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September
19, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 16Oakland,
CA
USF leaders visit Tijuana for lessons in social justice
The 13-year-old
girl recounted her story matter-of-factly: On Aug. 8 she and her mother,
along with four men, had walked for six hours from Tijuana east to the
rugged hills along the Mexico-U.S. border.
The man they had paid to guide them into the United States abandoned them
after nightfall, leaving them no choice but to turn back, and try again
another day.
She told her story the next day in a makeshift classroom at a Tijuana
migrant shelter to the University of San Francisco’s president,
vice presidents, and deans, who spent Aug. 8-12 in Tijuana on an immersion
retreat focused on border issues.
As a substantive experience of the university’s motto “educating
minds and hearts to change the world,” the trip was designed to
help the USF leadership team reflect on their roles in educating smart,
socially conscious citizens with a concern for social justice.
Hosted by the Jesuit Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), the visit included
meetings with educators, nonprofit organizations, and officials from the
Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, and the
Mexican Consulate in San Diego.
The group also visited the border, where the two countries are divided
by three towering steel fences added in 1994 to stem the flow of illegal
immigration into the United States.
Since then, the stream of would-be migrants has shifted east from Tijuana,
to the remote mountains of California and the blistering Arizona desert,
where more than 3,000 have died in the last decade attempting to realize
their American dream.
“Some of our students and some of our faculty have actually done
this,” Jesuit Father Stephen A. Privett, USF president, said of
emigration attempts.
“The issue is what can we do as educators to engage people on a
human level around this human tragedy, which has taken thousands of lives
in the last decade. We can support faculty who are engaged in this kind
of research and we can be sure we are not going to graduate uninformed,
prejudiced people.”
During a visit to the border, the leadership team spoke to activist Enrique
Morones through the mesh iron fence delineating the border.
With a U.S. Border Patrol officer watching Morones from inside a parked
SUV, he described how the nonprofit group he founded several years ago,
Border Angels, helps save the lives of migrants by leaving water in the
desert. An average of two migrants per day die of dehydration during the
summer months.
“The people migrating are the poorest people. They are leaving for
work and the United States depends on their labor,” Morones said.
Many of those who successfully cross the border work in agriculture. Undocumented
migrants make up approximately 1 million of a total U.S.
agricultural workforce of 1.6 million.
“If we graduate 10 Enriques every year, we’d be doing a great
job,” Father Privett told his leadership team.
“Listening to Enrique raised the conflict between our role as administrators
and being activists,” said Jeff Brand, dean of the USF School of
Law. “Part of me wanted to just jump over the fence and say, ‘Okay,
let’s get to work.’” But the challenge of the retreat,
the deans and vice presidents agreed, is to find new ways the university
can be an agent of change.
Other activities during the week focused on environmental and economic
issues relating to the factories, or maquiladoras, established in Tijuana
following NAFTA.
Father Privett also signed a renewal of the USF-UIA exchange agreement,
in which USF students each summer study at UIA through the College of
Arts and Sciences’ Border Issues course.
Jesuit Father
Stephen Privett (second from left) and other members of the USF leadership
team visit a monument honoring those immigrants who died trying to cross
into the United States.
ANGIE DAVIS PHOTO
