On April 29, 2024, dozens of people — students, staff, faculty and admin alike — packed into the Loch for the First-Generation Low-Income Student Union (FSU)’s “FGLI Town Hall.” This event was a space for first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students to share their experience at Macalester, and for their professors and administrators to listen and then to engage in conversations about the issues raised. Participants discussed everything from specific experiences with campus policies to the broader feeling of being FGLI on Macalester’s campus.
Since then, FSU has compiled what it learned from this event, meetings with FGLI stakeholders and members’ years of experience navigating campus as an FGLI student, and has turned this information into a list of demands for change.
The Mac Weekly sat down with four FGLI students — Richard Rose ’25 and Matté Lopez ’25, who are members of FSU’s leadership, Yamalí Rodas Figueroa ’27 and Roxy, who requested to be identified only by her first name and who attended Macalester for the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 school years — to talk about how being FGLI has shaped their time at Macalester, and about the changes they want to see. We also met with staff members from departments that work to support FGLI students to learn about what is and isn’t being done to help.
FGLI students’ experiences The impact of being FGLI on students’ Macalester experience starts long before their first semester does. For students like Rodas Figueroa, college options were limited to schools for which they received a full ride scholarship, whether those were schools they preferred or not.
“I never had autonomy in a college choice from the start,” Rodas Figueroa said.
Further, many FGLI students cannot afford to tour colleges, especially if touring requires travel, so their arrival for orientation may be the first time they step foot on Macalester campus — or in the state of Minnesota.
“[I] came here all alone, didn’t know anyone in the Cities, and just kind of put a lot of trust in Macalester to support me as I tried to do this,” Rose said.
Along with being on Macalester’s campus for the first time comes immersion in academic, upper-middle class culture and norms. For some FGLI students, this is a message right away that they do not belong.
“It was a culture shock, for sure,” Roxy said. “And I really never got used to it.
“On the first day of Macalester, they tell you, ‘you belong here. You matter to us.’ And that’s total bullshit. Everyone knows it’s bullshit, but no one really knows it’s bullshit.”
In this new culture, being FGLI is surrounded by stigma. Some FGLI students and staff have found that, while people on campus talk about other marginalized identities, they stray away from talking about class.
In addition, past Macalester programs have treated FGLI status as if it were something to hide. In her first year, Lopez participated in a program called Fyrst, which was run as a cohort model — but anonymously, meaning that participants couldn’t know who else was in it, let alone connect and build community.
Further, some FGLI students have felt like they have had to put in extra work because they were unaware of resources and how to navigate them. For example, Lopez didn’t know that she could ask for extensions on assignments until her junior year. She also found navigating the summer internship process to be challenging, and she struggled to find professors to answer her questions about the difference between types of grants.
Some professors take FGLI students under their wing and help catch them up about the hidden rules behind academia, but this doesn’t happen often for a variety of reasons, including because many professors are from a higher-class background, Roxy explained. Some of them just don’t think deeply about the different backgrounds their students hold. This extends to things as small as asking students about their favorite vacation as an icebreaker question, without realizing that not all students’ families have been able to afford vacations.
“Everybody just has such different circumstances, and you have no idea the labor that somebody has put in to be here, the burdens that people have outside of class,” Lopez said. “To act like your whole identity is a student, that’s a privilege. And so when professors think about how to structure class and things like that, they should keep that in mind. And that’s not asking to go easy or anything like that on FGLI students, but it’s just the reality.”
A lack of understanding of FGLI students’ realities appears, too, in the suggestions that staff, faculty and administrators have made to FGLI students who voice the ways in which campus policies are putting them in a precarious position. For instance, before Cafe Mac was open during school breaks, Macalester sent out an email with a map to a nearby grocery store, but did not address the fact that some students might struggle to afford food there, let alone offer assistance. In addition, when Rose asked Macalester for a later end-of-semester check-out date so that he could have a place to stay before the train ride home that he could afford, they told him he might have to stay in a hotel, not realizing that he wouldn’t be able to afford that, either.
Whether it’s sending emails and having meetings to ask for the help they need, facing high pressures to do well in classes or working multiple jobs and for many hours each week, FGLI students often must balance greater time commitments than their peers, leaving them less time for extracurriculars, department events or downtime. Many of them engage in activism despite this lack of time, striving to better their situation, especially when no one else will.
“I have had to work 10 times harder than an average Macalester student,” Rodas Figueroa added. “I have three jobs. I am a full-time student, and then also working on big projects on the side, also supporting my family with accessing resources. Being an FGLI student is like a full time job. Not only the burden is put on us to try to improve conditions for our own community, it also requires a lot of mental work.”
During her sophomore year, Roxy was a part-time student, working 25– 30 hours a week at Cafe Mac during the fall semester, and adding another five hours per week in the spring. Although she came into Mac lower-middle class, Roxy became poor during her time here, especially when she started needing to pay for her own rent, food and healthcare, including healthcare for her transition.
“[Working at] Cafe Mac attracts a lot of poor people: people from poor backgrounds and people who become poor,” Roxy said. “The biggest group of people who become poor and work at Cafe Mac are trans women and trans people.”
Roxy ended up deciding that, due to the wages she was earning, transitioning and not getting enough support from the college, she would drop out of Macalester at the end of her sophomore year. There is a pattern of trans women working at Cafe Mac and then needing to drop out, Roxy said, and she became part of that pattern.
“The combination of my own background and transitioning made it really hard to stay because I didn’t have the money and I didn’t really have the stability to be here,” she said. “You have to have a certain kind of stability — or certain kind of bullshit — to stay here. If you’re poor, you have to play the game.”
Rose remarked on how organizing as an FGLI student is already tiring, but it becomes even more so when so many of his community members cannot make it to their fourth year as a student at Macalester. When people have to drop out, FGLI students lose friends on campus, as well as a source of knowledge about how to navigate Macalester.
“It’s [really] draining to know we’re really working on this stuff, and students are still having to drop out, still having to leave,” Rose said. “That’s really defeating. It makes our work a lot more difficult emotionally.”
Many FGLI students and staff with whom we spoke wanted more spaces dedicated to FGLI students, better support for undocumented students, increased funding and staff for the departments that work with FGLI issues and a campus community that is more informed about and willing to talk about class, among many other changes. Roxy also sees unionization of student workers as a crucial resource for FGLI students.
“Part of this is because I co-founded the union and started organizing it, but unions are, I think, the best way that poor people can fight for their rights at the college,” Roxy said. “And if Macalester is not supporting the union and doesn’t bargain in good faith and doesn’t recognize the union once the union wins an election hopefully, they are basically giving a middle finger to all poor people.”
The change that FGLI campus members desire would build off existing support. Resources for FGLI students Support and programming for FGLI students is spread out across campus departments. Although the Lealtad-Suzuki Center for Social Justice (LSC), Laurie Hamre Center for Health & Wellness and Community Engagement Center (CEC) do their best to assist FGLI students using the time and resources they have, FGLI students — and the staff of these departments — see room for improvement.
The LSC’s programming for FGLI students includes educational and celebratory events, a resource fair, one-on-one meetings with students and community-building spaces, including meals and discussions. The department is also piloting collaborative programs for FGLI students and students navigating immigration.
However, no FGLI-specific role exists at the LSC. Instead, existing staff members must find the time and space in their job descriptions to provide this support. For example, Mads Clark, the Associate Director of the LSC, who is a first-gen scholar themself, works to support FGLI students even though their job centers around overseeing Kagin’s Gender and Sexuality Commons and providing resources to LGBTQ+ students. Through this work, they can tell that the LSC, and Macalester in general, could be providing more services if they had different resources.
“What’s missing is, in particular, a first-gen center or space,” Clark said. “There is not an office or a space on campus that is specifically made for FGLI student support, and most other campuses do have either a primary person or a support center.”
Clark also sees a lack of institutional structure and support for FGLI students. In addition, they pointed out that Macalester no longer has a Federal TRIO Program (TRIO), which offers a range of programs to help FGLI students and people with disabilities access higher education. Many colleges in metropolitan areas have TRIO, Clark said. Clark believes that TRIO could provide a more collaborative and direct approach to FGLI student support at Macalester, rather than having FGLI support scattered through different departments. They also think that an increased understanding of TRIO, the history of FGLI representation in higher education, of class in general and of dismantling elitism is important for Macalester; in almost all of their conversations with FGLI students, the students brought up the class ignorance they have faced on campus.
The Hamre Center works to connect low-income students with insurance options that are as affordable as possible. However, this wasn’t always the case. Before the position of insurance specialist, which is currently held by Nicola Michael-Tsai, was raised to an almost full-time position in 2022, students who wanted to try to use alternative insurance options like Medicaid and MNsure had to know they could go to the Hamre Center with this ask, and then conduct that communication themselves. This lack of Hamre Center-directed outreach created a perception among some older FGLI students that the Hamre Center was not allowed to advertise options other than Macalester’s default UnitedHealthcare. Now, Michael-Tsai sends out emails over the summer to inform students about insurance options, among other forms of outreach.
“I work with students, and I don’t care if they’re not on Mac-offered [UnitedHealthcare], I just care that they have coverage that meets Macalester’s requirement,” Michael Tsai said. “Sometimes you do what you have to do, and it’s not a bad thing to need help. We’re here to help you find that help that you need.” Despite the increased outreach under Michael-Tsai, some FGLI students do not believe that the Hamre Center’s current work with FGLI students is enough. They would like the Hamre Center to send more emails about affordable insurance programs and advertise specifics about medical care options for low-income students, and they want Macalester’s $1,000 Health Insurance Grant to be given automatically to the highest-need students when their financial aid does not fully cover the cost of insurance. The grant is currently advertised only at the bottom of qualifying financial aid statements, and students have to see it and reach out about it themselves.
“If you miss that one little line on that financial aid statement, you miss out on $1,000,” Rose said. “And that could mean the difference between being able to come here and not, or being able to stay here after you’re already here.”
Further, the Hamre Center’s previous lack of outreach about alternative, affordable insurance options has had serious consequences. For instance, Roxy did not know that she could be on Medicaid rather than UnitedHealthcare until her sophomore year, when she found out from some friends who were also low-income. At that point, she was already using UnitedHealthcare for her transition, so it didn’t make sense to switch, despite the cost. Her struggle to afford her gender-affirming health care was not the main reason why Roxy decided to drop out of Macalester, but it made her situation worse. If Roxy had been on Medicaid in Minnesota, her medication and therapy would have been free.
Hamre Center staff is currently formulating ways to conduct outreach to more students. Michael-Tsai and Hamre Center Operations Manager Torri Lattimore believe that, if Michael-Tsai’s position was raised to 1.0 Full-Time Employment (FTE) from its current 0.9 FTE, she would have time for more appointments and outreach, and students would not have to reach out to her first as often.
The Community Engagement Center (CEC) houses Macalester’s chapters of the QuestBridge, Posse and Bonner programs, all of which aim to make higher education more accessible to FGLI students.
Macalester partnered with QuestBridge, a national program that helps high-achieving low-income students access higher education, starting in the 2017–2018 school year. Students who match with a college or university through QuestBridge receive a scholarship to help them attend that school.
Once QuestBridge scholars arrive at Macalester, they are met with some events and a loose cohort model, but little formalized programming. About three years ago, Macalester’s QuestBridge became a student organization in the hopes of receiving resources other than the ones they get from the national-level Questbridge and building a QuestBridge experience that extends beyond admissions.
Macalester’s Posse program, which is in its third year, is not just for FGLI students, though a large percentage of its participants are FGLI. As per a decision from President Suzanne Rivera, all Macalester Posse scholars are from the Twin Cities metro area. Posse scholars are nominated for the program by high school teachers, coaches and other staff members on the basis of leadership and merit.
Once in Posse, students are assigned a faculty mentor, with whom they meet one-on-one every other week. All Macalester students in Posse also meet weekly as a cohort.
“The idea of having Posse on campus is that you spend those first two years connecting with each other and [your] faculty mentor, and then the idea was to also have an impact in the campus community by getting involved,” CEC Co-Director and Associate Dean of the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship Sedric McClure summarized.
Finally, the Bonner program provides an opportunity for 12 students to earn work study off campus for all four years of college. Macalester’s Bonner program encourages applications from first-generation college students and those who have utilized college access programs like QuestBridge and TRIO.
In the first year of the program, Bonner scholars tutor at a school in St. Paul. They then work at a nonprofit of their choice for the next three years.
The program also aims to provide structural support for its participants through initiatives like orientation programming.
Macalester’s Bonner program normally receives about 25 applications — for only 12 slots. As such, its support is not available to all who want it. The people this leaves out can include those who, like Roxy, become poor during their time at Macalester.
Rodas Figueroa, a Bonner scholar, is aware of this inconsistency.
“[Bonner] is setting me up for what I want to do for my career, and paving a path for me that a lot of FGLI students do not get the opportunity to do,” Rodas Figueroa said. “I definitely think that FGLI students as a whole that are not in Bonner are not provided with enough resources in general. … A lot of my friends … either had to pass/fail a class, drop a class, take a leave of absence, or drop out of college entirely. … I think that BIPOC students that are FGLI disproportionately have these sort of outcomes because of the lack of support.”
FSU and its demands
Around February of their first year at Macalester, Rose and Lopez, feeling the lack of support for and community among FGLI students, were struggling to get through the semester. To help themselves and their community, they decided that something needed to change, and they needed to do it. As is disproportionately the case for many FGLI students, Rose and Lopez did not have much time to give to activism, but saw the necessity of making time for it anyway. Rose and Lopez worked to create a space that would support and build community among FGLI students.
“We’ve acknowledged from the very beginning that it’s not our job to do this, and that there should be institutional supports already in place to not only build that community, but disperse those resources that FGLI students need,” Rose said. “But in the meantime, if no one else is going to do it, I think we had to do it for our own survival and being able to remain at Mac and have that feel worthwhile.”
FSU, The student org they created, is a space for both community and organizing. FSU aims to destigmatize being FGLI and create a community in which people’s identities are visible, allowing members to form connections and receive support. FSU also distributes resources, such as waivers for a free shop at MacShare or information about internship grants, and is a space to collect feedback on the FGLI experience and formulate strategies to advocate for change.
“It’s not only about being able to make friends and have a good time, but it’s also about helping each other survive through the shitty institution that Mac can be sometimes,” Rose summarized.
FSU has compiled feedback on FGLI students’ experiences at Macalester over the past three years, including through discussions with FSU members, meetings with staff and departments that support FGLI students, and an FGLI town hall at the end of the Spring 2024 semester. Earlier this semester, it turned this feedback into a list of 11 demands.
On Nov. 8, First-Generation College Celebration Day, the FSU board sent these demands to the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and shared them with the broader campus community. In their email to the SLT, they encouraged the SLT to “join [them] in making a real impact” and to set a date to discuss the demands with the FSU board.
FSU’s demands encompass both specific policies and broader actions.
The policies include allowing off-campus student workers who must travel more than 15 minutes to their work study site to clock in during their commute and extending the Mac Books Grant, which covers the additional cost of the Mac Books program, in perpetuity rather than only offering it for the 2024–2025 school year. FSU is also demanding consistently funding the Open Pantry and displaying its budget publicly, as well as distributing the Macalester Summer Internship Grant and other summer grants and stipends in full at the start of the summer. This grant and stipend shift would support students in making early payments for food, rent and other expenses during their summer programs.
Broader actions include forming a permanent body of stakeholders that would regularly hold meetings to discuss FGLI issues, and eventually hiring a staff member whose full-time job revolves around supporting FGLI students.
The SLT met with FSU leaders on Wednesday, Nov. 13 to discuss their demands. Following the meeting, one demand, moving the “Current Students – Find Help” button to a more central place on the Macalester website, was soon fulfilled. There is not yet a course of action, however, for the other asks.
“I appreciated learning more about ways we can continue to improve the Mac experience for students from low-resource households and those who are first in their families to attend college,” President Suzanne Rivera wrote about the meeting in an email to The Mac Weekly.
“We were able to make some immediate changes and, in response to a specific suggestion that FSU raised, I offered to create a working group of faculty, staff, and students to address their concerns,” Rivera continued. “I invited FSU to provide two student representatives, and I also will ask MCSG to send a student representative.
The working group was the SLT’s suggestion of a next step to formulating responses to FSU’s demands. Rose and Lopez, however, rejected that proposition. They believe that FSU has already done the work necessary to precede policy change, and they don’t want a working group that would simply repeat their progress. They also worry that, in a working group, their proposals would sit for a long time and eventually stall out.
“FSU has served as that working group in the past three years,” Rose said. “[We’re] pushing them to recognize the work that we’ve done and that we don’t need to repeat all of this.”
“I think it’s egregious and audacious that [Rivera] keeps suggesting that we do the work, or [assuming] that we want to,” Lopez added. “I think that plays into … the Macalester thing, the higher end thing, [of,] ‘This is a noble cause. Join the committee.’ … No. Nobody wants to do that. And [the working group] is unpaid.”
In their email rejecting the working group, Rose and Lopez suggested an alternative: a follow-up meeting that would include all stakeholders in FGLI issues, in which participants have an in-depth discussion of FSU’s demands and what implementing them would take. Rose and Lopez hope that the meeting would end with concrete decisions on if and how the group would move forward with FSU’s demands. And they do not want to leave anyone’s needs out.
“I don’t think there’s compromise in negotiation,” Lopez said. “There is no FGLI issue that is compromisable.”
In her email to The Mac Weekly, Rivera mentioned the SLT’s background with FGLI issues — over half of the SLT were first-generation students, Pell Grant recipients or both, she had previously informed FSU leadership — while acknowledging the limitations of the SLT’s understanding of current student experiences.
“As I and others on the senior leadership team share the experience of navigating college with few resources and little guidance from family, we recognize the need to change institutions to better support first generation and low-resourced students to thrive,” she wrote. “We also understand that our personal experiences do not make us experts about today’s students at Mac, and we appreciate having direct conversations with students to learn and work together.”
Rose and Lopez believe that the FGLI identity of certain members of the SLT does not mean that the administrators are doing enough to act on FSU’s demands.
“I don’t think it sends the message that she thinks it does,” Rose said. “If anything, I think it makes it worse. If all of you like to tout this identity of being first generation, low income, why are you treating this with so much coldness? Why are you acting like this is such a controversial issue? … There should be a level of, ‘Okay, let’s sit down and actually work this out.’”
Rodas Figueroa agrees with both Rivera and the FSU leaders that administrators cannot fully access understanding of current FGLI struggles. They urge administrators to listen and act anyway.
“As much as they try to listen to us and try to understand us, they won’t understand us,” Rodas Figuera said. “But what they can do is implement the feedback we give them, because … students, especially BIPOC FGLI students, are experts in what we need [in order] to be able to be supported better. So just implementing our feedback is literally the best thing you can do.
“[FSU leaders] are students who have dedicated themselves to creating these demands and inviting admin. These students want to work with admin — and FGLI and BIPOC students are vulnerable people. I do not know what the school thinks we are gonna be up to, but we generally just want to survive.”
