Students Informing Now (S.I.N.) - Challenge the Racial State in California without Shame . . . SIN Vergüenza!

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by moss~

Students Informing Now (S.I.N.) is a University of California, Santa Cruz student organization formed in January 2006. The article narrates how the founding members came together to support AB 540 students, explaining the legislation and how S.I.N. defines the term within its community. Through Paulo Freire’s ideas of popular education, members use the “flower” activity and dinámicas to build shared values, analyze oppression in higher education, and establish a vision and mission.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Background and Formation

Community Need and AB 540 Context

Popular Education Process

The Flower Activity

Dinámicas and Critical Dialogue

Core Values, Vision, and Mission

Key Values

Vision Statement

Mission Statement

Students Informing Now (S.I.N.) is a student organization created at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Members of the SIN Collective contributing to this article are: Christina Briones, Jessica Cruz, Mayra Diaz, Yazmin Duarte, Pedro Joel Espinosa, Lorena Fonseca, Laura López Ledesma, Luis Martinez, Renato Pérez, Nidya Yarely Ramirez, Mariella Saba, Danae Tapia, and Neidi Dominguez Zamorano, all undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Kysa Nygreen, an assistant professor of education at the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Veronica Velez, a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Students Informing Now (S.I. N.) Challenge the Racial State in California without Shame . . . SIN Vergüenza! By The S.I.N. Collective It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. —Paulo Freire On a cold and wet Friday night in January of 2006, thirteen of us gathered together in a small room on campus at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) . It was a combination of a need to survive anda feeling of hopelessness that brought us all together for a future ofjoined hopefulness. We were all first-year undergraduate students who had grownup in California, attended and graduated from California public schools, and gained admission to UCSC. Some of us were born in the U.S., but many of us had migrated here as young children, and a few were considered undocumented. There we were at the same university with different histories and backgrounds, but tonight we had gathered with one goal in mind. The goal, if over simplified, sounds something like this: to create an organization in support of AB 540 students, labeled by this nation as illegal aliens. AB 540, or the California nonresident tuition exemption, allows any student, including undocumented immigrants, to be exempt from paying nonresident tuition at public colleges and universities in California if they can show that they have successfully attended a high school in California for at least three years and successfully graduated or obtained a G.E.D. Not all AB 540 students are undocumented immigrants; approximately two-thirds of AB 540 students are U.S. born citizens who temporarily left the state and would be required to pay out-of-state tuition if it were not for this legislation. For the purpose of this article, however, AB 540 student refers to an undocumented immigrant student. We use this term because it reflects the language used within S.I.N. Little did we know that we were about to kick off a new chapter in our communities, our schools, and our own lives. On that cold Friday night in January, we gathered together for a six-hour meeting to solidify our purpose as a new student organization called Students Informing Now (S.I.N.). Inspired by Paulo Freire’s philosophy of popular education (see Freire, 1970/1999), we used an activity called “the flower” to develop our organizational mission and vision statement. The activity was prepared by one of our founding members, Metztonalli,1 and it used the analogy of a flower to represent our new organization: the roots, the stem, its center, the petals, the sun and the wind that also contribute to the growth of the flower. The center of the flower represented our organization, Students Informing Now. As a visual, the acronym S.I.N. was written at the center of our flower. The roots represented the social-economic factors that influence our lives. The stem represented the things that support and transmit nutrients needed for the flower to grow. The petals that surrounded the center represented our values. Our first activity in that meeting was to create this flower together by writing in the specifics for each part of the flower. This was our first step in using the tools of popular education in S.I.N. An important outcome of the flower

FAQs

What is AB 540 and how does S.I.N. use the term in the article?

AB 540 is the California nonresident tuition exemption for students who attended and graduated from a California high school (or earned a G.E.D.). For this article, AB 540 student refers to an undocumented immigrant student, reflecting the language used within S.I.N.

How did S.I.N. develop its organizational mission and vision?

Members met for six hours and used Paulo Freire’s philosophy of popular education. They first completed “the flower” activity to map organizational parts, then used dinámicas (inclusive dialogue-based activities) to analyze their reality and struggles, leading to a drafted vision and mission.

What key values and governance principle did S.I.N. agree on?

S.I.N. agreed on solidarity, unity, and education. They also decided the “stem” of the organization would be non-hierarchical, based on participative democracy where all members can vote if present at meetings.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by moss~