As a child, after visiting my relatives in El Paso, Texas, my father would point out the mountains alongside the Rio Grande: on one side, the star marking the city of El Paso, and on the other, a message from Ciudad Juárez to read the Bible. Though the river runs right between them, it is the United States-Mexico border wall that truly separates the two.

The wall itself isn’t too daunting looking from the inside, where I’ve mostly seen it from. But from the outside, it’s a message: You are not welcome here, you are not meant to be here. I say “inside” and “outside” purposefully. The border wall is one way — there’s often a line of traffic waiting for hours to come into the U.S., but rarely is there one out.

Today, most people cannot imagine what life would be like without the wall, whether they live in Juárez or El Paso. It just seems to be an inevitable part of life there; necessary to keep people safe, though truly only with U.S. safety in mind.

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“But Danica,” my father would tell me, “the cities were once one. People lived there, together. Before the U.S., before Mexico, before the idea of a border at all.”

I did not fully process his words at the time, but I kept them in mind regardless. Now that I am here at USC, I finally understand why he told me these stories. It was because we can’t afford to forget how the past really was.

I am sure many of us know that there was a time before all these ID-tapping checkpoints — after all, they were just implemented in late Spring 2024 — but believe it or not, there was a time before the gates, too.

The spiked metal fences we know now were not built until shortly after the 1992 Rodney King riots, a series of riots mainly in Los Angeles after the acquittal of four police officers charged with the violent beating of Rodney King, a Black man, during a traffic stop. 

Not much unlike today, these were likely erected because the University administration was afraid of the very community it superimposed itself on and what it valued. “Likely” because the University never officially said it was because of the riots — it only cited the vague notion of safety. However, both today and back then, students and community members know the University doesn’t want to be open about its true intentions.

Slowly but steadily, people forgot what USC looked like before. Part of this was because people graduated and moved on without leaving their testimonies behind, but there was also a desire to forget. USC’s student body is figuratively separated from South Central by its demographics: It’s predominantly white, wealthy and elite. 

With the fences, this separation became even more clear, and for privileged students who want the college experience of a prestigious university, there’s no reason to remember a time when students and residents — poor, Black and Brown residents — once shared the same spaces.

The University administration knows this about its students. The administration knows that people will forget, that they will want to forget, and so the University will keep adding more and more separation between the community and the University body. 

While the administration may try to cover up its disdain for the South Central community via “Friends and Neighbors Day” or the “Neighborhood Academic Initiative” — both post-Rodney King programs, by the way — it is important to remember these programs are just bandages of saviorism to cover up the wound of inequality that USC continues to make deeper.

Whether the University wants to admit it or not, these checkpoints were built because of the pro-Palestine protests last year. Quite frankly, I find it disgusting that any university would demonize its own students and surrounding community — who are rightfully protesting against a genocide — to justify funding millions into the surveillance and militarization of our campus. The only thing more egregious is the willingness of the student body to just accept it.

While not at the magnitude of the border wall, the same systems and patterns of violent exclusion are behind both. They are also the same in that if we don’t push back, they will keep becoming more extreme. But, if we do, there is hope.

At the end of my father’s stories, he would remind me that our ancestors have lived on this land since time immemorial, and only for a small fraction of time has there been a border.

“Our family has been here since before the wall, and we will be here after. We tell our stories to remember, and our remembrance is our resistance.”

With that sentiment, I tell this story to continue the memories of a university without walls. No matter what they tell you, a better university, a better community, a better world is possible.

With love,