Parts of the transcript unrelated to the California State University were removed and responses have been edited for clarity and length. The questions and responses that have been removed focused on his life experiences as an undocumented person and journalist.
Faculty layoffs, fewer class offerings and tuition raises have left the San Francisco State University community frustrated and confused amidst university budget cuts. In recent weeks, campus walls have been plastered with posters by lecturer David Gill, who is being “exited” from his position.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Journalism Department hosted an open forum event with Jose Antonio Vargas in the Humanities Building with the purpose of opening dialogue between students and the Board of Trustees.
Vargas is an appointed member of the California State University Board of Trustees, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, SFSU alumnus and immigration rights activist. Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States from the age of 12, he didn’t know he was undocumented until he tried to obtain a driver’s license at the age of 16. Vargas founded Define American, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting open dialogue about immigration and American identity.
Vargas answered questions from students and faculty about CSU funding, the recently-implemented five-year tuition increase and CSU investments in defense and aerospace companies.
Vargas: People ask me, “Why haven’t they deported you?” I don’t know. So you can ask whatever. I’ll just say, given I’m in this space, is I’m a journalist constitutionally. I’m Filipino, I’m undocumented, I’m gay but I feel like being a journalist is probably the identity that I wear the most, as crazy as that sounds. Being a journalist hasn’t just been a profession for me; it’s the way I live my life. What questions am I not asking? Who’s not in the room? Who am I not hearing from? Am I asking the hard questions? Or am I pulling punches?
I got into journalism accidentally. I was born in the Philippines, got here when I was 12 and then I found out I was undocumented when I was 16, trying to get a driver’s license. Then Mrs. Dewar, my English teacher who went to San Francisco State, said I asked too many annoying questions in class and I should do this thing called journalism. I was like, “What the hell is that?” Then she talked to me about a summer program here at State. Back then, it was the Bay Area Multicultural Academy called “BAMA.” Every summer, faculty of color, led by Eva Martinez, gathered summer interns to learn about journalism for two weeks. I went to that in 1998. It was my first summer here in San Francisco and that’s how I started being a journalist.
It wasn’t until I was 30, after I had built a career as a journalist, that I started asking hard questions for myself publicly. That’s when I came out as undocumented and started an organization called “Define American.” My goal then and now is: how do we tell the full picture of immigrants in this country, documented and undocumented, of all various races and ethnicities?
Q: My name is Neal Wong (Golden Gate Xpress Online Editor). I’m studying journalism. What exactly do you do as a CSU Trustee member?
Vargas: Oh my God. I was in a meeting today, and I started realizing that we need to make sure that people will really know what a trustee does because this is an unpaid position. If you’re a board of directors of a publicly traded company, board members get paid, but as a trustee of the system, no. We get a stipend. I think it’s a hundred dollars a day. And it’s a lot of time. So, we have board meetings every two months for three days. When we’re interviewing presidents, it’s for four days.
But the biggest responsibility is we have a fiduciary responsibility for the system. I was appointed by Governor Newsom two years ago. To be honest, when I was contacted about it, I was like, “I don’t know if I have time for this.” I knew that it was going to be a time commitment. I’m doing a lot of stuff but I’m so glad I said yes because I think this is unlike any other experience that I’ve ever had as a human being. As a Board of Trustees, our job is, “How do we make sure that we are looking at the financials of the system?” which is why the tuition increase was so hard because it was such a big lose-lose situation. Somebody said to me that we were caught in a rock and a hard place, and it’s worse than the rock and a hard place when you look at the numbers.
The fiduciary’s responsibility is then, “What can we offer to the system as a trustee?” And for me, brand and communications is a big one. I think we as a system need to do a better job marketing our system. This is the most diverse, largest institution of higher learning in the country, and yet most Americans don’t know that one out of 20 people in America comes from the CSU, has a degree from the CSU.
Editor’s note: One out of 20 Americans with college degrees had a degree from the CSU in 2017.
Somehow the University of California system, which is much smaller than ours, has a better brand awareness than we do and that’s unacceptable. That’s the first thing for me, and the second thing is fundraising and development. Given where we are, that’s where the tuition fee increase was such a hard thing because it’s hard enough to go to this school. You know what’s even harder than affording the school? Which is about $5,500 a semester — mind you, many people get financial aid — it’s the cost of living. That’s the hardest part. How do we form partnerships with companies here? How do we get more support from all the philanthropy that is here so we can better support our students?
Q. Neal Wong (Golden Gate Xpress Online Editor): You said you had a fiduciary responsibility. Are you obligated to do what’s best for the system financially or for the students financially?
Editor’s note: A fiduciary responsibility is a legal obligation to act in the best interests of another person or entity. This means that the fiduciary must prioritize the needs and well-being of the beneficiary, even if it means sacrificing their own interests.
Vargas: For the system financially so that we can serve students. Because why does the system exist? It’s here to educate students. So the hard part on that is – given the school and the students we attract — really understanding the financial decisions, how it’s going to impact different populations. For example, we know that we have 8,000 undocumented students across the system. I think that’s an undercount. I think it’s more than 8,000 students.
Editor’s note: According to the CSU website, there are nearly 10,000 undocumented students in the system.
And we know that because they’re undocumented, they can’t apply for Pell Grants. So they can’t get federal aid. They’re in a much more vulnerable and needing position, and the way the tuition fee increase impacts them is different from someone who’s a U.S-born citizen or a U.S.-born citizen with undocumented parents, who’s now maybe fearful to apply for the FAFSA because they’re giving information to the government.
Those are the complexities of it. So, how do you make sure that you’re informed as a trustee – because, again, I’m only one trustee. There’s a lot of us — that I have all the information I have so that I can make the decision that addresses the complexity of what I’m dealing with?
Q. Neal Wong (Golden Gate Xpress Online Editor): Does the CSU have enough state funding, in your opinion?
Vargas: No, I think it’s very clear that the state of California thinks that a UC student is worth more than a CSU student and a community college student. I think there are racial implications and class implications of that, that we as a system haven’t fully faced. I’m not saying that as a knock against the UCs. I’m sure they’re great institutions but as a vehicle of social mobility, as an engine of the economy of the state, all you got to do is look at the numbers and what the CSU does. Most of our students stay in their communities. Most of the students that attend CSUs end up staying in their communities. So we’re the engine for the state. We produce more teachers than any other institution. This is why we have to tell our story better. I don’t think we do that at the level that we ought to be doing it, given the financial situations that we’re facing. By the way, I am speaking for myself. I am not speaking for my fellow trustees, just for me. My email is [email protected].
Q. Jesse Suratos: PACE is the Pilipinx American Collegiate Endeavor here at SF State. I’m the political affairs coordinator for that group. We had a meeting earlier today with some of the other Filipino organizations, as well as Resist US-Led War and La Raza. We had asked you if you could advocate for us to have a bigger meeting with other trustees and more SF State students. We feel that we didn’t really get a clear-cut yes or no on that. We got a “Here is some contacts. Please follow up with them.”
I feel like we have the opportunity right now to get a trustee member to advocate to his fellow trustees to just say, “Hey, look at these students. They really want to meet with you guys.” Can we make that happen?
Vargas: I actually thought I gave a pretty straight answer — yes. I certainly can’t force my fellow trustees to do that. But I have to tell you though, given that this is a volunteer position, we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t care about the students. Let me really repeat that: I would not be spending the kind of time and energy that I’ve been spending in the past couple of years if I didn’t care about the system and the students they service.
So absolutely advocating for that. You’re one of our stakeholders. You’re our most important stakeholder. I have nieces and nephews your age. Sometimes I feel as if people only want to hear what they want to hear and don’t want to see the full picture. Again, my journalistic training is: what are the facts and what is the full context? Let’s agree on what the facts are and what are the full contexts. Then you can make a decision as to whatever you think of any vote that any trustee makes.
After the tuition increase vote, the messages that I got from our students, my people: All kinds of judgment calls around “I’m a traitor. I’m a this, I’m a whatever.” I was kind of like, wait, “I’m a human being and no human being has the right to talk to another human being like this.” But I didn’t say anything. I just collected messages. At some point, I’m going to email everybody back and be like, “I’m sorry you feel that way. This is why I voted.”
Now I’m also saying this because I think we, as trustees and at the Chancellor’s office, need to do a better job communicating with all of you in ways that you could understand. You don’t have time to sit through a three-hour board meeting, like why couldn’t we have released YouTube videos or Instagram Reels, or some TikTok explaining this is why the votes were the way they were. This is why we have a reserve fund, instead of the assumptions that people make because we are not presenting the information in a way that everybody could really access and understand. We have to do a better job at that. I know for me personally, I’ve been advocating for that within the Chancellor’s office.
Q. Peter Ngugi (Journalism student): How do you guys advocate for the government to give you more money to fund the CSUs? Should you be hounding the governor more?
Vargas: Absolutely. We’re advocating. That’s certainly what I do, personally and collectively. It’s not just the governor’s office, it’s the legislature that can also put pressure on the governor’s office. It was either we raised $327 a year, or we start closing off schools and laying off a bunch of people. That was the lose-lose, worse than hard and a rock place.
So, we had to make that decision then. We could not just go to the governor and be like, “Give us more money,” because, again, he has to look at the whole pot. I actually think it’s time to actually look at the master plan of higher education in the state. With all the wealth in the state, the fourth largest economy, the home to a few large industries in the world, there’s no reason why Stanford University, and I’m not picking on Stanford, is literally billions of dollars. And you have us begging for scraps. Makes no sense at all.
That takes not only a lobbying effort. That takes a real, in my opinion, the kind of storytelling that we as a CSU and we at San Francisco State have to figure out how to do. For example, when I was going to school here, there was 29,000 students. You’re what now? 21,000? 22?
Editor’s note: About 22,000 students in total are enrolled at SFSU as of Spring 2024.
The trajectory is going to go less and less. This university has to right-size itself. What does that mean? Of course, the reports around lecturers and what’s happened is awful. We don’t want anybody to lose their job but the reality is the enrollment struggles.
What we’re dealing with has to ask us to look at the numbers. This is a real reimagining of the CSU and reimagining the individual campuses within it. Cal Poly is a part of the CSU. When are they a part of the CSU and when are they not a part of the CSU? By the way, this is a question I’ve been asking for two years I’ve been on this board. When are we one system and when are we 23, now going on 22, schools? I haven’t gotten, in my opinion, a satisfying answer to that question.
Please know that advocacy is happening at all levels that it needs to happen. If you look at the trustees, it’s actually an incredible group of people with different kinds of relationships that all have to be leveraged one way or the other.
Q. Andrew Fogel (Golden Gate Xpress Visuals Editor): I’m Andrew and I’m studying photojournalism. How do you view the discrepancy between northern and southern CSUs and sort of how they’re growing and decreasing, and why do you think that’s happening?
Vargas: It’s hard to definitively say because I don’t have enough data to look at but we know it’s real. Because look, the exceptions are Sacramento State and San Jose State. Like, when I was going to school here, San Jose and San Francisco were about at the same level. Mind you, they have embraced “We power Silicon Valley.” San Francisco State is never going to be a Polytechnic. San Francisco State needs to be San Francisco State, right? I was drawn here as somebody who cared about social justice before that was a political mainstream word. I’m proud that I went to a university where we were the first university to have a College of Ethnic Studies — that I have a degree from political science and — back, then it was called — Black Studies. I’m proud of that. I think part of the reimagining is what is the vision for a smaller San Francisco State.
Q. Cami Dominguez (Golden Gate Xpress Campus Editor): I’m Cami, I’m studying journalism with a minor in political science and I think something that’s very unique to San Francisco State is that we have a really big faculty, like CFA, presence on our campus. Something that we’ve been seeing a lot recently on campus have been, flyers of faculty who are getting laid off left and right. Most notably, there was one specifically targeting our university president’s salary, saying like “She cut everything but her salary.” The student publication has since spoken to her where she said —
Vargas: And you mean President Mahoney?
Q. President Mahoney, yes. She said that “I don’t control my salary, it comes from the CSU and the state.” My question is, how does that distribution work, where we’re seeing our faculty getting laid off while we’re seeing university presidents’ salary increase?
Vargas: First of all, I think it’s important to know that the salaries of these presidents make less than or about two percent of the total budget of the CSU. Second of all, if you actually compare how we pay our presidents compared to the national level, you can actually make an argument that some of them are really underpaid.
Editor’s note: 0.168% or $14,437,766 of the CSU’s $8,578,359,000 budget this academic year was for executive compensation, which includes the salaries of presidents, the chancellor, vice chancellors and housing stipends. According to Ziprecruiter, the national average salary for university presidents is $186,961. CSU presidents are paid between $370,000 and $533,148 and receive housing or a housing stipend.
So I want everybody here to get a degree and get paid what you’re worth. In the same way that we want faculty members to be paid what they’re worth. Do you know what’s been so frustrating — as a journalist watching and consuming some of the news around — what’s happening here is that context of lecturers are not being let go because we want to pay people. Lecturers are being let go because of the enrollment challenges of the system of this specific school. Now, what I’m hearing — some of the messaging like “don’t go to San Francisco State,” is so — we already have enrollment challenges.
Actually, I heard from my cousin who got accepted to Channel Islands, Sacramento State and San Francisco State. What’s been happening here got to her Instagram feed. So she’s texting me yesterday, going “I can’t go to San Francisco State. Look, what’s happening there. I can’t get my degree there” and I’m like, “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And let me tell you why.” So, it’s been a bad situation all around. We are fighting for scraps when in reality, we deserve more. I know that’s not a sufficient answer but that’s an honest answer I could give you.
Q: My name is Audrey Palacio and I’m studying in the creative writing department. Despite the enrollment challenges, how are we as pre-existing students here at San Francisco State benefiting from the tuition hike when we are all already — despite your argument for tuition hikes — closing down a bunch of schools?
Vargas: Campuses yeah.
Q: How are we benefiting from the tuition hike when we are already losing dozens if not maybe around 100 faculty and hundreds of courses?
Vargas: So, I don’t think looking, I mean for my perspective, it’s kind of like — this is a bad analogy, but it’s all I can think about. As an undocumented person in this country, this is my reality. And I have to make choices based on that reality. This tuition increase is not beneficial to anybody. Certainly not to the students, but it’s the reality that we have to deal with. The reality is, some classes have gotten cut. The reality is there are going to be less lecturers. And by the way, I actually think San Francisco State and President Mahoney has been an exemplary example of transparency in terms of the budget. There’s a budget committee that meets apparently in a Zoom meeting the other day. There’s 300 people at this budget meeting because everybody’s really concerned about the budget as they ought to be.
I think she has been as transparent as she can be and I’m sure everybody always can use a room for improvement but I think this idea that somehow, this is beneficial for the students — from my perspective, it’s not. This has not been beneficial to the students but these are the choices we have to make in the same way that I have to be like, “Okay this is what I gotta do.”
The cost of living — when I was going to school here, I got a studio in the Mission for $650. I know, I know. Okay, the burrito at the cafeteria was $4.75. It was $6 with horchata. Apparently a lunch here is $17. This is not sustainable. We need to make it cost-efficient and cost-responsible. How do we do that? We need more money.
And of course, yes, ask the governor for more money but we have to make a case, right? And that’s why I keep bringing up philanthropy in corporate because look at the wealth all around this region. The fact that they’re not investing in our schools to me is actually irresponsible. Irresponsible. I’m probably getting way too worked up, but I feel very strongly about that, I’m just being direct with you. It’s not beneficial. I’m sure my fellow trustees maybe would not want me to say that but hey, I’m speaking for me and here I am.
Q. Sarah Louie: I’m Sarah. I’m a journalism major as well. The students’ reaction to the tuition hike, especially at San Francisco State — how angry we were and probably still are. What was your reaction as a trustee member and alum? Did you feel you were kind of contradicting your identity with those two roles?
Vargas: You had every absolute right to be upset. You have absolutely every right to say, “Wait a second, what is happening?” So I don’t see those things as contradictory. When I went to this school 20 years ago — I went to SF State because when your GPA is higher than 3.0, they don’t ask for your SAT score back then. When I found that I was undocumented, I didn’t want my identity to be tied to a number. So I’m not taking the SATs so I didn’t have SAT scores. And so I got in because my GPA was higher than 3.0, that’s the only reason why I went here and back then it was still affordable. $850 was very affordable.
Editor’s note: The current CSU tuition for undergraduate students enrolled in more than six units is $3,042 per semester.
So, I totally understand given the jump from $850. And that’s a lot. That’s a big jump. Again, $300 — less than $400. That’s a lot of money to me in the full context, though, of what it means to afford to go to this school. So it’s not just the tuition, it’s the whole cost of living of being in San Francisco State and I feel like that’s the conversation that we should focus even more on. It’d be one thing if we made this decision irresponsibly, meaning and for me, irresponsibly would be like, “Wait, were there other options?”
When people say, go to our reserve button, wait a second, then what happens when there’s an earthquake? What if there’s a fire? Talk about fiduciary responsibility — we have to put enough money away so that if there’s a fire and there’s an emergency, we have this rainy day or, since I’m Filipino — typhoon fund, right? We need that. Again, I feel like if you sat through the three-hour, four-hour board meeting that I had to sit through, I needed to understand all those contexts but I bet for the students here who are living, who are going to school, probably holding more than two jobs, we didn’t tell that story, we didn’t paint that picture. I don’t know, I wasn’t reading the Golden Gate Xpress so I don’t know what the coverage was like, but we needed to make sure that we told that story better and we didn’t. And in that I think we failed. And again, I’m speaking for myself. We failed at providing a clearer and fuller picture of why the decision was made, Sarah.
Q: Hello, I’m Angelia. I’m a psychology major but I’m in Resist US-Led War at [SF] State. In the past few years, we’ve been seeing more and more funding being pulled out from education in the U.S. war effort. Another institution that does this is the CSU system. We’re seeing no money from the state, therefore the CSUs are looking for investments into transnational world corporations that invites global war and displacement. In your position as a trustee, how can you advocate for a CSU-wide divestment from these war profiteers and raise the quality of jobs in education and not more war and occupation?
Editor’s note: According to a statement on the CSU website, “As of March 31, 2024, the CSU had direct ownership of approximately $20.8 million of corporate bonds in the aerospace and defense industries through our Liquidity and Intermediate Duration Portfolios. The CSU also had about $30.6 million of investment exposure through mutual funds in the Total Return Portfolio. Altogether, these positions total $51.4 million, or 0.62% of total CSU investments.”
Vargas: I’m somebody who was born in the Philippines and the Philippines was the first exercise in empire of this country. This country has been an empire ever since you took the Philippines. At the same time, you took Puerto Rico and all of a sudden, we’re Americans culturally, apparently. I’m saying something that I’m aware of that I don’t know if my fellow trustees are aware of, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the kind of education that needs to happen, and is already happening to a certain extent, but it needs to happen more at that level. I have to say though that because this has come up with a few board meetings, I still need to really understand where all these investments are and what are the consequences of pulling out in some of them at a time when we need money — and this is again the cost analysis.
We are a country and this is something — and again, I’ve never voted. I’m undocumented. This is where Bernie Sanders has been present from the beginning. We are in many ways a war economy. We have been now for more than a hundred years. And we spend so much money. The whole capitalist system of this country is created and I’m going to bring Gore Vidal into this conversation for Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. I was a student here with that book — this little booklet came out. What the hell was he talking about?
By the way, if you don’t know who Gore Vidal is, please everybody. He was the first person I ever heard and thankfully, I went to political science at the school where I was assigned to read Gore Vidal essays. He was the first one that actually started saying that this was an empire, America is an empire, certainly militarily. We are certainly economically. All you have to do to look at that is to say, why is it that an iPhone have more migrant rights than human beings.
That’s an important question. Why is it that an iPhone can travel to all of these places, and yet, the undocumented people that make sure you have your strawberries for your salads can’t go anywhere outside of their state because they don’t have a valid license. All of that. But this requires real critical thinking and we are not a critical thinking society. I think as a board, we need more — not only the vocabulary — but we need more interrogation when it comes to this.
Q. Neal Wong (Golden Gate Xpress Online Editor): You touched on looking at the master plan. So in 1960, when the master plan for higher education was drafted, the UCs and CSUs were tuition-free and now it’s changed so much. So what changes do you hope to make in the future to bring financial stability to the CSUs?
Editor’s note: UCs, CSUs and community colleges were tuition-free for in-state residents but charged small fees like the campus fees today. Also, Vargas reiterated that his email is [email protected] and said that he responds within a week to questions.
Vargas: Making sure that we have a real statewide conversation with all the stakeholders. The headquarters of Apple, Meta, the headquarters of all these multi-billion dollar corporations have to be a part of the conversation. They have a fiduciary responsibility as corporate citizens of the state. So, in my opinion, there’s no reason why our students can’t afford, not only to go to these schools, but to live in these communities. So, that’s going to be pretty high on my priority. I have to say though, we live in a state — This is actually in this book that I’m finishing — 67 percent of the state are Latinx, Latino, Latine, AAPI, and Black. 67 percent of the state.
Editor’s note: According to census data, Californians who identify as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, or Asian make up 60.9% of California’s population. However, 14.6% of the population identifies as two or more races, meaning up to 75.5% of the population could be part of those categories.
So, how do we really address racial and class differences? And how, if you look at wealth and the distribution of wealth, if you look at the median household incomes that Pew Research comes out every year.
And you look at the gap between AAPI — I was so surprised by the way, when this came out last year, the number one, highest median household income in America, today are Indian, Indian-American, South Asians number one. Number two, Filipinos.
I was totally surprised. I was like “Wait what?” And then I’m like “How many Louis Vuitton bags do some of my aunts have?” And then I look, you look at the whole list and Latin people and Black people are very near the bottom of the list.
And then I asked my researcher, “Can we go back as far as we can?” Black people have always been at the bottom of the list. That is all on us.
When we immigrated to this country post-1965 — there are 22 million Asian American people in this country today because of the 1965 Immigration Act. Do you know much about that?
The 1965 Immigration Act is the most important, and yet, least understood piece of legislation this country ever passed. That’s why the country looks the way that it does. And yet, I have so many immigrant people, Asian people in particular, who don’t know the debt that we owe to what the Civil Rights Movement was. And so all of these conversations are meritocracy, around — needs a racial examination. And look, when we talk about white supremacy, Latin people and Asian people are — can be as racist as white people. We know that. We live in these families. So, what does it look like to actually address that?
Editor’s note: There were 24.7 million Asian Americans in 2022 according to census data. While the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act had a major impact on the demographics of the United States, other factors like economic opportunities, social movements, technological advancements and geopolitical events have also influenced the country’s development.
One of the things that I’m so proud that we’re doing right now in the university, in the system — Have you heard of the Black Honors College? Check it out. We have actually a report unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Not even the HBCUs have done this. Our report is actually looking at, how do we retain Black students and Black faculty and admin. It’s an incredible report. When I saw the report I went to one, a couple of my colleagues and I said, “Hey can we do a version of this for undocumented students?” I want to understand what that looks like too. So yeah, it’s a long answer to your question, Neal. All right, I gotta go you all.
Editor’s note: For full transparency, Cami Dominguez, Andrew Fogel, and Neal Wong are on the staff of Golden Gate Xpress.
