Student association president Ivan Diaz aims for advocacy and service

Diaz will draw upon the wisdom, values and difficult experiences of his own life in the pursuit of his goals.

Diaz grew up in Calexico, California where he attended Calexico Mission School, which was established during the Great Depression. His mother, Theresa Alvarez Diaz, serves as principal of the school. Diaz enrolled in kindergarten and left twice to attend public school due respectively to financial issues and the COVID-19 pandemic. During his senior year in high school at Calexico, he served as the spiritual vice president for the student association.

He graduated from Calexico Mission School in 2022 and enrolled at La Sierra University as a history major. Now a senior, Diaz is leading the student association as its new president for the 2025-2026 school year. In addition to providing a representative student voice in university administrative and academic processes, he and his team also aim to provide unifying campus activities that give students opportunities to come together. 

As president, he will publish a regularly occurring president’s report podcast by which he will communicate with the students and campus. 

The choice

Diaz considered several higher education options including Union Adventist University in Nebraska and Imperial Valley College near his home. In the end he chose to enroll at La Sierra University because he wanted to remain within the Seventh-day Adventist education system while also remaining relatively close to his family. La Sierra in Riverside, Calif., is approximately three hours from Calexico.

Enrolling in an Adventist school was important to Diaz because of his deep roots in the Adventist faith. He grew up in a conservative Adventist home with parents who would read the books of Ellen G. White to him and his siblings in Spanish. 

However, his parents’ perspectives and approaches underwent a transformation following an incident with one of Diaz’s siblings that served as a wake-up call. Resultant counseling sessions produced a more intentional approach to parenting and a focus on the development of critical thinking skills that impacted the way their children’s faith developed. 

“Their way of approaching how they raised us and how they taught us our faith changed,” Diaz said, noting the words of his mother when as a young boy she addressed his confusion over a depiction of God in the Old Testament. “She said, I'd rather you decide to believe because you want to then you choose to believe because we raised you to,’” said Diaz. “That was part of the many critical thinking tools my parents armed me with.

“When it came to picking where I wanted to be educated, I wanted to continue the Adventist system, because I understand that the Adventist church is a church, and therefore it's an institution, and therefore it has certain flaws. Regardless of those flaws, I choose to believe in a largely Adventist perspective of approaching my faith, and I wanted to stay in that Adventist educational system, because I wanted to continue to uncover exactly what it is about this system that is flawed, and if there is a solution to fixing it from the inside.”

The calling

Diaz aims to become a history teacher for middle or high school. He follows in the footsteps of his parents who are both educators and those of his brother and sister who are teachers as well. 

“Teaching, I think, is probably one of the highest callings.” – Ivan Diaz, S A L S U President

“I felt called to teach,” Diaz said. “And in reality, I feel called to service. I want to be of service and teaching, I think, is probably one of the highest callings. 

“Teaching is very different [from other fields]. It's very special, because you're in a room with a lot of young people who don't really know much of anything. And it's on you to bring them up in such a way that they're able to find those answers on their own, and that's essentially, what education is. In my mind, you are learning in tandem with your students, and you're arming them with critical thinking skills so that when they're out in the world, they're able to determine the answers for themselves and not follow in step with something that could be detrimental,” he said.

He wants to teach history, Diaz said. “If you know where we've been, and you know the mistakes that were made when we were there, you'll do better and not fall into those mistakes again.”

The purpose

Diaz decided to run for student association president because he saw a need and thought he could fill it, he said. He goes forward into his presidential term bearing a concern for the impact of federal policies and actions on higher education and other institutions.

“I am conscious that I may not be the most skilled and I may not be the best at this or that, but I'm willing to learn, he said. “I'm willing to make some mistakes, bear the brunt of it, dust myself off, pick myself up and get back into it. 

Because when all is said and done, and when they write the history books, and when they look back at this period in all of our lives, and when my kids or grandkids ask me, where were you when this rot was destroying our institutions, I want to be able to tell them I was on the front lines, giving it my all.”

His goals include addressing issues through the S A L S U Presidential Report podcast, the first of which posted on YouTube on September 22, and through which he plans to educate the student body on university and governmental policies and actions that impact them. “We start with educating the student body, letting them know this is the policy or this is the issue, and then we go into how best to combat it, and that's how we're able to rally the student body and show them how to fight and how to best be able to combat that rot that I was speaking of,” he said.

He currently holds office hours at the student association office on Thursdays between 1 and 2 p.m. for students and campus members to stop by and talk about ways to get involved and the impactful issues of the day. 

Diaz and his cabinet are also planning campus events to bring students together. “So far, we have certain events that are traditional to the campus that we will continue to do as we go into 2025 2026 okay. And we're also brainstorming a couple new ideas,” he said.

"I think we definitely should get more students involved with politics, because ultimately, it's their future.” – Ivan Diaz

Diaz’ background includes serving as a poll worker for state elections. “I was answering questions, I was helping people get registered, and I was directing people to this resource or that resource,” he said. “Political involvement is something that if that door opens, I will definitely walk down through that road, because at the end of the day, public service is also something that is important. And if I were to do it, I would definitely do it as an independent. I don't plan on allowing myself to be tied to any sort of political agenda,” he said, noting he is registered as an independent.

Diaz noted the importance of student involvement in politics, while acknowledging a common apathy among them. “That's mainly because the system in their eyes doesn't work. Therefore, why should they care about it? So how do we get students involved? It goes back to educating them and why they should get involved in the first place, because the last thing we want is people going headfirst into something without really understanding what it is they're doing. So, I think we definitely should get more students involved with politics, because ultimately, it's their future.”

Of Influences

The two foundational influences in Diaz’s life are his parents, he said. Both struggled with difficult childhoods that involved parental abandonment and as a result worked hard to ensure their own children grew up with solid values and empathy for others. 

“Both of them have an origin in struggle, and because of that, they have worked very hard to ensure that my siblings and I are good human beings, people who look out for others,” Diaz said. During his middle school years where bullying and fights can be commonplace, he received critical advice to always stand up for others who are being mistreated.

“They told me if, ‘if there's a fight, and one of those kids in it is struggling, I don't want to hear afterward that you sat it out,’” Diaz recalled. “They instilled in me [to] stand up for the little guy and fight for those who can't fight for themselves. And that's been my philosophy my entire life, and it goes into that idea of service.”

And from his grandmother, Margarita, he learned “the value of mercy and the value of loving other people and giving people second chances,” he said.

His brother and sister as well have influenced him with their kindness, patience and empathy and the determination to follow their goals, he said.

The diagnosis

The signs began appearing in early childhood. Something was off. 

“I couldn't maintain the conversation. I couldn't really hold eye contact with people. The fact that I can answer questions and keep eye contact and be able to keep a dialogue that is fun and engaging is a tremendous feat that a lot of people take for granted,” Diaz said. 

Meanwhile, his mother who was a teacher at the time, noticed behaviors in a young student that mirrored her son’s. She learned that the student was autistic. So she read voraciously on the subject to learn about it. Eventually, Diaz was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. “When I got the diagnosis, I wasn't normal anymore,” Diaz recalled thinking. His mother explained it meant he thinks differently from other people, he said.

Therapy became a regular part of Diaz’s life requiring drives with his mother to San Diego several times a week, two hours one way. “I just recall feeling like I was in need of fixing, and that's why I was there,” Diaz said. A couple of bright spots arose during his commutes to his therapy sessions – he and his mother sometimes stopped for dinner at Taco Bell, one of the few moments he was allowed fast food. And the therapist’s office had a few Calvin and Hobbs comic books available in the waiting room, which Diaz came to love.

“Calvin is a very autistic, coded individual, but I related to Calvin because Hobbes was alive to him. And every time any other character is included in a panel where Calvin and Hobbs are both present, Hobbs becomes a stuffed tiger. And in my mind, that's what life was, at least for an autistic child. We see things that are viscerally real to us, but no one else can see it.”

Due to his style of behaviors and his diagnosis, which at the time was officially named Asperger’s Syndrome, he was the subject of “less than polite jokes” growing up, he said, although some who made his life difficult are now his friends, he added. 

The extreme difficulties and altered self-view that descended produced anger. “I remember being a very angry kid for a time, and I'm not particularly proud of those moments, but they are a part of who I am and my past. They don't define me, but they do exist, and eventually I had to grow out of that anger. 

“And looking back, I think I understand why I was angry, and that was because I had to impose upon myself a degree of introspection that is very difficult to demand of an eight-year-old,” he said. 

“Therapy gave me tools in the form of books, sheets of paper and more,” he continued “Books concerning humor, conversation, and believe it or not, sarcasm. These books instructed me to look into myself and who I was in order to find what my humor was, what my conversation style was, and what kind of sarcasm suited me best.”

Diaz is open about his diagnosis and challenges. 

“Being autistic is not something you can keep secret forever,” he said in an interview. “It's not something you cannot tell people. Because if you want patience from people, if you want people to be more empathetic towards you have to tell them. Unfortunately, people just aren't empathetic and patient by default, especially when it comes to stuff like this. So I had to, for lack of a better term, kind of advertise it to people.”

“I don't simply want to make a change, I want to make an actionable improvement in people's lives." – Ivan Diaz

He manages autism with it by investing in relaxation time. “Even if time off is rare and far in between, there is still some level of alone time that is necessary for someone like me to recover the energy that is used to help others understand me and vice versa,” he said.

While Diaz welcomes public speaking opportunities, appearing in front of an audience carries significant challenges.

“Autism makes public speaking impossible,” he said. “I always feel really nervous whenever I have to go on stage and the only way to combat the nerves is to do a ‘cold plunge.’ The strategy that my therapists gave me was essentially, jump out of the frying pan––which was being nervous––and into the fire­­––which was going into the speaking portion. They told me to tell a joke at the beginning of every public speaking role, so I do, it allows the audience to laugh and allows me to laugh which puts me at ease.

Autism, rather than distract from his objective of living a life of service, fuels his determination. 

“I don't simply want to make a change, I want to make an actionable improvement in people's lives,” he said. “On empathy, I have heard it said in the past that people with autism don't experience empathy the way that others do. But this is false, I was raised with empathy and with loving, caring parents. Empathy comes naturally to me, and this empathy is what fosters the kind of service I wish to render towards others. A service that listens before it acts. A service that places people's needs ahead of my own. In my mind, service is not merely an action, it is a way of life that calls us, and we answer that call until we are no longer able to do so.”