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A recent Everest High School graduate has received the Presidential Scholarship from San Francisco State University.
According to San Francisco State University’s website, the scholarship is given to four students upon entering the freshman cohort. It is based on academic performance, leadership contributions, and service activities during high school. It is primarily focused on first-generation, low-income students from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tiffany Medrano-Martinez recalled the moment she received the scholarship and recounted the surprise and excitement she experienced.
“Are you serious? Because I never expected that. I remember I started bawling and crying,” Medrano-Martinez said.
The scholarship provides a four-year scholarship covering tuition/fees, housing and books, and cohort-building co-curricular activities with developmentally appropriate programs designed specifically for the cohort of students.
At SFSU, Medrano-Martinez will be studying Cinema and Race and Resistance.
“My end goal with those majors is kind of become a director-producer…(to) create better representation of the Chicano community,” Medrano-Martinez said. “I feel like a lot of our representation is held within stereotypes. I want to break stereotypes and show not just our trauma but our dreams and aspirations and our joy.”
Her inspiration for civil rights first came in 8th grade, when she was instrumental in organizing a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Redwood City.
She was inspired by her brother’s small protest in 2016 with his classmates over the 2016 presidential election results.
After hearing about the death of George Floyd, Medrano-Martinez, who at the time was 14, felt she should do something, so with the help of her brother and his friends, Martinez organized the protest.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of the planning (experience), (but) I always felt like the main force behind it because I was what sparked it,” Medrano-Martinez said. “I was very meek and shy at that point in time in my life… I did not know anything about how to lead and start one(a protest).
She also received the Oster scholarship from her high school, an award given to 10 graduating seniors from Summit Charter Schools who match the school’s core values.
The scholarship is funded by Summit’s Board Chair, Robert Oster, and his wife, Marion Oster. It offers three different types depending on the recipient’s vocational path. Medrano-Martinez is receiving $20,000 for attending a four-year university.
While at Everest High School, Medrano-Martinez was president of the student ambassadors in her junior and senior years and one of the four members of the student council in her senior year.
She received the Student of the Year award in her junior year and the Everest Leadership award in her senior year.
While at the university, Medrano-Martinez plans to continue student involvement by getting involved with on-campus clubs and the student association.
Medrano-Martinez found her passion for film while helping a friend with a video project for Hispanic Heritage Month during his high school film class.
“I remember being so interested whenever he had to turn things in for his film class,” Medrano-Martinez said. “I would be so interested in the mechanics of the camera and the editing and just kind of being really interested in the whole process.”
Medrano-Martinez has worked on her own film projects, including a documentary she made in collaboration with the Riekes Center that was shown at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park.
“About a year ago, I started making a short documentary on Spanish colonization and its effects within the Chicano community,” Medrano-Martinez said.
Medrano-Martinez had struggled in the past with feeling out of place and has found that representation matters.
“I didn’t really fit in much there,” Medrano-Martinez said of her elementary school. “I ended up having very low self esteem … so I always thought very badly, very poorly of myself when I was younger …
She added: “But I always kind of had this feeling that there was just gonna be so much more out there for me besides that, so I always had a great sense of hope… I always had these big aspirations.”
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