Undergrad Courses in Education Spawn Two Student Regents

Undergraduate classes in the Berkeley School of Education have recently pro-duced two Student Regents. The Student Regent is the sole student representative on the governing board for the University of California system.

The first Student Regent to emerge from an undergrad class in Education was Michelle Pannor, who served from 1999-2000. "I was taking John Hurst's Education and Democracy course. One day he passed out an application to be a Student Regent, so I filled it out that evening-I think it was due the next day."

Ms. Pannor was chosen to be a Regent, and she found the topics that the board took up were important to her. "Among the most interesting discussions during my term were the ones about curtailing the use of the SAT. I learned to see things from a different perspective, but I always advocated for a higher education system that is reflective of the people of the state of California, and for restructuring the budget so that less funding went to top administrators," she said.

"I also learned that the people who know the most about an issue aren't always the ones who make the ultimate decisions," she continued. "Serving as Student Regent influenced me to study public policy." Today Michelle Pannor is a graduate student at the School of Public Policy at Berkeley. "I'm contemplating a career in education as a professor someday," she said.

The second Student Regent to emerge from a School of Education course is Dextor Ligot-Gordon, a senior majoring in Political Economy. "In Education 40, Experiencing Education: Race and Ethnicity inside Schools, I learned about different philosophies of education, including Paolo Freire and Bell Hook," he said in a phone interview. "I applied to be a Regent as a result of what I learned in my Education classes."

Dexter Ligot-Gordon was also moved to try to become a Regent based on his work on the Berkeley campus. "I was director of recruitment for the Pilipino-American Academic Student Services, and at the same time I was also the student representative on the Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education Committee of the Academic Senate," Ligot-Gordon elaborated. "I was both protesting the ban on affirmative action and being protested against. I made my role to get the two sides to communicate better."

Ligot-Gordon explained that the process of becoming a Student Regent is not a simple one. "There were three rounds of interviews," he said. "Only one Student Regent votes at a time, but two serve, so next year I'll be observing, and the year after I'll vote."

After he was selected to be the student representative, he attended a meeting of the Board of Regents for the first time and had a rude awakening: "The meetings are separated by a velvet rope-administrators at one end, students and everyone else at the back. When I crossed the velvet rope, the police encircled me and patted me down. It reminded me of where I come from and what I stand for."

Two of the issues Dexter Ligot-Gordon hopes to focus on during his term are accessibility and the quality of student life. "I want to draw attention to who the university is accessible to-who gets in, who gets housing, who gets counseling services. These things are directly related to academic success."

Dexter Ligot-Gordon is minoring in Education. After college he's planning a career as an educator. "I plan to teach high school for a few years and later teach at a university," he said. "Education is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done."

Dextor Ligot-Gordon

Michelle Pannor