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Alum Drives State Bill
 Friday, September 21, 2018 
After beginning at UC Santa Barbara, just 3 years ago, Zenzile Riddick (c'11) has been instrumental in ensuring the campus, and other California public schools are receptive to supporting African-Americans students.
Zenzile is a founding member of The Coalition for A Better UC (CBUC), a small student group, which decided to campaign for a change to California’s financial aid system. Earlier in the year, she worked with five other UCSB students to begin campaigning across University of California and California State universities campuses to make the statewide grant for low-income students, the Cal Grant, available over summer.
Major research from the US Department of Education, and some of her own research on California’s graduation deficit, made it obvious that students needed more access to summer classes if they were going to graduate on time.
CBUCs campaign was successful, and this past March, Assemblyman Marc Levine (10th District, North Bay) authored the bill AB 3153, that will extend Cal Grant to summer sessions. Since then, the bill passed in the CA Assembly in May, and it has two committees left in the Senate before it makes it to the governor’s desk.
As Director of Internal Affairs, she also managed the social media campaign, created all campaign graphics, created legislative leave behinds for governmental offices, traveled to Sacramento on multiple lobbying trips, and hired and supervised an all Black team of freshman interns who have since been promoted to assistant directors.
Additionally, as the Black Student Union Internal Vice President, she partnered with the External Vice President, Kuvimbanashe Chikukwa, to create the first ever Freshman Black Mentorship Program. She was able to pair 40 first year Black UCSB students with undergraduate mentors who had similar majors, hometowns, and interests.
UCSB Financial Aid and UCSB Admissions accepted her program proposal and funded the project, so mentors received stipends, had funded coffee dates with students, and had programs specifically for them! The program was extremely successful and now it is an official UCSB Admissions Mentorship program.
The graduating senior will continue working to ensure the mentorship program's success this year, as well as closely monitoring the bill's passage, along with preparing for graduate school after graduating in May, 2019.
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