“Is this real?”
That’s what Carlos Rubio asked Vanessa Meraz when the two found out about their opportunity to meet with Mark Zuckerberg.
That opportunity became a reality when Rubio, a systems engineering sophomore, and Meraz, a political science junior, sat down with Zuckerberg Nov. 8 in Oklahoma City as part of Zuckerberg’s 2017 state-by-state tour of the U.S. The Facebook founder’s stop in Oklahoma included a visit to a wind farm and a discussion with 10 Oklahoma college students and graduates who are Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients.
“We’re sitting with one of the richest people, one of the most successful people...not just in the nation, but in the world, and the conversation revolved around the experiences of Dreamers in Oklahoma,” Meraz said.
The two OU students, both outspoken advocates for undocumented and DACA students, have previous ties to Zuckerberg.
After President Donald Trump announced the rescinding of the DACA program, FWD.us, Zuckerberg’s organization for immigration reform, reached out to both students and brought them to Washington D.C. to lobby for DACA, Meraz said. Rubio and Meraz were able to meet with legislators and discuss the Dream Act, which gives DACA recipients the nickname "Dreamers" and has failed to pass as a solution for undocumented immigrants for the last 16 years.
The conversation, originally slated to last one hour, ran over two hours, Meraz said, and also included representatives from Oklahoma advocacy organizations like Dream Act Oklahoma, Aspiring Americans and Latino Community Development Agency.
While the first part of the discussion allowed the DACA recipients to tell their stories, the rest of the meeting dove deeper than most discussions about DACA recipients’ perspectives, Rubio said. Rubio said he rarely hears questions about being Latino or being a DACA student in Oklahoma’s political environment, so Zuckerberg’s questions about those issues were important.
“I think in a state like Oklahoma, most of it is educating. We’ll tell our stories, and that’s it,” Rubio said. “But we never get asked the questions about ‘yeah, how does it feel to be in such a conservative state, how do you feel?’ I think that really went a long way, especially from someone like Mark Zuckerberg, so that was cool.”
Though Meraz and Rubio often have a chance to advocate with stories about their personal journeys, the easy-going conversation was a welcome experience to feel heard on another level, Meraz said
“It was neat, because not only did we share our stories, which is something that we do all the time here, we got to tell Mark Zuckerberg what’s it’s like to be sharing your story in Oklahoma,” Meraz said.
Rubio said the ability to have an advocate and a voice in someone like Zuckerberg makes a powerful statement.
“You have such a big name coming to Oklahoma for two reasons: wind energy and then coming up to the south side of Oklahoma City to speak to Dreamers,” Rubio said. “That kind of shakes the state a little bit — this is being heard. I think it made a statement, and that’s really what he was going for and I’m really proud of it.”
