After 56 years, a community activist returns to ASU to finish his degree

More than 50 years ago, a young Vietnam veteran enrolled at Arizona State University on the GI Bill. Amid the conflicts and protests of the late 1960s, he left campus before he graduated.

Alfredo Gutierrez went on to become a state legislator, political consultant and prominent human rights activist in Arizona.

He helped to establish the Hispanic Convocation at ASU and even received an honorary doctorate from the university.

In May, the 78-year-old Gutierrez finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts.

“To me, it was one of the things I felt like I had to do,” he said.

Back in the 1960s, there were only a few dozen Hispanic students on campus at ASU. And there was no Hispanic Heritage Month to celebrate people like Gutierrez.

Now, ASU is designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution, with an enrollment of Hispanic undergraduate students that is at least 25% of the overall student body.

“Just the fact that I walk around this university now and you know, there's Latinos everywhere,” he said.

“The change has been immense. So as much as we have a fight to go forth, we’ve come a long, long way, and I celebrate that.”

Gutierrez grew up in the small mining town of Miami, Arizona. At age 17, he went into the Army, where he was in the infantry in Vietnam.

“You met all kinds of people from all kinds of places. One went to Penn, another went to Harvard. They were from Mississippi and Missouri,” he said.

When he got back from Vietnam in 1967, he worked in the mines for a bit, but when the miners went on strike, he decided to enroll at ASU on the GI Bill.

“The GI Bill would not only pay for my tuition, it would offer a stipend. And that was enough to live on. So that was the carrot that attracted me,” he said.

“No one in my family had been to college, and I didn’t have any friends at the university.”

But his life experience in the Army and in the mines had prepared him.

“Any intimidation I had about the university being full of people who were so intelligent that I would feel like a fool was really diminished by the time I got to ASU,” he said.

He helped to form a Mexican American student group, which became involved in community activities — and activism.

“Activism was, I think, natural. I come from a union background and was involved with the farmworkers. But what led to it was the laundry,” he said.

ASU had a contract with a commercial laundry that served the fraternities and sororities. The student group discovered that the laundry workers, most of whom were Black and Latino, were underpaid and working in abusive conditions.

“They were horribly treated. It was hotter than hell in there,” he said.

The student group was rebuffed from meeting with university administrators.

“Essentially, ‘This is not your business’ was the response,” he said.

So the student group wrote a document about the conditions at the laundry and shared it with the fraternities and sororities, who agreed. But they still couldn’t get a response from the administration.

“Long story short, we took over the president’s office. We were very polite. We cleaned everything and left around 6 o’clock. We didn’t stay overnight, but we were there the next morning when the doors opened,” he said.

The university president met with the group and agreed to some changes.

“It wasn’t perfect, but it was something and we could declare a bit of a victory and we did,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Board of Regents members were unhappy with the protest.

“They were talking about calling out the National Guard, which at the time would’ve been me. I was in the National Guard Reserves,” Gutierrez said.

“I was the public face of this, and they wanted me out.”

The student code of conduct didn’t cover discipline for protesting, so they wrote a new code.

In 1968, Gutierrez attended an antiwar protest on campus.

“And apparently I stepped in the wrong place,” he said.

“I had a choice of leaving the university and being able to come back or going through a legal process and getting kicked out and having that on my record.”

So he left with less than a year left until graduating. And it would be more than 50 years until he returned.

“Life got in the way,” he said.

Gutierrez left campus but kept his activism.

He won a fellowship created by the Kennedy family after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, whose presidential campaign Gutierrez had worked on. The fellowship, which came with a monthly stipend, allowed him to become even more active in the community. He helped to form the social-justice advocacy organizations Chicanos Por La Causa and Valle del Sol.

Gutierrez was elected to the state Senate in 1972 and was majority leader in 1974. During that time, he was instrumental in getting funding approved to build South Mountain Community College and in setting a budget formula for the state’s three public universities. He served in the Legislature for 14 years and then founded a political consulting firm. He also served on the Maricopa County Community College District's Governing Board.

In 1984, Gutierrez was among many in the Hispanic community who organized the first Hispanic Convocation for ASU graduates, which was not a university-sanctioned event. Community members asked Gutierrez to talk to ASU administrators to make sure they approved.

“I went to see the dean of students. I knew him well. He was the son of a b---- who threw me out,” he said.

“But he was happy to see me, and they wanted to be helpful.”

The ceremony was later held at ASU but in that first year, it was at a dirt lot in Guadalupe.

“They had to wet it down and stomp on it so it wouldn’t be dusty,” Gutierrez said.

The community built a riser and brought in a loudspeaker, tables and chairs. There were speeches and a procession of 49 graduates, whose names were called out.

“The mariachis started playing, and people were hugging and crying,” he said.

“I thought it would be a somber affair, and it turned into a celebration of joy that was amazing.”

Over the years, Gutierrez stayed academically engaged, lecturing at Harvard and teaching in Mexico in the Fulbright program, and he thought about returning to finish his degree.

“Once, when I was the Senate majority leader, it became obvious to me that if I wanted to go on in politics and have significant positions, I really had to come back and get a degree, and I tried to fit that in, but it was impossible. My time demands as majority leader made it possible,” he said.

In 1999, ASU gave him an honorary doctorate.

“It’s a great honor, but you can’t get a job with it,” he joked.

During his time with the community colleges, he would talk with families about financial aid and the need to pursue a bachelor’s degree. One mother introduced him to her daughter, who was graduating, and said, “I’ll invite you to her Hispanic Convocation.”

“That really got me ruminating. And one night, I said, ‘I’m going to go to college and get that degree.’

“It wasn’t just a dream. It was an unfulfilled commitment.”

Gutierrez assumed he had some eligibility left on the GI Bill and was shocked to learn that Congress had amended the bill after the Vietnam War to limit the years of eligibility after discharge. But he enrolled anyway last year.

Gutierrez enjoyed his classes and is happy he completed his degree.

“It’s good to be around a lot of smart people. It makes you smarter,” he said.

And in a nice full-circle moment, he was the keynote speaker — and a fellow grad being celebrated — at the 40th Hispanic Convocation in May.

While Gutierrez is thrilled to see the surge of Latino students succeeding on campus, he has mixed feelings about celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, given the disparagement of immigrants in the current political discourse. 

“You’re happy that (Hispanic Heritage Month) is being recognized, but it points to an alarming hypocrisy that this country presents for us,” he said.

“And so maybe we should set aside celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and devote all our energy to making sure that no one vilifies us in this country again.”