceutical companies that can't shut down. They just can't and they've been working throughout the Pandemic. So, our people are working the front lines. And I think that's been part of the reason why we're a hotspot--our people don't have the luxury of working from home, our people don't have the luxury of just staying home and working in front of a computer. So that's one of the issues. The other issue is that a lot of our, members of our community are undocumented. And so, a lot of them work through temp agencies. And so, when you talk about temp agencies taking responsibility for their employees and providing PPE and providing training and keeping their employees safe, it's like a blame game. You know, the temp agencies will blame the actual employer or the place where they're sending their employees for not taking care of them. And the factories would just blame the temp agency. Well, they're not my employees. They're the temp agencies employees and so their responsibility is to keep them safe. And so, it's a blame game.

-- Jesus 55:00

At the same time, one of the issues that we've had is that when one of our Latino members gets infected at a company, they will not call the health department or they will not call any kind of authority to investigate because of fear of losing their jobs, or because, you know, my dad, and two of my sons are working with me in this company, and so if I call and they shut it down, we are all going to lose our jobs. And so, it's that fear of not being economically stable that prevents us from reporting those things and taking action. The other thing is, well, you know, a lot of us were fortunate enough to get a Stimulus Check or get a COVID response check. A lot of our undocumented families did not--or none of them did, actually. And even some of those that are of legal status and mixed families didn't even get it. And so again, it's a matter of necessity. You need to go out there, you need to work, you need to find something to do because otherwise your kids are going to go hungry. And you cannot expect a community that is on survival mode 24/7 to just shut down and stay home and do nothing, you know, if they're not getting economic support too, they're not getting rent support, if they're not getting PPE, what do you expect? I mean, for me, it's no surprise that we are a hotspot. Our people need to be out there and don't have the resources to protect themselves and their families.

-- Dana 56:44

And how about support, besides the federal government, has there been any local support in Waukegan for being able to do that? It seems, it's very interesting that it's the center of the PPE industry but yet it seems like there's also this big problem with PPE and just support of the people that are making it possible for others to have PPE.

-- Jesus 57:05

So that effort began just a little bit too late, I think--well, it's never late when you're in a pandemic, you know, whenever you start is a good thing, but it could have started a lot earlier. And so, just recently, we, through the Latino working group that I'm part of, we finally got a grant from the health department to begin purchasing some of those things and distributing them in the community. But I think there has been a leadership gap, for example, there's been several PPE distribution sites that have happened throughout the city. But for example, the township gave out 200 packs of PPE. When you're talking about a 90,000 people city and you're giving out 200 packs, and you know, the advertising was done in English only, you know, you're not serving the vast majority of your people. The city of Waukegan has had probably one or two events. But again, the marketing of those events has been lacking. And, you know, a lot of my families, a lot of my people are not on social media, they don't have access to Facebook to see your advertisements. You know, the city, I think, has used social media as a platform to advertise some of these events. And I'm sorry, but we are still not there as a community. Not all of us have access to the internet, not all of us have social media access, and I think a lot of us are still just working and not necessarily thinking about the danger that we are putting ourselves in our families in by doing so.

-- Dana 58:55

How about these corporations themselves, the Medlines and the Abbotts, have they stepped up at all to support their workers and their community?

-- Jesus 59:08

I can tell you that what I've heard is yes, they are providing the training and the PPE to their employees, and they're taking care of Social Distancing and all of that. In regards to supporting the community, I've seen at least one of them that has made a large donation. And it's geared towards healthcare workers, not necessarily the community itself. And so, they're making large donations to hospitals and to health departments and that kind of thing. But if you drive through downtown Waukegan, I mean, you don't see a PPE distribution site, you don't see anything like that. The United Way has been at the front collecting funding to help families and entities that are helping families, and they've been very successful in raising funds. I think they could always use more, but they've been a great resource in getting it there. However, there's been a lot of criticism with regards to community entities, Latino agencies that are supposed to be helping Latino families. Because the need is so large, that even if you have, you know, $100,000 to help 100 families, 100 families is a drop in the bucket in Lake County. And so, you keep hearing conversations of people saying, well, this organization didn't help me, they gave me the runaround, they told me they don't have funding, you know, they didn't really help at all. And so, I think, that has been getting around the community as well as to who has been helped and who hasn't been helped. And within the Latino community conversations about oh, yeah, all the African American people are getting their stuff but you know, there's nobody advocating for us, we're not getting anything. And again, it has to do with how well organized the community is and, you know, the African American community through the churches and through the faith-based entities has done a better job I think, in that case. So much so that when we began the Pandemic, the African American community was the most affected and all of a sudden, you know, Latinos became the target population for that.

-- Jesus 61:28

The other thing here in Waukegan, that has been and I'm just going to touch base upon that a little bit, is that a lot of the news and a lot of the things that we hear in the media come from Chicago, and Chicago is quite different, you know, Chicago news outlets reach Waukegan, but we don't have a centralized way of communicating with our people. And so, when you start hearing some of our, some of our community talk In the beginning of the Pandemic, this was a Chicago problem. This was not a Waukegan problem. And even when we heard the news in the beginning, it was an African American problem. And that's how a lot of us took it. That's how a lot of people in Waukegan took it as Latinos is saying, Well, you know, it isn't African American problem. And then there were people were toying with a predisposed genetic thing that made them more susceptible to COVID, and we felt safer and,--and it was just a lot of confusion. The other piece that I mentioned during one of our meetings with the health department is the fact that you know, we told young people not to worry about it, it's not going to affect you in the beginning. It's not you, it's the elderly that need to be taken care of. Well, we have a bunch of people that say, well, why should I care? instead of driving home the message of we all need to take care of ourselves, even if you don't do it for yourself, do it for your grandma. And so mixed messages and when you look at the federal administration, oh my god, I mean, how many more mixed messages do you need to be incredibly confused and just ready to pull your hair out? You don't know what, what the heck they're doing. Um, but I think a lot of entities have stepped up. But we definitely need more. And when you talk about people like Medline, for example, who are working around the clock, creating medical supplies and all of that. I mean, I do think that there is conflicting interests there in regards to who am I going to send the supplies to: this community of African American or Latinos that is right next door or the multimillion dollar entities that are purchasing them, you know, through Condel or Northshore, or whatever health entities are out there trying to get PPE. So I think, you know, again, a lot of it has to do with money.

-- Dana 64:01

Anything else you'd like to share with me about your experiences with COVID-19 that I haven't asked about?

-- Jesus 64:08

I just wanted to touch base about my experience as a student. And I think that was something that we were going to talk about. But, you know, throughout the Pandemic, I was part of the first ever Latino cohort of doctoral students out of Illinois State University. And it's 10 of us working towards our PhDs and we were taking our last class during the spring semester. And it was a preparatory class for the comprehensive exam. And as we began writing, the Pandemic hit us and everything shut down. It was a monumental task for us to actually write something that was worth a passing grade I would say, and it was very difficult to concentrate. It was very difficult to do research sitting in my office or sitting at home trying to write, while at the same time having to think about what was happening with my uncle, what was happening nationwide and the world in a pandemic, hearing the news. Having my family stuck at home. It was a monumental test to write. It was very, you know, it was just the most difficult writing exercise I've had in my life. And so, I just, I just want to salute those of us that have been, you know, students in this area and have been trying to move forward in a pandemic. It's not easy. It's not easy to concentrate and shut down the world so that you can concentrate on writing. It's just an incredible task.

-- Dana 65:49

Are you still in the middle of that? Have you have you been been able--

-- Jesus 65:53

I still am in the middle of it. I will be writing probably August and September. But, you know, I submitted my, my exam and it wasn't the best, and I need to rewrite pieces of it. And it's fine. You know, I understand that I was writing in an incredibly stressful time. And I understand the kind of effort I put into it and, and the kind of stress I was in not only as a student, but as a dean and as a Latino. And so, I kind of foresaw that I would need to rewrite it. And so that's what I will be doing in the next coming months.

-- Dana 66:33

Well, you're making such a contribution to your students and your community at the same time. So that's a lot of that's a lot of pressure to have, you know, that going on at same time.

-- Jesus 66:46

Well, good thing is we have plenty of time. So.

-- Dana 66:50

Yeah, there in the basement. Um, I really want to thank you Jesus for sharing your stories with us and future scholars, and others, to help them understand what it was like experiencing this moment in history and your particular experience.

-- Jesus 67:10

Well, thank you so much for considering me and I'm here, anything I can help with let me know.

-- Dana 67:18

Okey Doke.

-- Jesus 67:19

Thank you.