It is not uncommon for first generation college students to have to negotiate cultural worlds of family heritage and college. This negotiation takes place in different ways. When asked about this, Mireya Albarrán responded to this issue in the following way:

--Does your family worry about you losing your culture?

--I think so. It has always been like that. There is a lot of stuff I don't believe in what they do. It's just hard, when I go back home. I have to respect them. But when I am out I do what I want to do and believe what I want to believe. Because I have to make myself happy.

--Do your parents accept that?

--I don't think they will ever accept that. I kind of have to learn their ways, because they can't learn mine. It's not impossible it's just real hard...

Two Chicana scholars express their theory on culture. In the article, "From the Barrios to the Academy: Revelations of a Mexican American "Scholarship Girl", Laura Rendón explains, "For the young scholar who first experiences academic shock -- a feeling of alienation that moves the students from concrete to abstract experience and that takes the student from an old culture that is vastly different in tradition, style, and values to a new world of unfamiliar intellectual conventions, practices, and assumptions -- these questions are not easily answered (Rendón, 281).

Guadalupe Valdés in her chapter "Education and Life Chances" comments about the children's expectations put on by the parents and culture. Valdés says, "Each day they struggled to survive in a new context that was very different from the world they had known, but it did not occur to them that values involving, for example, the way which children were raised would need questioning. They fully expected that their children would grow up with the same notions of reciprocity, respect, and responsibility that had been part of their families for generations" (Valdés, 17

Gloria Cuádraz in her article "Experiences of Multiple Marginality: A Case Study of Chicana 'Scholarship Women" quotes Patricia Zavella about gender roles in the Mexican families. Zavella states, "By family ideology, traditionally, men are breadwinners, whereas women are supposed to sacrifice their careers and minister to family needs, especially those of children" (Cuádraz, 217).

CSUMB student, Patty Morales, describes some of the expectations put on women by her culture: "

.. they [men] don't really want to see that we could be bringing in the money to raise the family... There's some men that would prefer us to stay home and do the cooking. 'That's what we were born for' and they kind of get upset... that we are trying to educate ourselves. And sometimes they kind of feel afraid of feeling intimidated, that we might know more than they do...

Judie Swartz's story shows that these are expectations put on women from all cultural backgrounds:

...Right after high school I really did want to go to school. But I was married and had a little girl and actually my mother discouraged it, she couldn't believe that I would do that. She said, 'Ya know, you're a mom. You can't do that.' But I was on the verge of divorce, and I knew, thatI had to pay the bills...

In their article, "Higher Education: Colder by Degrees" Myra and David Sadker explain the situation for women who attended college, "As this wave of college women surged into emerging careers, they often abandoned the traditional life-style of marriage and motherhood" (Sadker and Sadker, 88).

However, they also point out that: "The brick walls have been replaced with those of glass; the partions are to transparent that they are all but invisible. The campus remains a divided one; it channels women and men into different educations that lead to separate and unequal futures." (88). Thus, the college experience may not always be liberating for women. As one CSUMB senior expressed:

...my major is very technical, hands on. You have to know a lot about computers and a lot about the equipment and things like that and it's generally a very male job. It's an area where there are woman, but not a lot, and I feel like I'm teaching people to let me do it a lot. But, it's been challenging, it really has It's traditionally a male role, so people just need to unlearn that. ...There are men at this school that are not particularly bad people, you know, if they would stop and think about it, if you put it in their minds, they wouldn't 'disclude' you because you were a woman. But they certainly don't think of you to do this kind of thing. It just doesn't occur to them that you would be interested in a workshop on some computer stuff. You know, that's too mathematical, that's too technical. You've got to be in their face a lot more to be recognized for what you want to do, which is unfortunate. But, I guess I mean in the world it's gonna be like that too, so it's just as well I have to learn to do that, get myself in there.

Many first generation college students, particularly students of color, feel isolated and marginalized on college campuses. Assumptions about race and ethnicity are pervasive in the educational system. Pedro González describes one of his first experiences with attitudes toward language:

I started out in the fourth grade, Even though I was suppose to start in the fifth grade, but since my birthday is December 5, I don't know, there is some kind of a rule that if you are born before December first I think. So I had passed fourth grade back in Mexico and I just got placed in fourth again here. So It was kind of weird because they started... they put me in an English class automatically... And I stayed there for about three days until changes occurred. I got switched to a Spanish class ESL... And I started 6th grade in English classes. So... it [English] was kind of hard to dominate cause in my family nobody spoke it.

Merlyn talks about being stereotyped and labeled on the basis of her ethnicity as someone not expected to go to college or become a student leader:

I think in high school I wasn't the same person that I was before I got there. So, I think because I'm Mexican and I'm a girl, Yeah, I did get labeled. But I proved everyone wrong my sophomore yearBefore that I wasn't doing good, you know, I was not a good student and I wasn't into the community. Then all of a sudden, I was the Vice President of the School and on like one-hundred different committees and I just did so many things that people expected me to go to college. And it also shows that you shouldn't stereotype a person. My activities director put all these people in a line at my ASB [Associated Student Body] camp and they were all Anglo women and menand I was the only Mexican. Then he said, "If you put all these people in a line, would you have thought that Merlyn was going to be your Vice President? Would you have picked her?" And everybody said, "No." So that showed a lot; that I was probably labeled, but I proved a lot of them wrong or made them think about labeling somebody before they actually knew them.

Another student, spoke about experiencing prejudice from her peers:

It was kind of weird. It was my first semester and it wasn't my first class we'd you know we'd been there for a couple weeks. There was a group of 3 or 4 Mexicans they're all females. And they sat behind me and I sat not directly in front of them but like two people in front of them. I could hear them talking about me because I don't know remember exactly how it went. But I could hear them talking about me and they automatically figured I didn't know Spanish. But I could understand so they were talking about me how I don't remember specifically what they said but I do remember I like saying that's not very cool. You know I didn't like it at all because they just automatically figured that I didn't know Spanish. I don't remember exactly what they said but um something to the point that like oh she's too good to whatever. You know she's not like us but she's pretending you know she doesn't know Spanish. No one has ever come up to me and asked me that. Like you know none of those girls ever. They never tried to talk to me ever. So that hurt. That was my first semester here. So I was like wow I can't go to school here. And I think that was because my roommate is Caucasian and we get along great. And everywhere we go we are together because, because we just get along you know and I think that had something to do with them saying that. And I turned around, that day I turned around and asked them something in Spanish and they kind of looked at me like going "oh wow" (laughs). I turned around and asked them a question about class some dumb question I don't even remember. It was just like they knew I knew Spanish. They just looked at each other Oh okay. ...and like when that happened it was so weird.... I couldn't believe it I did it (laughs) just turned around and casually asked them a question but then I was thinking I was talking to a friend and I told him "You know I don't need to go through this. I've done this in high school or whatever."

Professors can also contribute to stigmatizing students. In Race & Class on Campus, Rochlin narrates many stories of minority students from different generations that encountered racism from professors. One student from the 1930s recollects a racial confrontation with one professor, "I had a professor, and she gave me a B as a final grade. I said, 'I am happy to get this B." I had been so accustomed to them giving me Cs, you see. And she said, "Well, you deserve an A." And I said, "Well, I would have loved to have seen an A on my grade sheet." She said, "But I have been told not to give a black an A." (87)

Another CSUMB interviewee relates:

...I mean, I never thought, I was see that. In one of my classes we were all schedule to do an essay, so, we all turning in, and then the teacher just after he read them, I guess, he was kind of disappointment. Even that he said, he wasn't. But what I didn't like, was that he went in that day, and he started to talk in Spanish. And there are some of us, there are like five or six Hispanics, some of them Mexicans, and the rest are different race, but they don't speak Spanish. So, he started speaking Spanish, and saying that he couldn't understand that it was difficult for us to write a good page paper because English wasn't our first language. So, I mean the other people didn't understand in Spanish. Then, what did he tried to say, you know, that we are not that good as the other people, that our papers were not that good. So, he was basically telling us, you know, I understand that maybe because our language wasn't in English, our first language. But, he didn't have the right of speaking in Spanish. He could it talk to us, if he really wanted and tell us, he could it tell us you know in private or he could it, not in front of all of them. And, like, embarrassed us because I think we walk a lot of people, a lot of my friends, we felt offended because of that. Because, he try talking in Spanish, and I guess, the reason he tried to talking in Spanish, it was just for us to understand, not the rest of them, you know. So, that's my first experience, from the rest of them, and that was very last week. So, you know, but the rest of them know.

Rendón explains who difficult it is for a Chicana student to become educated, "Higher education often requires not only that students be humble but that they tolerate humiliation...To become academic success stories we must endure humiliation, reject old values and traditions, mistrust our experience, and disconnect with our past." (285).

Drs. Dolores Delgado Bernal and Octavio Villalpando describe the profile on first generation students and the resistance framework. They point out who peer groups and networks were a source of retention for first generation students. Research showed that minorities that socialized with the people from their own ethnic background were retained in college. (Class presentation, March 11, 1998).

While some groups may be perceived as behaving in exclusivist fashion, peer groups are important sites of empowerment that help students succeed academically and socially. When asked "When this whole thing came out with the E-mail system [openly racist messages on the student email] were you affected by it?" one student responded:

Well, I think that some of it started because of an E-mail that was sent out by the, a person that wanted to initiate this club, the Latino Business Club and there was a response to them saying that it was unfair, that it shouldn't be a "Latino Only" business club and all these things were said that it was excluding other ethnic races, ethnic groups and so it made it a big deal at that point. But then after that, that's when the other E-mails came up. I thought about it and the first E-mail I read I did get upset cause I thought it wasn't fair what they were saying. You know. I saw the Latino business club as a support group. I mean you don't go around saying "How can the Alcoholic Anonymous have there own support group?", "they're excluding other people". You know, its not that way, its a support group, its there to support you. And it was never said that the Latino Business Club was exclusive to Latinos, I mean any one can go in there. I mean there's an Asian club here and anyone can go in there. There's nothing that says you can't. There was a misunderstanding there and I think that's where it all started.

The interviews confirmed that if students have enough support to respond to the negative impacts of sexism and racism in their educational experience, they are empowered to focus on their goals and futures.