So when I got to Virginia Tech, this was the first semester that DACA recipients were eligible to get in-state tuition. And I realized that was because of the work of undocumented students so I wanted to do my part. As soon as I got on campus. I started taking to people about

starting an undocumented student organization. I was able to link up pretty early on with a professor who didn’t there anymore who was down to be our advisor and connected me with a couple of other DACA recipients. We decided to start @TechDREAMers and hold our first meeting in

late October. And a few days later, I saw that this poster was going around with a meeting advertised on the same day. And obviously people took issue with this poster. We partnered up with LASO and I wrote this letter in response.

Leading up the event, there was a lot of tension on campus around it. Link to my first ever NPR interview : https://www.wvtf.org/post/alien-invasion-event-controversy-and-opportunity-important-dialogue

We decided to keep our event on the same day and use it as an opportunity to educate people and provide a different respective. Ignore my awful haircut.

Turnout for our event was pretty good. But we new the other event was going to be massive given how much of an uproar it had caused on campus.

Their event was what you would have expected 2-3 hours of pretty intense conversations/sometimes yelling. There used to be a video to the whole event but I couldn’t find it.

Collegiate Times article the day after the event: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/article_d93c67e6-5f10-11e4-8b9b-0017a43b2370.html

Sometime after, there was an incident where the Student Budget Board took funding access away from the principal organizer, YAF at VT. Here is a picture of their president and I awkwardly being fake to each other the day of the event:

The incident revolved around YAF not using funds for their Oct. 28th event for what they had been allocated for (not as retaliation for the political viernes) but that didn’t stop their president from thinking so:

In the end, this event did give our undocumented student organization, barley a month old at that point, the leverage to be able to do a lot of great things over the next few years. YAF kept, and keeps, doing their YAF thing.

But the point being that people with these sentiments are and have been at VT and vocal about it.

Also just found this again and was worth sharing :) fun fact: where we held our first event, the Multicultural Center, is now the AAPI Center

Also @TechDREAMers has been inactive for about a year now. If anyone is an undergrad and wants to restart it, lmk I’d be happy to help and it would mean the world to me :’)