My parents have always requested that any papers from the school be mailed either in both English and Spanish, or just Spanish if possible. Now that I’m in college, and all the papers come addressed to me, I was a little surprised to see some things from the school still show up in Spanish.

Is the school being presumptuous or inclusive?

Heidi Healy, Director of Marketing for ECC, says the decision to mail items out in multiple languages came before she even started working at the school.

“Those decisions go back several years. To the best of my understanding those decisions were made at a pretty high level, probably at a cabinet level. Dr. Sam and his direct reports would have talked about that in a cabinet meeting and made a determination,” said Healy.

I have received multiple notices from ECC about semester start dates and tuition and registration reminders that come in English on one side and Spanish on the other, though Healy and Lauren Nehlsen, Director of International Education and Programs at ECC, would not offer up information on those mailers without a reference example first.

I find it odd that the people in charge of sending out these items would not know what I was referring to without seeing it first.

ECC also does a lot of work to ensure that any international students on campus have adequate resources provided to them.

“International students who come to study at ECC are provided with an in-depth new student orientation upon arrival. This orientation provides new international students with the opportunity to meet fellow students, learn about how to become involved on campus  and resources available to transition to life in the U.S,” said Nehlsen.  “Many international students also participate in the International Student Homestay Program, an ECC-sponsored initiative that gives international students the opportunity to live with a local American host family and learn about American culture. The homestay program also has scheduled activities for students and hosts throughout the year.”

As helpful as ECC is to these students, no information could be provided to me as to which documents, other than the admission application, are provided to them.

“I don’t know. We have a few other printed items that we do in other languages. Some of that would probably by handled by the international office. There are some applications that are available in English, Spanish and I believe Chinese,” said Healy.

Nehlsen declined to comment without clarification.

However, when it comes to the Latino community, ECC is all about inclusivity and trying to make sure that demographic is receiving the information they need to either go to college or make their experience a little easier per their newsletter “ECC Para Ti” (“ECC For You”).

“[“ECC Para Ti”] gets sent out three times a year and it goes out to all Latino households in our district,” said Healy.

The articles are printed in both English and Spanish which at least in my household, is a definite advantage.

“What’s interesting about this newsletter is that when you contact a Latino household, you’ll have members of the family that are comfortable speaking English and members of the family that are more comfortable speaking Spanish,” said Healy. “When family members are having a conversation about planning for college, choosing a college and where to go to college it’s nice for them to have a resource that everybody can refer to and get information from.”

This newsletter is primarily a resource for students to get information about admissions and financial aid. It also provides a list of phone numbers so current or prospective students can gather information on their own.

“One of the reasons we have such a focus on how to prepare for college, what it means to go to college, how to choose a college and how to pay for college is because a large proportion of our Latino population are first generation students,” said Healy.

She knows what going through that is like and how it feels to not have anything available to help you,

“I was a first generation student. My parents didn’t know anything about how to help me choose a college; there weren’t resources for that. Something like [“ECC Para Ti”] going into a first generation home can really help pave the way for decision making and conversations with family members who might not know what it means to get ready for college and someone who’s saying ‘I really wanna go’ because that can be a source of tension,” said Healy.

ECC does have another newsletter all in English that gets sent out to every household in the district three times a year.

Anything that gets translated by the school is done via outsourced resources, according to Healy.

The number of Latino households does not get determined by applications to the school but by demographics taken by an outside company. Those numbers then determine who receives this newsletter.

Unfortunately, not everyone is pleased with this newsletter being aimed at Latinos. We received a call to our newsroom from a man who thought The Observer published ‘ECC Para Ti” and he was not happy about it.

Frank Wenzon in regards to that newsletter said he “feels like he is in Mexico”.

Follow up phone calls to Wenzon were not returned.

While I’m sure Wenzon is not the only person to share this bigoted sentiment, neither the marketing, international office or communications departments say they have ever received any negative feedback concerning “ECC Para Ti”.

For Healy specifically, any feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“What we find is that after this newsletter reaches households, all of these phone numbers starts ringing. They all say ‘we always know when they newsletter has gone out because my phone started ringing with more questions’,” said Healy.

The reasoning behind the push of Latino resources is justified though because ECC is a “Hispanic serving institution” which is a designation from the United States Department of Education.

“Respect for diversity is one of ECC’s core values and the fact that we are a Hispanic serving institution, there’s a definition for that, it means that we have a large proportion of students at the college who are Hispanic or Latino,” said Healy. “Demographically, our population is well over a third Hispanic. That means that it’s important, it behooves us, it’s the right thing to do to reach out to a third of our population who may have facility in another language.”

This is an important statistic because communities need to be aware of just how much Latinos make up of the population not just here but all over the country. These are people who deserve and rely on the same resources as anyone else and they miss out sometimes because of a language barrier.

While I wish the information in other languages was just as readily available, the fact that ECC has realized the importance of being in the middle of a significantly Latino community and has tried to bridge that gap in wonderful and I applaud them.