Gina Garcia wasn’t stressing over a dozen college applications when deciding where to go for her undergraduate degree.
“I made the choice like a lot of first gen college students do: Wherever is closest to home, that’s where I’m going,” said Garcia about joining her older sister at California State University, Northridge, in the mid-1990s, when tuition was virtually free and Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action, wasn’t undermining diversity.
Northridge, which is about 30 minutes from her home, was a world away from where Garcia grew up in the predominantly white town of Simi Valley in California’s Ventura County.
“When you’re in a white space, you know when you’re not white,” said Garcia of her childhood. “And so I went to college, and I was in a brown space. I immersed myself….It felt like a space that I belonged in. That was my undergraduate experience.”