“I had to be comfortable being uncomfortable and that’s that whole growth process and that started with joining APSA.”

“I never really understood about looking back until ethnic studies and understanding that if we don’t know what happened before, if we don’t know, and address that this is who we are, then we can never move forward.”

Jonathan Burgos studied at UC San Diego from 1993 to 1998, majoring in Sociology. During his time at UCSD, he was the 1994-1995 Publicity Coordinator, 1995-1996 President, and 1996-1997 Outreach Coordinator in Asian and Pacific Islander Student Alliance (APSA) and member of Kaibigang Pilipin@. Today, he is the founder of First Gen Scholars, a local non-profit organization in San Diego supporting and uplifting underserved first-generation students in applying for colleges, completing their degrees, and succeeding overall.

This interview covers topics including his transformative experiences being involved in APSA, Ethnic Studies, and community activism during his time at UCSD. He also discusses how those experiences motivated him to establish First Gen Scholars.

The interview was conducted on May 07, 2020 via Zoom by Victoria Pham, an undergraduate student of Literature and History at the time of the interview. She was also deeply involved in student activism at UCSD as the 2020-2021 Chair of APSA and student leader in It’s On Us, “a campaign dedicated to raising awareness and changing the culture around sexual misconduct on college campuses in the United States” (It’s On Us at UCSD). Currently, she is a doctoral student in History at Northwestern University.