Meghan Traynor

UC San Diego has offered Meghan, a Cultural Anthropology major and Literature of the World minor at Revelle College, many opportunities to work toward her personal goals of human rights, climate change and border/migration advocacy.  While in high school, she lived with a host family in Ecuador and learned firsthand how connected they were to the crops they grew and the food they ate.  She also learned about “the mass forced migration out of their communities due to economic deprivation in the region, which cemented in me a deep desire to work within border and migration advocacy.”  Through the University, Meghan is now interviewing migrants who are waiting in Tijuana to apply for asylum to the United States.  This work is done to better understand the health needs of the migrants, as UC San Diego is building a clinic at the migrant shelter.

Meghan has also used her interviewing skills while taking part in Urban Challenges: Homelessness, a research program at UC San Diego.  She has conducted qualitative interviews with people experiencing homelessness in overnight parking lots in San Diego.  “It has made me passionate about understanding the factors that perpetuate poverty and homelessness in California, and motivates me to advocate on behalf of affordable housing development in California.”

Meghan is also involved with UCSD Action, a club she co-created after leading a protest on campus against the overturn of Roe v. Wade.  “The group of us who facilitated the protest found that we needed to create activist efforts for social change beyond just protesting, and we needed a central body on UCSD’s campus that people could turn to in order to find out about activist initiatives.”

Meghan is still deciding whether to pursue a graduate degree in Border Studies or Public Policy Development versus a law degree in Human Rights or Immigration.  Either way, she hopes to live long-term in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region.