All Events
HSP Community Progress Meeting
MCC Lounge
Join us for the MCC’s Community Progress Meeting, where we’ll reflect on the journey since our Community Forum earlier this quarter. Together, we’ll share updates on the progress made in addressing the themes and concerns raised – diversity, belonging, and empowerment – through community care and collective action.
This meeting is an opportunity to highlight the steps taken, the challenges encountered, and the solutions implemented as part of the MCC’s Holistic Safety Plan. We’ll discuss how feedback and collaboration have shaped our efforts to create supportive spaces that address campus climate and foster connection, resilience, and equity, as well as some of the next steps for the spring quarter.
Your voice remains vital in this process, and we invite you to join us as we celebrate strides made, share lessons learned, and explore the next steps in building a more inclusive and empowering community at UCSB.
(NEW DATE 3/7/25) - Mixed in America
Meagan Smith & Jazmine Jarvis
MCC Theater and Lounge
(NEW DATE MARCH 7*) – Begin your mixed healing journey with Mixed Identity Specialists and Founders of Mixed in America – Meagan Smith & Jazmine Jarvis. Join the Office of Black Student Development and MCC, for a trauma-informed workshop designed to help you explore and embrace your mixed-race identity with authenticity and truth. Gain practical tools for healing identity wounds in a safe, supportive, and judgment-free space. Don’t miss the opportunity to connect, reflect, and grow.
Co-Sponsors: MCC, OBSD, BWHC
* New date March 7, rescheduled from January 24
The Maverick Poetics of Juan Felipe Herrera: A Conversation and Reading
Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera
MCC Theater
Join us in an engaging panel with Professor Prof. Juan Casillas-Núñez, Prof. Jorge Omar Ramírez-Pimienta, and Prof. Francisco Lomelí, and Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera at the MCC theater. Some examples of Herrera's books will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.
In 2015-2017, Juan Felipe Herrera served as the 21st U.S. Poet Laureate, the first Latino appointed to that most distinguished position. In 2012-2014 he also served as the California Poet Laureate. He has produced 37 books, exhibiting a penchant for creative experimentations through language, themes, and styles in the broadest sense of the word. His trajectory spans over half a century with numerous landmark works on mixed media and a dogged avant-garde poetics, ranging from memoirs, travelogues, unofficial epics, manifestoes of resistance, theatrical pieces, neo-indigenist incantations, (im)migration treatises, chronicles or documentaries, ethno-biographies, visual renditions (i.e. "mud drawings"), transborder crossings, "undocuments", revolutionary discourse, calligraphy, poetry interfaced with collages and murals, barrio-centric profiles, young adult novels, children's literature, linguistic rendezvous, intertextual soirees, justice re-articulated, and of course multiple incursions into mixing or remixing aesthetic forms--a kind of literary synthesizer, including transgeneric writings. Some of his writings echo Whitman-esque lyrics, Allen Ginsberg's unconventional poetics, Dylan Thomas' sentiments, Alurista's Spanglish, Pablo Neruda's artful politics, Federico Garcia Lorca's rural imagery, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, the Beat Generation's anarchism, Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism, Gloria Anzaldua's border consciousness, Teatro Campesino's agitprop representations, and of course many others. He can adeptly meander between philosophical riddles and sardonic commentaries, cathartic tongue-in-cheek humor and syllogisms, uplifting children's books and the role of (im)migration. He has a way of transcending his humble migrant roots as a "people's poet" by also capturing the big picture of transnational social movements. He is both personal and universal. He has won most of the major awards and recognitions that an American can receive: the PEN/Beyond Margins award, the American Book Award from Before Columbus Foundation, America's Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, and MacArthur "Genius" Award, among others.
Co-Sponsors: Chicana/o Studies Department, Chicano Studies Institute, Comparative Literature Department, Dean of Social Sciences, English Department, Global Latinidades Center, Luis Leal Endowed Chair, MultiCultural Center, Spanish & Portuguese Department, and Vice Chancellor of DEI
QTBIPOC Cultural Showcase
MCC Theater and Lounge
Celebrate culture, community, and creativity at our QTBIPOC Cultural Showcase! We will have delicious food, a fun friendship speed dating activity, and an exciting cultural showcase to end the night. Come dressed in your traditional wear or be ready to change into cultural wear that represents where you are from, showcasing the beauty and resilience of your heritage. Even if you don’t participate, come out and enjoy an uplifting community space! We will have polaroids for you to take photos! This space is intentionally created for and centered on the voices, experiences, and joy of QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community members. ALL are welcome to come and celebrate!
Collaborators: RCSGD, OBSD
