Activist and political science major to serve as student speaker at UCLA commencement

A political science major who is a nationwide leader in the movement to pass the federal Dream Act has been selected as the student speaker for the UCLA College of Letters and Science commencement ceremony in June.

 

Flavia de la Fuente, a 22-year-old native of Irvine, Calif., will deliver her remarks on Friday, June 11, at 5 p.m. in Drake Stadium on the Westwood campus. Approximately 3,400 students will receive bachelor's degrees at the ceremony.

 

"I feel great about being selected," de la Fuente said. '"I hope to do the position justice."

 

De la Fuente was selected from a pool of 30 applicants by a 10-person panel of staff, faculty and students.

 

"We knew that Flavia would challenge the 2010 graduating class in a powerfully positive way so that they would want to emulate her experiences and take her speech to inspire their future endeavors," said Joseph Brown, a UCLA staffer and a member of the selection committee.

 

De la Fuente will share the dais with Gustavo Arellano, author of the witty and incisive "¡Ask a Mexican!" column in the OC Weekly, who earned a master's degree in Latin American studies from UCLA in 2003.

 

She said her speech will challenge fellow graduates to stretch themselves.

"I'm going to focus on a theme of creativity and the importance of being artists in our own lives," she said.

 

De la Fuente's UCLA career has been distinguished by involvement in a range of political issues, including the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, human rights violations in Burma, and the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which provides a path to citizenship for undocumented college students.

 

A fluent Spanish speaker, she is the oldest of three children of Fiorenza Comunian, an architectural designer, and Fernando de la Fuente, an aerospace engineer. Her father emigrated from Chile in 1978, and her mother followed him in 1985. De la Fuente's two other siblings, 18-year-old twins, also are Bruins: Francesca is a freshman anthropology and premed major, and Fernando plans to enroll this fall as a performance major in the School of Music.

 

De la Fuente said she made up her mind at 13 that she wanted to come to UCLA to major in political science. In fact, she still has a letter to herself, written in fulfillment of an eighth-grade assignment, spelling out the goal. 

 

"It was mailed by my homeroom teacher after I graduated high school and was on my way to UCLA to be a political science major, exactly as I had planned," she said.

 

The only change de la Fuente made in her original plans was adding a minor in Latin American studies, largely inspired by her family's background. In connection with her minor, she spent a semester abroad last fall in Santiago, Chile. 

 

De la Fuente said her involvement on campus in politics and activism stemmed from a conscious decision to supplement classroom learning with real-world experiences.

 

She rose through the ranks of the UCLA extracurricular club Bruin Democrats to serve as co-coordinator in 2007 and 2008 of UCLA's campaign for Barack Obama, organizing a campus rally attended by 500 people, sending more than 150 UCLA students to campaign in the swing state of Nevada, orchestrating 2,000 telephone appeals and gathering a database of more than 2,500 supporters.

 

De la Fuente then went on to co-direct the Mighty Mic Human Rights Awareness Concert, an annual tradition on campus designed to increase awareness about human rights violations and raise funds to help victims. Under de la Fuente's leadership in 2009, the program raised $3,000 for Burma's pro-democracy movement, chiefly through a concert headlined by the hip-hop group Blackalicious and the indie rock group Daphne Loves Derby.

 

De la Fuente said she is most proud of her work on behalf of the Dream Act, a cause she was motivated to take up after witnessing the hardships endured by her undocumented classmates. In addition to activities advocating for passage of the legislation, de la Fuente serves as editor of DreamActivist.org, a nationwide online resource network for undocumented students. 

 

"I don't feel like you have to graduate to make a difference," she said. "I feel, what better time to start than now!"

 

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than 323 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Five alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

 

For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.