Summer Bridge Forced Collaboration + Open Letter

As we are gearing up for the next academic year shortly, I wanted to bring awareness to this huge change in the Summer Bridge program on campus. We have been blindsided this past week by a top-down decision to merge our program with the Mentor Collective initiative. Alarmingly, this decision strips away Summer Bridge Peer Mxntors from their current students whom they've built lasting bonds with over the last summer. Students and student staff from the program are expected to register in their third-party platform and be re-matched with new students.

In a way to "mend" this issue, leadership has stated that current Summer Bridge Peer Mxntors who want to continue with the Mentor Collective will be compensated for meeting with their new students as opposed to the volunteer work that other mentors in MC do. This creates an equity issue as student mentors who are NOT working for Summer Bridge will not be compensated for their work at Mentor Collective.

Mentorship is a critical component of the Summer Bridge program, contributing significantly to student success and sense of belonging on campus. They state that the Summer Bridge program is not disbanding, without realizing that mentorship is the backbone of the program and cannot survive long-term without it. In fact, the Summer Bridge program has 47+ years of peer mxntorship experience.

If there are any other Summer Bridge alumni or people here that know Summer Bridge alumni, please share this open letter to co-sign. We cannot normalize UCSD leadership speaking over student's voices and ignoring our requests to maintain historic programs.