Re “South County education task force convenes at ‘very challenging moment’” (May 2): In the 1980s, North County San Diego was allowed to establish an independent four-year university, not a satellite of other institutions. Its undergraduate enrollment is now 52% Chicano/Latino. Our South Bay, particularly its Chicano community, deserves the same. The announced plan of the South Bay Higher Education Task Force to establish a campus of satellites merely provides classroom space for other independent universities.
If the programs taught in the Chula Vista space reflect the current profiles of SDSU and UCSD, their student enrollments will be 25% to 36% Chicano/Latino and their faculty will be 8% to 19% Chicano/Latino. That’s in a city in which Chicanos represent 60% of the population.
Such a colonial situation is unacceptable. Chula Vista deserves an independent four-year university with its own student admissions and faculty hiring processes, and plans for such an institution should be solidified now.
— Patrick Velasquez, Serra Mesa