Six panelists spoke on the experience of navigating college life as a Latino at the annual State of Latinx event in Chumash Auditorium Wednesday. Organized by the Latinx/e Center for Academic Success and Achievement (La CASA), this Q&A style event featured themes of culture, belonging and campus representation.
Coordinator for La CASA Jeremiah Hernandez said the event went really well and talked about visibility and having a place on campus where students feel at home.
“Coming to San Luis, coming to Cal Poly, whether it’s dealing with culture shock or just feeling homesickness, it allows the opportunity to build more community and to come together, share our experiences and really see that they are not alone, we are not alone in this process as we are trying to educate ourselves, be better and learn and grow,” Hernandez said.
The moderator asked questions to the panelists including how their identity has shaped how they navigate college, a time they felt like they belonged on campus and how Latino voices are expressed and not expressed on the campus.
The event featured a raffle with two winners receiving a copy of “Solito: A Memoir” by Javier Zamora.
Israel Pérez Pedraza, panelist and political science, psychology and Spanish junior, said the panel taught him to be more courageous, drawing on a moment where a panelist talked about why it is important to pronounce his name correctly.
“I think it was really impactful because I used the nickname Izzy instead of Israel to accommodate,” Pedraza said. “And that’s like a little bit of a form of assimilation from myself personally, so just being a little bit more courageous in what my identity is and what I hold near and dear to my heart.”
Pedraza said he wants to see way more from Cal Poly, and talked about Cal Poly becoming an HSI but how it’s all the Office of University Diversity and Inclusion (OUDI) spearheading this effort.
“Then we look at Cal Poly as a whole, it’s still so white,” Pedraza said. “And so like they’re pushing like we’re an HSI, Hispanic-serving, but they’re not serving Hispanics. OUDI is, Cal Poly is not.”
Pedraza said he wanted to see Cal Poly get people of color in decision making spaces, so they don’t have things like U.S. Customs and Border Control coming to campus. This topic was also mentioned during the panel, where panelists expressed their feelings about U.S. Customs and Border Control at the career fair.
“If they would have asked someone in Adelante, they should have been like, ‘Hey, you know what? Like, career fair’s happening, how do you feel about custom border patrol coming,’ Pedraza said. “We would have been like, ‘Hell no, why are they coming?’ But because we don’t have a voice in these spaces, they just do it.”
Through the event, electrical engineering freshman Diego Bautista learned that the community all has the same type of struggle finding diversity at Cal Poly.
“This event showed me that the vulnerabilities in all their stories do eventually lead to finding safety and community,” Bautista said.