Making Connections: President of the Associated Students of Citrus College builds the bridge between the student body and the executive board.

What would you like to accomplish this semester as president?

Favian Fragoso: While running for president, I never set out any personal goals of mine that I would like to achieve, I leave that up to our wonderful senators, who are elected to represent the students. My role as president is to support them and help guide which way they want to go. I have heard from a couple of senators that they want me to improve relations with the Citrus community and ASCC because they feel like there’s a big disconnect, which I completely agree with. I’ve heard from another senator that they would like to push to get security cameras on campus, because many students don’t feel safe, especially at night, especially with the female students, we see the emails all of the time. People are getting sexually harassed on campus and in parking lots. So, I really think these are wonderful goals that our student government has in plan and I hope that we actually go through with it.
What do you mean by disconnect?
FF: For many students that come to Citrus, it’s like a commuter school, and I completely understand that many students have other lives going on. They have work, they have responsibilities. And because of this, most students do not know what ASCC is or that there is even a student government. Which I like to compare it with U.S. government, we all know that there is some sort of government that makes up all these rules, but we don’t know who it is, what it is, or even the fact that we can vote to make a change. The last election, I want to say it was upwards of 300, maybe 400 students that voted, and that was actually a high number. And the reason was because of the bus pass. So, when you only have about 400 students voting and you have 16,000-18,000 students enrolled, these are students that may have opinions on how to better the school but they are just not being heard. It can simply because they just don’t know that their opinions can be heard by someone who has the power to change them.

Favian Fragoso serves as the president of the Associated Students of Citrus College for Fall 2017.

What are your plans for the future?

FF: After getting my Bachelor’s, I’m going to law school, and hopefully becoming an attorney. I’m looking towards doing federal law or constitutional law.
Was running for student government part of your future career plans?
FF: No, in all honesty, I didn’t join student government because I was thinking of possible career paths. In fact, when I joined student government I wasn’t really thinking of actually ever transferring. But I did notice that a lot of students had different issues and felt that nothing was being done. So, I started getting involved, I started hearing what was going on in student government, and I jumped in.
So you weren’t planning on transferring, so what changed your mind?
FF: Once I was able to win my seat in student government, I realized that I had so much more potential and I started taking my future seriously. And I started looking at the possibility that you know, maybe I am made for university. Growing up, I never really thought I’d be able to go to school, since my parents didn’t go to school, no one in my family has ever gone to school, so I thought, okay I’ll just go down the same path my parents did. It worked out well for them and it will work out well for me. The more I look at our situation currently, I think it’s best for most people to start going to school.
Are you the first of your family to graduate from college?
FF: My mother did finish a high-school equivalence back in Mexico, my father did not, he made it up to junior high. So I would be the first in my family to graduate from college. My father used to work on campus at UC Davis, which is one of the top schools I’m looking into.
When the semester is over what would you want people to say about you and what you’ve accomplished?
FF: In all honesty, I’m not here to accomplish anything, my job is just to support the student body and our student senators in whatever they want to do. I’m taking the back seat and I’m going to help them in whatever way they want. The ones who are getting the credit are the senators that are going to be pushing and discussing how to better the school, they are the ones that are going to be making all of the changes. I’m just going to be sitting in that meeting room, like the president is supposed to do, and just try to guide the conversation and make sure that procedure is being followed.