Members of UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Sociology are speaking out after hearing that undergrads from the school’s Gaucho Underground Scholars Initiative were denied admission into the Graduate Department of Sociology, throwing a wrench in the future for formerly incarcerated students on campus.
The program’s founding members fought tooth and nail over the past three years to build the Underground Scholars from the ground up, modeling it after similar programs at UC Berkeley and several other UC campuses.
The bulk of the program’s working staff — including program coordinator Ryan Rising and advocacy coordinator Gilberto Murillo — applied to UCSB’s graduate sociology program, hoping to stay on campus and continue their studies while maintaining the day-to-day activities for the Underground Scholars. When they learned that their applications were all denied, they said it felt like the ground was pulled from beneath them.