Olivia Russo
Staff Writer
IDEAS, Improving Dreamers Equity, Access & Success, is a club started last spring with the intention of becoming a support group for undocumented students on campus as well as raising awareness to the struggles they face in their daily lives.
Currently, the club has two board members, Wendy Alba-Cedillo, the president, and Francisco Adauto, who is a co-founder. Alba-Cedillo said that they met at an event put together by the University of La Verne’s DREAM Team, where Aduato told her that they should make a club.
So they made a club.
“I wanted to create something like that, even though it wasn’t going to benefit me now, it was going to benefit other people,” Alba-Cedillo said. “So that was kind of also what pushed me to be a voice and be able to create a space where I can help others find their voice.”
The number of undocumented students on campus is a hard number to obtain, but at one point there were at least 40 students at ULV who were undocumented.
Being undocumented in any college system has many struggles including seeing classmates get opportunities that many cannot have due to the absence of a work authorization or always having to explain the situation to others.
“I’m a computer science major, so internships are already hard to get,” Cindy Guzmán, communications co-director at the Undocumented Students Network, said. “So adding on top of that the fact that I probably won’t have access to most internships, makes it a lot harder to try and create job opportunities for myself and gain experience.”
Alba-Cedillo shares the same fears, and advisors in many California universities are not able to help in the best way, as they are not even informed about the difficulties of being an undocumented person in the U.S.
“She was thanking me for explaining to her what this all meant and I was like ‘I can’t believe that I have to do this for myself. I’m advocating for myself,’” Alba-Cedillo said.
Being an undocumented immigrant is a very personal struggle and the experiences of these individuals are not the same. However, when it comes to giving back to the community, they understand that they are not living through it alone.
“I’m going to be graduating, but there are so many students coming in from high school that were not able to apply for DACA, that won’t be able to have these opportunities,” Blanca Estela-Alba, sophomore public policy major master student at UCLA, said.
“It’s not just about me, but also the students coming into these universities. Just being able to have the same resources as everyone and gaining the same experiences that we need for careers.”
Alba-Cedillo, Guzmán and Estela-Alba all worked at DREAM Summer, a fellowship created by UCLA to give undocumented students a chance to connect and empower immigrants to become the next generation of social justice leaders. They all attribute their belief in fixing the system for reasons outside of themselves to this program.
IDEAS will be starting to host more events soon. For more information visit @ulv_ideas on Instagram.
“I think, if anything, it’s just wanting to see the dreams of those who are undocumented come to fruition,” Daniel Loera, director of multicultural affairs and advisor for IDEAS, said. “I think to help and to be able to be of some level of support, even if it is miniscule, for them to be able to pursue that dream and reach the dream and if they are hopefully achieve it is significant and life-giving.”
Olivia Russo can be reached at olivia.russo@laverne.edu.
Olivia Russo is a senior journalism major with a concentration in print/online journalism and a minor in criminology. She is the Editor-in-Chief for the Campus Times for Spring 2026. She has previously served as the News Editor, LV Life Editor, a photographer and a staff writer for the Campus Times, as well as a staff writer and photographer for La Verne Magazine.
