UC Berkeley senior Carlos Vázquez is running for the ASUC Senate with Elevate Cal on a platform centered around improving resources for disabled students, promoting cross-cultural solidarity and enhancing parent-student relationships.

His campaign can be boiled down to one overarching idea: intersectionality. According to Vázquez, a lack of intersectional framework is the biggest issue facing the campus community, especially within student recruitment and retention efforts.

“The university likes to think of recruitment and retention of students as being static based on one identity,” Vázquez said. “You have a Latinx recruitment strategy. You have a disabled student strategy. But it’s never focused on recruiting more disabled Latinx male students, for example.”

Vázquez, a political science major, has served as co-chair of the ASUC Disabled Students Commission, which works on accessibility and transparency for disabled students. He has been involved with the group since its founding in spring 2019, making it the ASUC’s newest commission.

Identifying as a physically disabled member of the Latinx community, Vázquez has experienced the importance of intersectionality firsthand, citing his feelings of isolation from as early as kindergarten.

“I saw the importance of intersectionality as influencing the student experience at every stage of my educational career,” Vázquez said. “In my disabled community, I am one of the few students of color who are physically disabled, and I feel isolated when there’s only a few people who share my identities.”

One of his main platforms, Living Disability at Cal, focuses on improving recruitment and retention for disabled students while bridging gaps. Vázquez intends to provide scholarships to students of intersectional identities, implement anti-ableism training for students and staff and have other departments also support disabled students, instead of just the Disabled Students’ Program supporting them.

Vázquez also seeks to promote cross-community solidarity across historically marginalized groups at UC Berkeley. Under this platform, Vázquez hopes to support students who face double or triple discrimination by expanding anti-discrimination training and encouraging partnership among various student identity groups.

“When standing in solidarity with each other and our movements, we can get more done,” Vázquez said.

Aside from directly addressing the needs of students of historically marginalized groups, Vázquez has pointed out a need to improve resources for UC Berkeley parents to get involved in supporting their students. He hopes to implement parent workshops and resource fairs, and also look at ways to address language barriers among parents.

Vázquez notes that rather than working as a representative, he wants to allow the voices of the people within his various communities to speak through him.

“The university often forgets that a disabled Latinx person exists,” Vázquez alleged. “As a senator, I want to uplift my intersectional identities and show that people like me exist. We are here. We have needs.”