Imagine receiving an acceptance letter from your top choice college and paying thousands of dollars to attend it, just to find out that they are not prepared to support you as a student. Tens of thousands of college students end up in this predicament every single year. According to the Center for First-generation Student Success, over half of college undergraduates in the nation are first-generation students, a jump from when it was 42% back in 2015.
Juana Arias Cuellar is a senior double majoring in Psychology and Sociology and minoring in Spanish at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. The only other person in her immediate family that attended college was her older sister, making her a first-generation college student. When she first arrived at Willamette University, she did not realize how being a first-generation student would affect her. “It kind of took me a while to realize that we’re not all here on the same page…there are times where I have to teach my parents how to help me,” she says.
Despite there being a growing number of first-generation students continuing on to college, some schools are still not providing them with the resources they need to be successful. As a result, first-generation students are not only forced to transition into college as a new student, but as a new student with minimal familial support as well.
Willamette University offers a few resources that are specifically for first-generation students, Ohana and the First-Generation Book Drive. Ohana is an orientation program that takes place before classes start, and the First-Generation Book Drive is available to students all year. Willamette University also has a Career Development office that first-generation students are encouraged to take advantage of.
It is important to note that Ohana and the First-Generation Book Drive are both student-run. Arias Cuellar, took advantage of the First-Generation Book Drive during her first year, and is now one of the co-coordinators of the drive. She says “it is very fulfilling to be able to help students like me even though I’m in the same situation as them.”
According to the Pew Research Center, first-generation college students face a unique financial barrier due to their parents or guardians not having a degree. That is why the First-Generation Book Drive was started. Emmanuel Rodriguez, who graduated from Willamette University in 2015, founded the First-Generation Book Drive because he discovered how difficult purchasing textbooks was as a first-generation student. Rodriguez first collected 200 donated books from students in the semester he launched the drive, and now there are over 3,000 books in their inventory.
Although there are a few resources on Willamette University’s campus for first-generation students, the experiences of current and past students show that they were not enough for them. Akerah Mackey-Watkins, who is a 2019 graduate and also served as student body president, says “when I found out that most of the people that went to Willamette already had parents with college degrees, it made me feel as if I was not where I was supposed to be…like I was in a secret club that I snuck into.”
During her first semester, Mackey-Watkins had several questions regarding how to navigate college, but did not have anyone to turn to. She eventually found community support her sophomore year through student government, and through that, she started creating the change she wanted to see on campus.
Kawika Kalama, a 2021 graduate, found support through the people they befriended during their time at Willamette University. They say “I found my support system through a bunch of different groups, but the thing that tied us together was typically either our lived experience of being low-income, or being first in family, and a lot of times of course, there’s a big overlap there.” It was through those friends that Kalama discovered helpful resources that the school did not promote, despite being helpful to first-generation students.
For Raymond White, who graduated in 2012, the reality of being a first-generation student hit him after struggling in several classes at once. After his first year at Willamette University, he realized that a lot of his peers were not facing the same problems he was because they had college educated parents or guardians.
“It was around the end of freshman year, beginning of sophomore year when I realized that there’s a whole network of folks who have that experience and backing behind them to navigate the waters,” he says.
Year after year, first-generation students at Willamette University end up being responsible for finding ways to make their education more accessible to them. Olivia Satterlund-Stearns, a 2020 graduate, says “…it always falls on us to go out there and request what we need and demand it.”
First-generation college students need support that has a long-term impact, not just when they need free textbooks or during orientation. Satterlund-Stearns, who is a graduate student at Portland State University, did not feel like Willamette University prepared her to apply to graduate school.
She says “…I was so confused because no one explained to me ‘if you want to keep going, you actually have to pay for it, the loans are a whole different process’ and I realized there is no support for first-generation students who want to continue…no one showed me how to get here…it feels like another way to gatekeep.”
At Willamette University, students like Arias Cuellar make the college experience more inclusive for everyone on campus. Mackey-Watkins, Kalama, White, and Satterlund-Stearns are all first-generation graduates of Willamette University who benefited from the work and generosity of their peers that helped them make sense of their reality.
Arias Cuellar notes that it is important to specifically recognize that it is “student-led organizations that help students in need. First-generation students, low-income students, people of color…it’s always going to be students fighting for students.”
