New York Times: Jose Luis Zelaya stood with a crowd of other students waiting to hear the news. It was election day at Texas A&M University here, and he was running for student body president. A victory for Mr. Zelaya, a 24-year-old graduate student from Honduras, would make history at Texas A&M: He would become its first Hispanic student body president — and the first illegal immigrant to hold the position.
Mr. Zelaya came to the United States at age 14, fleeing an abusive father and gang violence and hoping to reunite with his mother and sister in Houston. Last year, at a campus rally organized by supporters of the proposed Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college, he spoke of being undocumented, and described his journey from cleaning windshields at stoplights and sleeping under a bridge in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula to attending the sixth-largest university in the United States.
Long after midnight one night last month, as students gathered outside a student services building to hear the election results, Mr. Zelaya’s campaign to lead a student body of 50,000 came to an abrupt end. He had lost: Out of 14,074 ballots cast, he had received 1,142 votes, coming in fourth out of six candidates.
For Mr. Zelaya and the other roughly 300 Texas A&M students who are illegal immigrants, feeling both welcome and unwelcome are part of life at one of the most conservative colleges in the country. On the one hand, Mr. Zelaya and other undocumented students receive support and encouragement from university administrators, faculty members and fellow students. As Mr. Zelaya walked around campus recently, he greeted Hispanic and white friends, talked about an encouraging Facebook message he received from the university’s president, R. Bowen Loftin, after the election and hugged Marisa Suhm, the assistant director of the Department of Multicultural Services. When Mr. Zelaya graduated in December with a bachelor’s degree, he led the invocation at the ceremony.
Yet at the same time, undocumented students say they have been made to feel unwelcome. At last year’s rally, a student who is a member of a campus conservative group approached Mr. Zelaya and bluntly told him that he had reported him to the federal immigration authorities. In 2010, the student senate passed a bill opposing the state law that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities, though it was vetoed by the student body president.
And while Mr. Zelaya spent no money on signs or a Web site for his campaign — one of his rival candidates spent $900 on T-shirts — some students were reluctant to vote for him, either because of his immigration status or because they felt he would be more of a minority advocate than a student advocate.
“A lot of people were worried that someone who isn’t completely following the law might be representing our university,” said Thomas McNutt, 21, who also ran for student body president. “Whether you agree with the undocumented student issue or disagree with it, the law is the law as it is right now.”
Justin Pulliam, who graduated in December and was a co-founder of Texas Aggie Conservatives, the group whose member notified immigration officials last year and which endorsed Mr. McNutt for president, put it another way. “Most Texas A&M students don’t want a taxpayer-funded illegal immigrant activist to hijack the student body president’s office in order to advance a pro-amnesty agenda,” said Mr. Pulliam, 22, who pointed out that student candidates in the past had been criticized for minor run-ins with the law. “These candidates have been attacked and discredited, but now people are celebrating when an out and proud illegal immigrant runs to lead the student body.”
While many undocumented students found Mr. Zelaya’s campaign inspiring, his defeat was a reminder to some of the difficulties they face gaining widespread acceptance on a campus that last year came in third in the Princeton Review’s rankings of colleges with the most conservative students. “I think we could have won” the election in any other university, said Greisa Martinez, 23, an undocumented student who co-founded a group with Mr. Zelaya called the Council for Minority Student Affairs. She said a Hispanic student told her of being in a class during which the professor, discussing the growth of Hispanics in Texas, said the state could have a Hispanic governor in the future. A number of students in the class hissed.
“It was an audible insensitive thing,” Ms. Martinez said. “People aren’t open to a Latino being in that kind of position. When it comes to issues like this, there’s always that divide, and it’s, ‘Am I welcome or not?’ ”
Mr. Zelaya said inspiring others, not necessarily winning votes, had been his goal. “It’s not about being undocumented,” said Mr. Zelaya, who wants to become a teacher and is seeking a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. “It’s about inspiring people to go to college, inspiring the parents to inspire their kids, to inspire that person who mows the lawn that they can do better.”
If his campaign had any success, then perhaps it was in the extent to which his immigration status had become a nonissue. During candidate debates, immigration came up only briefly, at the end of one of the events, when Mr. Zelaya was asked how his status would play a role if he was elected. Students said Mr. Zelaya lost votes for reasons that had nothing to do with his status, like his lack of name recognition. “The issue that he is an openly undocumented citizen did not come up really at all in the election,” said John Claybrook, 21, who ran against Mr. Zelaya and was named student body president-elect this week. “Nobody used that as a weapon against him.”
Mr. Zelaya is struggling to pay all of his $3,500 tuition this semester. His main source of income comes from selling beanies that he crochets. He plans on pursuing a doctorate after receiving his master’s, but expressed frustration that although he volunteers as a tutor at a middle school, he cannot teach there, because he cannot legally work in the United States. To do that, he says, he would have to return to Honduras and wait years or even decades for legal entry.
“The only reason why I want to be legalized and I want to have documentation is that I can teach,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything else in this life but teach. Because it’s a teacher that inspired me to go to college. All I want to do is to be able to do the same thing.”
Mr. Zelaya came to the United States at age 14, fleeing an abusive father and gang violence and hoping to reunite with his mother and sister in Houston. Last year, at a campus rally organized by supporters of the proposed Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college, he spoke of being undocumented, and described his journey from cleaning windshields at stoplights and sleeping under a bridge in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula to attending the sixth-largest university in the United States.
Long after midnight one night last month, as students gathered outside a student services building to hear the election results, Mr. Zelaya’s campaign to lead a student body of 50,000 came to an abrupt end. He had lost: Out of 14,074 ballots cast, he had received 1,142 votes, coming in fourth out of six candidates.
For Mr. Zelaya and the other roughly 300 Texas A&M students who are illegal immigrants, feeling both welcome and unwelcome are part of life at one of the most conservative colleges in the country. On the one hand, Mr. Zelaya and other undocumented students receive support and encouragement from university administrators, faculty members and fellow students. As Mr. Zelaya walked around campus recently, he greeted Hispanic and white friends, talked about an encouraging Facebook message he received from the university’s president, R. Bowen Loftin, after the election and hugged Marisa Suhm, the assistant director of the Department of Multicultural Services. When Mr. Zelaya graduated in December with a bachelor’s degree, he led the invocation at the ceremony.
Yet at the same time, undocumented students say they have been made to feel unwelcome. At last year’s rally, a student who is a member of a campus conservative group approached Mr. Zelaya and bluntly told him that he had reported him to the federal immigration authorities. In 2010, the student senate passed a bill opposing the state law that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities, though it was vetoed by the student body president.
And while Mr. Zelaya spent no money on signs or a Web site for his campaign — one of his rival candidates spent $900 on T-shirts — some students were reluctant to vote for him, either because of his immigration status or because they felt he would be more of a minority advocate than a student advocate.
“A lot of people were worried that someone who isn’t completely following the law might be representing our university,” said Thomas McNutt, 21, who also ran for student body president. “Whether you agree with the undocumented student issue or disagree with it, the law is the law as it is right now.”
Justin Pulliam, who graduated in December and was a co-founder of Texas Aggie Conservatives, the group whose member notified immigration officials last year and which endorsed Mr. McNutt for president, put it another way. “Most Texas A&M students don’t want a taxpayer-funded illegal immigrant activist to hijack the student body president’s office in order to advance a pro-amnesty agenda,” said Mr. Pulliam, 22, who pointed out that student candidates in the past had been criticized for minor run-ins with the law. “These candidates have been attacked and discredited, but now people are celebrating when an out and proud illegal immigrant runs to lead the student body.”
While many undocumented students found Mr. Zelaya’s campaign inspiring, his defeat was a reminder to some of the difficulties they face gaining widespread acceptance on a campus that last year came in third in the Princeton Review’s rankings of colleges with the most conservative students. “I think we could have won” the election in any other university, said Greisa Martinez, 23, an undocumented student who co-founded a group with Mr. Zelaya called the Council for Minority Student Affairs. She said a Hispanic student told her of being in a class during which the professor, discussing the growth of Hispanics in Texas, said the state could have a Hispanic governor in the future. A number of students in the class hissed.
“It was an audible insensitive thing,” Ms. Martinez said. “People aren’t open to a Latino being in that kind of position. When it comes to issues like this, there’s always that divide, and it’s, ‘Am I welcome or not?’ ”
Mr. Zelaya said inspiring others, not necessarily winning votes, had been his goal. “It’s not about being undocumented,” said Mr. Zelaya, who wants to become a teacher and is seeking a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. “It’s about inspiring people to go to college, inspiring the parents to inspire their kids, to inspire that person who mows the lawn that they can do better.”
If his campaign had any success, then perhaps it was in the extent to which his immigration status had become a nonissue. During candidate debates, immigration came up only briefly, at the end of one of the events, when Mr. Zelaya was asked how his status would play a role if he was elected. Students said Mr. Zelaya lost votes for reasons that had nothing to do with his status, like his lack of name recognition. “The issue that he is an openly undocumented citizen did not come up really at all in the election,” said John Claybrook, 21, who ran against Mr. Zelaya and was named student body president-elect this week. “Nobody used that as a weapon against him.”
Mr. Zelaya is struggling to pay all of his $3,500 tuition this semester. His main source of income comes from selling beanies that he crochets. He plans on pursuing a doctorate after receiving his master’s, but expressed frustration that although he volunteers as a tutor at a middle school, he cannot teach there, because he cannot legally work in the United States. To do that, he says, he would have to return to Honduras and wait years or even decades for legal entry.
“The only reason why I want to be legalized and I want to have documentation is that I can teach,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything else in this life but teach. Because it’s a teacher that inspired me to go to college. All I want to do is to be able to do the same thing.”
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