Meet Nirvana Felix, a Filipino-Cambodian UC Berkeley badass. Nirvana comes from a place of adversity and is dedicated to education and prison reform. Find her on Lower Sproul dressed in all black, with quirky accessories and a beaming smile. From serving as co-campaign manager for a CalServe senator to being a dedicated student, she’s also passionate about her involvement in a student organization called Pilipino Academic Student Services, (PASS) which runs under bridges Multicultural Resource Center. Upon graduating in 2016, Nirvana hopes to further her education at a law school so she can cater to criminal justice reform and give back to her community.
Major/Minor(s): Social Welfare/Public Policy and Education
Hometown: San Jose, CA
Birthday: October 28, 1994
Ethnicity: Cambodian/Filipino
Body Modification:
Piercings: 5 in total: 1 on each nostril, a septum, and a cartilage piercing on each ear. Why 3 nose piercings? I feel like they fit my personality – quirky and a bit unexpected
Tattoos: None yet, but I’m hoping to get one soon (maybe for my 20th birthday) that will symbolize both my Filipino and Cambodian heritage
Fashion: I’m a big fan of black clothing, so 75% of my wardrobe is black. I don’t really have any fashion icons because my style is constantly changing – but I do like form fitting clothes and anything high waisted
Favorite bands: Starfucker, Bombay Bicycle Club, Best Coast, Sylvan Esso (very much suggest listening to Sylvan Esso if you’re looking for coffeehouse music)
Feel good song: “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” – Starfucker
Hobbies: Napping, shopping, reading, writing, trying out new foods, watching movies, community service (I’m really big on giving back to my own community. I used to volunteer at my local library every summer to help host a summer reading program for disadvantaged youth in my area), adventuring, meeting new people!
What inspires you? Knowing that I’ve come this far despite all the hardships I’ve encountered – constant financial problems, the difficulties that come with being raised by a single mom, temporary homelessness, and just a shit ton of other things that nobody deserves to go through. I’ve come so far and I can only go uphill from here […] Also, definitely my mom. She had me when she was still in high school and has been through more hardships that I can ever imagine, from balancing 3 jobs once to making the decision of not living with me and my younger sister for a while so that we could live with our uncle, closer to our high school. She’s my role model and my best friend. One of the reasons I’ve fought so hard to get to where I am today is to make sure she never has to worry about another bill ever again.
Nirvana (right) facilitating PASS’s first general meeting on September 3rd, 2014 in Barrows Hall.
Organizations you’re a part of on campus: Pilipino Academic Student Services (PASS)
Position: High School and Transfer Outreach Co-Coordinator
As an Outreach Coordinator, I’m in charge of holding college presentations to under-resourced high schools and community colleges all across California – throughout the fall semester, we have our Bay Area outreaches and help students with their college applications and personal statements. In the winter, I hold a week-long trip to Southern California and in the spring break, we travel to Central California. The goal of these trips is to educate students about the requirements to both graduate high school and get into an institution of higher education. The students we like to target are not specifically “college bound,” and that’s because we want all students – regardless of race, income, background, etc. – to know that higher education is possible.
Personally, I never thought I would go to college – I didn’t have the best grades because I was working a lot to help out my family and I knew nothing about the college application process. I know that a lot of low-income students may be going through similar struggles and may not feel that they’re “good enough” for college, or some may not have family members who can help them out along the way. I want to be that resource for these students and show them that if I can make it, they can too!”
Why did you join PASS? One day, I walked into a 200+ person lecture hall and realized that I was one of the few people of color in the room. This really got me thinking about why I didn’t see more brown faces, more people who look like me, in the room around me. People always say that Berkeley is such a “diverse” school – but once you really disaggregate the data, you’ll realize just how disproportionate the numbers are; people of color are still largely underrepresented in higher education. I decided to become a part of the PASS community not only to learn more about my history and where I come from, but to help make social change in my communities and beyond.
Nirvana at a California Football game during her Freshman year in October 2012
Issues you care about: Education and Prison Reform
Education reform: helping to increase the percentage of people of color into higher education; providing adequate resources to under-served/low-income schools; investing more money in education and less on prisons (and stopping the school-to-prison pipeline)
Prison reform: The prison system has been really ingrained in my life because I’ve had close family members be incarcerated and I know firsthand how the prison system can affect not only the formerly incarcerated, but also families. Last year, I was in a DeCal called Get on the Bus, where we fundraised money so that children with incarcerated parents had the opportunity to see their moms and dads on Mother’s and Father’s Day. I’m currently applying to be an intern for the Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC) in Oakland to spread more awareness about the detrimental effects of the prison industrial complex and to offer resources to those who have been affected by it.
“What I wanna be when I grow up”: The goal is to go to law school (hopefully!) and work for a non-profit catered to either education or criminal justice reform, somewhere based in northern California where I can assist the community I grew up in.
Something awesome you did over the summer: Public policy intern for a law firm in Washington, D.C. called the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The internship was under the First Generation Civil Rights Fellowship, which is a 10-week program catered to first generation college students interested in pursuing careers in civil rights and/or social justice. As a public policy intern, I went to a lot of meetings on Capitol Hill and sat in on discussions on matters like criminal justice, prison, and education reform. One of my bigger accomplishments was contributing to a 20+ paged statement that was submitted to the Senate on the Senate Judiciary Hearing on the Voting Rights Amendment Act.
Want to get involved with PASS? Join PASS’s internship program. Email PASS or Nirvana Felix for more information.
ucberkeleypass@lists.berkeley.edu