I dropped this course after week 2
psa: this is not going to be about US-latino politics in the international relations way!! This class doesn't examine dif. countries and thier foreign relations w the US. it is about voting patterns, census data, coding, and statistics. I thought it would be dif, so thats why i enrolled. the slides are all data we cant even see clearly (small lecture screen, lots of students) and he does not post the slides or bruincast

in my opinion, dont take this heavy-one exam based class when the slides arent posted. missing one class runs you a risk of falling behind, and focusing is hard because its boring to look at data, analyze it, and do it again for over an hour.

the class might be fine, but just beware if its something in ur interests! Also textbook is mandatory and costs 50 bucks if that matters to any of u

While the course material was fascinating, Dr. Barreto and his TAs made the experience kind of lackluster. My problems with this class are many.
1. The syllabus for the class required students to buy around five textbooks. We only used maybe half of them for the entire quarter.
2. There is a clear lack of unity, cohesiveness, and standardization among how the TAs graded. My TA, Claudia Rodriguez, was absolutely wonderful. Claudia was great at leading class discussions and was clear about what her expectations were. I had two friends who had an absolute nightmare TA. This TA was rude and condescending to them in emails. When receiving their final grades for a final project that required us to research Latinx populations in various cities across the US, my friends reached out to their TA to ask for an explanation. She gave them both Cs for their project because they didn't include "specific information" required by the professor. My friend emailed the professor back and forth; after re-grading her project, the professor gave her a B+. This lack of communication, cohesion, and standardization could have cost her an entire letter grade.
3. My final comment is about Dr. Barreto himself. His lectures were SO BORING. He would literally just make PowerPoint slides and read off of them the entire time. There were a few pictures here and there throughout the slides, but the majority of the slides were a text that had been copied and pasted from the book. Though a smart and accomplished man, I think he lacks the ability to make the information interesting in a teaching setting.

Though I have many complaints about this class, I will say that (with a good TA) the class was actually pretty easy. There were only three components of our grade, two of which were a final and a final project. The final was easy if you went to lectures, took notes, and made a mental timeline of the events he talked about. I would definitely be wary of taking this class. I say go for it if you want to roll the dice and risk getting a rude and unfair TA.