Fernando Torres-Gil:
Welcome folks. I know we have people joining us and we'll be signing on. And it's wonderful to have you here at one of the sessions during the Brandeis Alumni Reunion. And this one will focus on a particular chapter of Brandeis University, 50 years of Latinx, Latinos, Latinas, from all parts of Latin America. We welcome you. We will also be addressing one of the great organizations that came out of the Latinx experience, Grito.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And we're hoping to use this session to both, look at the past, the history, what came before in terms of the Latino, Latina experience at Brandeis University, but we also do so to look to the present and in particular to the future and to those Latinx students who are at Brandeis now, who will hopefully be there in the years to come, to provide that historical context and to support Latinx students, both as students, as alums, as professionals. And in that regard, we have a panel of amazing accomplished individuals who will represent the various decades of the past 50 years, who will share their experiences, who will always make themselves available to students and alums, whether as mentors, supporters, friends, we're all in this together, even though the years may have separated us. But it's wonderful to have you all with us at this session on the Latinx experience.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And to begin that, and before I introduce the panelists, and we go through a set of questions that reveal the rich history of the Latinx experience, we have a very special video produced by one of our alums, Maria Rodriguez from the class of '75 and also her son Dino Dio, who really worked hard to give us this amazing video. But before we start that, let me give a special shout out to Elsie Ramos, the class of 1972. She is responsible for bringing us together, for giving us this space, for giving us this opportunity. Thank you, Elsie Ramos. We know you're there in the audience, and we're so appreciative that you are the madrina of this organization. So with that, I would now like to ask Courtney who's from the Brandeis Alumni Group, who has been also very instrumental in helping us organize this session. We'd like to now first introduce the video, which gives a historical perspective from a visual approach.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Wonderful. I think we would all say that the video in itself was worth the price of admission. Just amazing memories. Thank you all who made this possible. And certainly we want to thank Maria and her son for the just amazing retrospective of our history, but for those students today who are students or will be students in the future, you will have your own history. You will have your own social justice movement just as previous generations have had. I'm hoping by the way, a suggestion to Courtney and Brandeis University, perhaps this video can be available for orientation for future incoming groups of Latinx students, as a chance for them to put it all in perspective and to have that amazing context. So thank you again for all of you, for being part of this and to Maria and Dio, just an amazing way to start the session.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
I will now introduce the panelists who will build upon these wonderful memories and share their experiences. And I'll briefly introduce them. You've seen them on the video. I'm Fernando Torres-Gil, I was a Heller graduate student, but I was also a residence counselor at Ridgewood. So gave me an opportunity to get to know the undergraduate students. One of them became my wife for 40 years Elvira Castillo. So I'd like to say at Brandeis, I received my MSW, PhD and my Mrs. I married a wonderful student from that university. Well, and we're going to move to the decades into the 1970s. We have Naomi Vega, from Brooklyn, she's introduced herself with graduate degrees in education, a long time professor and teacher in Puerto Rico. We will move into the 80s with, Norma Sanchez-Figueroa, who's from Connecticut, also Puerto Rican. Who's a judge and Connecticut, received her law degree and Boston University and has been practicing law as a Connecticut superior court judge.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And then we move into the 1990s with Blanca Elizabeth Vega who majored in anthropology, Ecuadorian, who is now a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey with her graduate degrees from Columbia University. And we move into the 21st century, the early part with, Cesar Ramirez who graduated in 2004 with a degree in psychology, lives in Florida, has his graduate degrees in organizational psychology, is a well-known consultant in the areas of personal coaching and human relations. And then to the current period, 2021 with Irma Reyes, who's majoring in international and global studies from Mexico, Chihuahua born, and raised in Kansas city and currently working on her master's in education. So as we can all see it's an accomplished group of Brandeis alums, and they are only the beginning of many more in the future who will make a big difference in this country and around the world with these types of professional successes.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
But now to hear from them, I'd like to pose to each of them in turn beginning with the 1970s. And Naomi essentially, what were your formative experiences and how has that influenced your personal and professional life and how might that lead to advice for other Latinx students? And it gives me pleasure to introduce Naomi Vega from the 1970s, please.
Naomi Vega:
Hello everybody, welcome to this activity. First of all, I want to say that when I got to Brandeis, there was no Latinx organization and we formed that or I was one of the founding members in the early 1970s. And, basically my experiences of Brandeis from very beginning, the first thing I got involved with was with the Puerto Rican Group, which, Elsie and Elsie Morales and Orlando Isas, I think is his last name, who's here today. I'm happy to see him after many years, I had formed this group that worked with the Puerto Rican community in Waltham. So I immediately, that was the first thing I got involved with. I was a social activist before I came to Brandeis, from high school. And, so at Brandeis, that experience of working in the Puerto Rican community of what's a very, very, satisfying experience, helping that community and we really expanded it and a lot of the new students that came in also got involved, as you could see in the video, they got involved with the Puerto Rican Group.
Naomi Vega:
The other thing is through Grito, we were very active in trying to get more Latino students at Brandeis, Latinx students at Brandeis. And, we won't, the video, tells you a little bit of history of the things that we were involved with. And also we were very involved in social activities outside of campus, like the anti-war movement in those videos that has a lot of Latino, Latinx students were involved in those demonstrations and on campus also with the Lettuce Boycott. So those that community that we form the Latinx students that came in after... When I came in 1969, Elsie was the only Puerto Rican there.
Naomi Vega:
And then I came in and there was another Puerto Rican who came in with me. So there were three of us. There may have been some other Latin American students, but you those come in through the Wein program, probably, mostly they came in through the Wein program. But basically, students on of underserved communities, there was just very few of us, three of us, the following year, many more came in. And again, through our efforts, we got more students coming in. And we formed a solid community of Latinx students, as you can see from that video, we were a family. And so that was just such a wonderful experience for me. And I can honestly say that some of the best experiences of my entire life were at Brandeis, that solid community that we had.
Naomi Vega:
And of course, for me, who came from... I was basically homeless before I came to Brandeis and now I had a home, and I had a full scholarship, and I had food, and I had books, and I had an education and it really wasn't an exquisite education. My class sizes were very, very small, because I majored in Latin American history. So classes were very small except for required general education courses, which were very large. So that experience at Brandeis was really one of the most important experiences in my life. And my professionally I've flourished and had lots of opportunities, because of my excellent education at Brandeis.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you, Naomi. And we'll be coming back to each of you to expand on these formative experiences. And I'd like to now move to a Norma from the class of 1984. Norma you're on mute. Norma you need-
Norma Sanchez:
Okay. I got it.
Norma Sanchez:
Thank you. And good morning to all. Those who have joined us today, I'm just going to make one slight correction. I attended Boston College law school, and I'm only correcting that because we were always rivals. So it's important that I acknowledged Boston College. So now let me thank you, it seemed like the 70s in your class, paved the path for us. My introduction to Brandeis was a bit unconventional. I started looking into college at a very young age, probably my sophomore year in high school. I learned, that Brandeis had a TYP program. So what I did, I became a lawyer even before I went to law school. I petitioned my high school to allow me to graduate after three years in high school, because I had fulfilled all my requirements. And mind you, I'm the first in the family to go to college, first in the family go to law school.
Norma Sanchez:
That was approved. I entered the TYP program, which was a great program for me. So TYP for me was my senior year of high school, which I learned so much, when I got to Brandeis, the first person I met when I arrived at Brandeis was a student named, Rafael DeLeon. And people probably know who he was, and he was in Usdan protesting because at that time they were protesting the South Africa, that vestment movement. And I got really excited, and I said, "I think I belong in this place." And that's what motivated me. But while at Brandeis, while at the TYP program, I met great English professors, who really helped me solidify my writing skills, which that's what I'm doing now. As I used it as a lawyer, use it now, writing decisions from the bench.
Norma Sanchez:
But my experience was, and supported me when I was at Brandeis Grito. It was known as Grito at the time we did become as a family, we supported each other, we provided books to each other because we couldn't afford to buy our own books. So they would share the books that they used in classes before and that was my family, while I was there, my support system. And I urge students today to find that niche, find that support system, because it's only going to help you get through, the years at Brandeis. I'm going to agree with Naomi my best years, or I'm going to say my best friends, were created at Brandeis, while at Brandeis, I also took the opportunity, because I wanted to travel to Spain.
Norma Sanchez:
I could not travel to Spain because my family didn't have the money to send me to Spain. So I learned that Brandeis had a program in Israel, that was run by Brandeis. And that was the only place I can take my financial aid with me. So I went there for a semester, actually I spent six months there. While there I was able to travel with some of my friends, to Egypt, but it was an experience of a lifetime that I would not have had otherwise. And I was the only non-Jewish person in this program. There were 12 of us, and that was the only non-Jewish, we would travel around everywhere and because of my color, my hair, people thought that I was an Arab, we would travel around, Israel and we would be lost and asked for direction. And all the answers were directed at me, because they thought I was an Arab or a native.
Norma Sanchez:
And it was a great experience. And when people would ask me, "Where are you from?" I said, "I'm from the United States." "No. Where are you from?" "Puerto Rico." They went, most of the time, didn't know where that was, but it was a great experience.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you very much, Norma. And we'll be coming back to each of you as well. And let's hear from Blanca from the great class of 1998.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Hello everyone. Thank you for, that introduction. And for that history. I'm sitting here really emotional because when I was a student from 1994 to 1998, and I'm a higher ed scholar. So I should say that I'm a higher ed scholar. I do race work in higher education. And I would say that Brandeis was transformative in the sense that while I have always been interested in areas of race and Latinidad, since I was like four or five years old, I used Brandeis to really understand that a little bit more and how that affects, Latinidad, and sort of racialization in the United States. So knowing the history now of what higher education institutions had been enduring in the 1990s, it gives me a little bit of sort of peace and context, right?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Higher education was embroiled in another era of racial conflict on their campuses. In fact, some of the research that we have now is based from that era. The other thing that's less known is how Latinos were starting to take the, sort of being shaped by higher education institutions. And this was the time when higher education institutions were bringing in more international students. And some folks mentioned sort of financial aid, and the international students don't receive federal aid from private institutions or from public institutions for that matter. So what I was experiencing in terms of, what Latino or Latin American was at Brandeis University, who were students organizers, or I wouldn't necessarily say they were activists, but they were part of student organizations were largely Latin American students who were able to afford Brandeis University.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
So that was my first introduction to what Latinos in at Brandeis really meant. Right? I was faced with a lot of, classism and racism. Right? So, I was met with Latin American folks who didn't feel like I spoke Spanish well enough. I was from New York, so I sounded different. I looked different from them, and many of my friends were also black, they were African-American. So, I started hearing more about why are you hanging out with them and now with us kind of thing. So the Latino organization that existed at the time, was called Aora. And that, I think was the descendant of, Nosotros. So there's a gap there that we should try to recover about what the Latino organizations at Brandeis really was about.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
I was not particularly happy with the, Aora organization at the time, because I felt like they were very celebratory in the sense that, there were parties and things that were celebrating Latino culture. But when I went into Brandeis University, I had seen so many problems. Right? The fact that there were not a lot of Latinos from the United States necessarily, or immigrants, Latin American students, who were low-income studentS, were not necessarily enrolled, at Brandeis University, which led to, sort of me sort of feeling undervalued, and the resources for students like me who came from low income, first generation, New York backgrounds, there were just not available resources. So I was for about two or three years very resistant to what the Latino organization, at Brandeis had to offer, until... And I was very much welcomed by the black community at Brandeis University.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
I was very much invited to the BSO meetings. And I learned from my friends who were in the BSO, that there was a difference between celebratory and institutional advancement, right? That there was a need to have joy. So the parties that we saw in the videos, right? But what we also saw in that video was that there was a lot of work around institutional advancement, and that's what we were missing at Brandeis University. So I had, in I would say about 1996, I had an idea, I wanted to do Hispanic Heritage Month. It was really pushed by universities at the time. And when I went to the Aora organization, they did not want to do it.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
They said we already have something, it's called Sancocho, it's three days. We really can't, we don't have more funding for that. So, this is when I knew, Dr. Nathaniel Mays, he was Rev. Mays at the time. And he was like, "We have to continue figuring out how do we, if you want to do Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month, you really should use the resources from, Aora, the organization." And I was still like, "But they don't want to do it. What do I do? You know what I mean? They don't want to do this. I mean, I like the party, but we really need a movement to let Brandeis know that they're too little of us here. There's not enough of us here who come from low-income backgrounds. Right?"
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
And Dr. Nathaniel Mays was like, "Nope, you got to go back. You got to figure it out. You've got to learn how to build community with these folks." So I went a couple more times, they reject the idea. and then finally in the last meeting, and this was not sanctioned by Dr. Nathaniel Mays, he did not say for me to do this, but I was like, he was like, "I told them, I'm going to do this by myself. If none of you want to do this, I'm going to do it on my own." And I was like, "So I don't need this organization." Yeah, I did. I needed the organization. I had no idea what I was talking about. I was what, like 19. I had no idea, right?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
So I go in, and then I leave the meeting and then I found that other students followed me out and they said, "Let's do this, let's figure this out." And so that's when, Dr. Nathaniel Mays came in, again, said, "You know you have to run for president now." And I was like, "What? I can't run for president for that group. I'm not going to do it. There's no way, I don't have any connection to that group. They all hate me. What does it look like me running for president?" He was like, "You got to do it. You got to run for president. If you want to do Hispanic Heritage Month, you got to do it." So here I am putting my name up for president and lo and behold, I became president of, Aora an organization that I had no idea, I did not like, I did not want to be a part of. I did not want anybody to think that I was part of this organization, because I had no idea that there was Grito and Nosotros before me. Right?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
No idea. Right? And this is what higher education does, right? It divorces us. And it's also what United States does. Right? It divorces us from our roots. Right? And we see it at the cultural level. We see it at the ethnic level. We see it at the racial level, but at the institutional level that was less explored. Right?
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Right.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Were no institutional folks to let us know that we had predecessors like Aora and I mean, Nosotros and Grito, and that's really what really shaped my understanding of Latinidad in the United States.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you, Blanca. And I'd like to come back to those very issues and let us now move to, Cesar Ramirez, the class of 2004, Cesar.
Cesar Ramirez:
Yes. Thank you, Fernando. Yeah, for me, just great segue. I really am grateful to be part of this. I'm learning as we go along about the history. So no prior exposure to so many decades prior. But, yeah, so I was there as, Fernando mentioned, from 2000 to 2004. And so the term Latinx, really started developing around 2004. So it wasn't called Latinx at the time, but it was Hispanic and Latino organization that I was a part of and Blanca, great segue, I was part of Aora. I was active. I do remember we used to meet about one time a week or so to connect, to socialize, discuss cultural events on campus, really help drive that awareness. So I guess the more from a lot of the parties, as you will recall, as we were mentioning to more of this education and so forth, and Hispanic Heritage Month, I do remember was very well celebrated and we tried to be as inclusive of everyone on campus.
Cesar Ramirez:
And all the action happened at, I remember at the Intercultural Center, so the ICC, but, yeah, also just being part of those cultural events, right? Dance performances. We had events where we had diverse food from Latin America and central America, the Sancocho that was mentioned before, the empandas, all of that, just educating, sharing the experience, and just indulging into delicious cuisines. Right? So all of that was great. In terms of just big experiences that I recall which helped shape me. And I'm just forever grateful for, five jump out to me, I'll keep it brief. But I was a Posse scholar.
Cesar Ramirez:
So I was very fortunate to have received this merit based leadership scholarship through the Posse Foundation, to attend Brandeis, if I never got that, I would have never gone. I did not have the money. This was full tuition, but essentially nine scholars and myself. So there were 10 scholars per year, got this. And prior to arriving to campus, we had leadership training. We connected prior and on campus to really drive, initiatives to provide support for others. Growing up in New York city, the Posse Foundation focused on inner cities. And so by default, it was diverse. And so we brought that diversity on campus. The second experience is just being a resident advisor. So similar to Fernando, I was a resident advisor for three years, and this helped create this social circle and made me feel connected or I created, an environment for my residents to feel connected, to share, to socialize. And then I just remember family, my family dropping me off, prior to going to college, visiting me those moments, my mother and father being there were just so important, for me to psychologically kind of reinvigorate and just know that I belong there.
Cesar Ramirez:
And then I guess, fourthly, the academics. Academics were tough, it was hard. I had never had so much exposure to heavy, heavy, just reading and exams. And so the fact that it was that intense, I did spend a lot of my life in the library just studying, but that coupled with liberal arts really helped me find what I wanted to do. And I fell in love with psychology, that's what I studied there. They didn't have business at the time, so I minored in economics, which kind of leads me to the fifth point, really, which is the career.
Cesar Ramirez:
Without Brandeis, I would have never been where I am today. And so I coupled the psychology and the economics at an internship summer of my junior year at Bloomberg Financial in HR, human resources. And from there onward, that was it. HR was kind of my bread and butter and got a full-time offer, and so forth. But yeah, those were the foundational experiences. Again, just great, great experiences, forever grateful of the Brandeis experience and Posse and, yeah, that's all for now.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you Cesar, and we'll be coming back to you as course. And lastly, but certainly not last because there'll be many more generations of Latinx students, but Irma from the class of 2021.
Irma Reyes:
Hi, Everyone. So I guess like for me, I came to Brandeis to 2017. So not that long ago, obviously it probably seems like super recent to a lot of you all who have been done with school for a really longtime. But when I got to Brandeis, so my whole life, I attended public schools and they were predominantly black and Latinx. Everyone was from the same neighborhoods as me, like low income neighborhoods. So I never really knew how challenging or the systemic reasons for a lot of the stuff that I experienced, when I was going through my public education system until I was like in high school and stuff like that. But I am a first generation college student. I was like, I need to go to college in order to succeed, in order to help my mom out, all this other stuff.
Irma Reyes:
And so I somehow I ended up at Brandeis. And I remember my first semester at Brandeis, I absolutely hated it. I did not like it at all. This was my first time being around this many people. It was very weird. I was very uncomfortable. I hated the food, the food was awful, my neighbors were annoying, everything about it. I just did not like it, the classes I just felt super left out. I felt afraid to speak up in class because I felt like I was going to come off as uneducated. I felt like I looked weird because all of my clothes are thrifted and pretty low quality. And everyone else looks super nice and had all these expensive things. So pretty much everything about my experience at Brandeis when I first was there was not fun. I did not like anything about it.
Irma Reyes:
So I ended up staying a lot in my room and not doing anything, which kind of made things worse, and made me hate it more. Because I was having fun at there at all. But then I attended like, it was actually, Incendio, is what we call it, it's like the Hispanic or Latinx Heritage Month Celebration. I attended that because my roommate, she's my white roommate, but she told me, she was like, "Hey, Irma, did you see this event is happening? It's like for Latinx students, you should definitely go." And she was willing to go with me even though she wasn't part of the community. And so we ended up going, and I really enjoyed it. It was kind of raggedy. I'm not going to lie.
Irma Reyes:
It wasn't the best event I've ever been to, but I was like, "Wow! It's so cool to see that there is a Latinx community here on campus and I want to be involved more." So then I didn't end up getting involved that semester because I was super busy. It was like, I was still getting used to Brandeis. So then my next semester I joined the dance group, which is called Line Extreme. So I joined that because I was like, this is fun, this is a way for me to meet people. I love dancing, whatever, seems like less of a commitment. And I don't think at the time I was aware that like the BLSO, Brandeis Latinx Student Organization was doing any elections or looking for any new executive board members.
Irma Reyes:
So I didn't think to like ask or anything. And through there I made friends with some other Latinx students, especially a lot that were already on BLSO's E-Board. And so I started getting more and more involved. And I would say that throughout my time there, I ended up becoming president my second semester of sophomore year, which was kind of scary because I didn't really know what I was doing. I had only been on the E-Board for about a month and I was like an event coordinator and we were doing like, I was helping out with events. But at the time I felt like BLSO was very unstable. It wasn't very well organized, the events that we were putting on were kind of unsuccessful. I didn't see that there was huge attendance except for Incendio, that was the only event that a lot of people were attending and other than that, people were not coming out to our general meetings really.
Irma Reyes:
So I kind of wanted to take charge and make some changes and make BLSO a well-established organization on campus, because it felt like no one knew that we were there, because I didn't know that they were really there, that they were doing any of these events that we were actually organizing until I was actually on E-Board. So I ended up getting a lot of younger people are like, yeah. First year, even though I was a second year, but a lot of younger people to join our E-Board, and started making a lot of like administrative changes to the organization. So the amount of members who were there, what kind of events we were holding, things like that and just trying to make it a lot more well put together.
Irma Reyes:
And so kind of like Blanca and was mentioning, there was a big challenge because I feel that a lot of... The Latinx experience is so different to people. We have also international Latin American students, and they don't interact with U.S-based Latinos at all, they're a whole distinct world, like Blanca was saying, they kind of live in their own kind of world, in their own bubble that don't interact with us. They see us as different, or they don't understand the U.S systems that we've operated under and why we act in this way or why we are this way. So there's a huge distinction there. And even among U.S-based Latinos, there's a huge difference because some people are coming from different socioeconomic classes. Some people, are white and live a white experience on campus as Latinos.
Irma Reyes:
And some people take advantage of their light skin and incorporate themselves into those white groups and continue to exist as white students in those spaces. And then we also have Afro-Latinos who do not feel comfortable in the BLSO space because they don't feel identified in that space. And then we have brown Latinos who sometimes don't feel comfortable coming out to these events or they kind of navigate both of those worlds and don't necessarily feel like they need to be in this space. And so it kind of felt like we were never really sure what Latinx students wanted. So for me, I knew that something that I really wanted from the organization was to see a lot more responsiveness to the political state of Latinx people in the United States. And so, I took a lot of initiative to start making more events that were talking about these relevant issues.
Irma Reyes:
We've held immigration teachings, we've held career panels. We've held an indigenous eraser workshop last semester. We've had like Afro-Latinx people, speakers come and talk to us about their experiences. So I definitely tried to kind of change like the way that BLSO is, what our focus is. But at the same time, I felt like a lot of students didn't want to come to those events, because those were our popular, but people really loved coming out to, Incendio and our parties and stuff, which is really frustrating because I feel like as an organization that was founded on political movements and activism, seeing what students want now, because they are privileged and their identities, and don't feel the need to be a part of the community, is really frustrating for the few of us who do want to seek that community, because it's only us at those events, It's always only like our E-Board members and a few of our friends.
Irma Reyes:
So, I don't know, I would say for my experience with the Latinx community on campus, a lot of my experiences were around trying to implement change through BLSO, never really feeling supported by a lot of the community members, which sucks because this is who I was trying to connect with. And it felt like there was no connection. And then administratively, in a lot of the white spaces, they don't even know that cultural clubs exist on campus. And so there was just no allyship, no support. And so for me the whole experience was really frustrating. I feel like I've done a lot through what I did with BLSO, and I'm really happy about it.
Irma Reyes:
But at the same time, the whole experience was really frustrating. And I feel like right now there's room for growth and there's room for space to improve BLSO as a whole, but I also think that there should be a lot more space for, I just don't know. I don't know exactly what students want and I don't know how we can achieve that, like integrate, the connection. I think there's just a missing link between, what we're trying to do as an organization and what the community as a whole, what their experiences are. So it's kind of hard to navigate that, but I don't know, I think we have some strong executive board members as some of them are actually here. So I'm excited to see what they do with the organization in the upcoming years. I know that they have my full support, and I'm still in connection with them. And so I kind of just hope that there's more community members that want to be involved and that, feel that sense of community in the events that we're holding and stuff.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you, Irma. Thank you for bringing us up to the present, but also for your efforts to continue that legacy that began back with Naomi's era. So we're going to, in the last 30 minutes, attempt to do two things, one, I'm going to present a series of questions to the panelists, they can share their dialogue, but we also want to allow time for those who are on the Zoom, our attendees, participants, to also ask questions, which you can do via the chat. But let me just begin. And of course we'll want to keep our answers rather concise so that we can make good use of the remaining 30 minutes, but Naomi and Cesar, given what Naomi we've heard-
Jose Perez:
[foreign languange]
Fernando Torres-Gil:
... So, Naomi and Cesar, given what you've heard, how would you suggest that students face the challenges of diversity, equity and inclusion at Brandeis?
Jose Perez:
[foreign language]
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And it's always good to hear Jose in the background. Naomi and Cesar.
Naomi Vega:
Well, basically, did you ask how did we face the challenges of diversity? Is that what you asked?
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Yes.
Naomi Vega:
Okay. I just want to say that when I went to Brandeis, I feel very comfortable with the Afro-American community. I didn't mentioned that before, and I think I want to mention that because my background in high school, and in my community, I was very involved with the Afro-American community. So, I didn't feel any challenge because I was so, I felt comfortable even though there weren't a lot of Latinx students there. But I felt very comfortable, being in the Afro-American community and Afro-American studies, I took courses in that. And then being very involved with the Puerto Rican Group. Now, I don't know, it seems like the Puerto Rican Group doesn't exist anymore.
Naomi Vega:
Because, Waltham, it's there's a Waltham Group and Puerto Rican Group came out of the Waltham Group. And the Waltham Group was an organization that did social action in the community, did work in the community. So I don't know if that exists anymore, but basically that's, I just want to say also, I didn't feel any kind of, with the white community... I never even had a white friend the whole time I was there, nor did I have any need for it or wanted, I just didn't.
Naomi Vega:
But I didn't feel any discrimination at all from anybody. But I'm a very outspoken person, so I wasn't intimidated by anything anybody could ever say, but I felt, even though my first year I had, my roommate was white and she and I had a lot of fights, because she was extremer right and I was extreme left. So there was a lot of friction there, but that didn't bother me either. I just went along and did my own thing, and I didn't worry about it. So, the challenge is really to be, feel self-assured that you can survive if you're outspoken, if you have a lot of high self-esteem of yourself, which I did. I don't know how, but I did. So that was how I felt. And I didn't have any problems, any challenges in dealing with inclusion at Brandeis.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And Cesar, your views on that.
Cesar Ramirez:
Yeah, absolutely. For me, I think being a minority at Brandeis, again from 2000, 2004, I think by default, you felt like you were limited in numbers. I felt that, very clearly. And sometimes I didn't feel like I belonged. I mean, fortunately because of Posse, again, inner city high school students, there was some level of diversity, that was like my go-to people. Beverly I see her in the audience, she was also there. So, by default there were some connections made also my... Well, a couple of things, Brandeis, is well, historically, a Jewish institution, I think when I was there 65% or so of the population was Jewish. And so there wasn't as much diversity. And again, coming from New York, this was a bit of a culture shock.
Cesar Ramirez:
I think my personality definitely helped though, to break through these barriers, if you will, to just thrive to Excel, to network, again, Posse, being a resident advisor that helped me really just overcome these feelings of not seeing as much diversity or feeling like I belonged that 100%. I think if I had, if I was more of an introvert, I would've struggled so much more, because I would have felt just harder to... It would've been harder to just build these relationships. And then in terms of equity, just in general, I guess how Brandeis operated, I did feel like it was a good playing field.
Cesar Ramirez:
I felt like I had the right resources to turn to, whether it was career services, student support services, tutoring, professors, I felt like there was that feeling of equity to a certain extent. And yeah, that would be, I guess my answer for that Fernando.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Well, building on that, for Blanca and Norma, the fact is that Latinx students and our black brothers and sisters were all in the, "Minority." So our question is how did you Blanca on Norma, how did you interact with the non-Latinx, the non African-American community at Brandeis since they were obviously the majority and how might that give us some positive lessons or some advice for other students who might be, "In a minority?" Norma, your thoughts on that? I mean, Blanca, excuse me, we'll go first with Blanca. How would you interact with the non-Latinx community at Brandeis?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
So I will say that I grew up, not just working class, poor New York, but I also grew up Catholic. Right? And so before I left to, Brandeis, my mom gave me an escapulario. So like a little across that I would wear around my neck. And so I went to... That was like a protective thing my mom sent it to be, [foreign language], all that stuff and they were terrified, when they first came to Brandeis to drop me off. They were absolutely terrified, they were like, one I can't speak to anyone in Spanish here, and two who's going to feed my kid? Right?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Within the first week, students were invited to different, barbecues in North Quad, and all that stuff. And I had no idea what kosher was, but there was a kosher line and there was a non-kosher line. And my friend Beth was like, "You go get the hot dogs." Tiff, so my other friend was like, "You go get the hamburgers," and then we all come together and... Because this was a group of women of color and working class, some white women that we met within that first week, we lived on the same floor and we all became fast friends. And so when I was collecting, the hot dogs for my group, whoever was at the front, I was told later it was a resident assistant who happened to be a white male.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
And Jewish, right? He pretended like he was giving me hot dogs and then gave it to the next person standing next to me. And he kept doing that, then after a while, you're a New Yorker. You're like, "Yeah, dude, I'm going the other way. I don't know what you're trying to do right now, but I should go." Right? And as I walk away, he said, "What is this Jews for Jesus?" That was my first introduction to the non-student of color community at Brandeis University, one of my first introductions. Unfortunately that kind of experience was, something that, again makes me very emotional because I wasn't the only one who experienced those kinds of incidents. Right?
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Where, these were obviously racists, these were obviously, anti everything that I could have imagined. Right? So, there was no way for me to really bridge, I would say with the community at Brandeis, but I also know now, as a higher education scholar, that again, racial tensions were really high in the 90s. Right? And there was a need for different communities to hold tight onto what they had because they felt like they had a loss of... And this is research, I'm not saying anything, that's new here. But white communities felt very threatened by a growing group of people of color in higher education spaces. Right? We are experiencing that today with the backlash of CRT. So we saw that critical race theory.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
So we saw that in the 90s a lot. Right? There was kind of like a tightening of the reins of resources, right? Because they felt that they were probably not receiving them in the name of admitting diverse students, students of color. I did not know that at the time. Right? So one of the things that we need to do to prepare students is to prepare them with the language to defend themselves against these racial microaggressions and racial macroaggressions, these racists messaging that students are often given and that they're not prepared to face when they go to college. So that's, what I would say is one way to be able to address these issues, is to have higher education administrators, and folks on campuses to be able to provide the language to students of color, to be able to face, have that arsenal of weapons to be able to face racist aggressions on campus.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Important advice. Thank you. And, Norma, your thoughts on this subject. Norma, you're on mute.
Norma Sanchez:
Okay.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
There you go.
Norma Sanchez:
There we go. Again, I'm going to agree with Blanca in terms of needing those resources and the language and to be able to handle this kind of treatment and feeling. I mean, for me at Brandeis, I didn't have such an avert experience such as yours, Jews for Jesus. But it was definitely, an underlying something that wasn't spoken, but you always felt like you didn't belong. And I didn't know whether it was because I was a woman of color or a student of color, or because I was not Jewish, but it was definitely there. I mean, you're on a floor with probably predominantly whites and Jews, and you share a bathroom clearly, and people don't speak to you. So it was a very difficult experience. And for me, the saving grace was my involvement with Grito that later became, Nosotros.
Norma Sanchez:
And I think it became, Nosotros when I was still there and I don't know why, but it became, Nosotros. So it was definitely a feeling of, you do not belong. What I advice because I always did make, took it upon myself to engage and to be involved, and to be noticed. In other words, I don't care what you think about me. I do belong here and I didn't get here because yes, I come from a lower income, but I didn't get here because they allowed me to come in, even though I do not qualify, because that sometimes was the perception too, why you here? Why didn't you go to a community college? That, again, wasn't an overt thing, but you always felt like you didn't belong.
Norma Sanchez:
Irma brought up a very important thing. Yes. In the classroom, I was afraid of raising my hand. I always felt that everyone was looking at you and you were afraid that you weren't going to sound intelligent enough, or that you were grasping the material that was being presented to you. So that feeling was always there. And I believe that part of that is because you always looked around, and you were the only one in the classroom. So, the importance of having more diversity, both in cultural diversity and in color is important. Because, we had students also, they were many, many students who came in directly from Puerto Rico, when I was there. They did not associate with the Grito, either because they weren't fair skin, or came from better economic backgrounds than most of the us Latino students.
Norma Sanchez:
But there was always a division. I knew who was from Puerto Rico, because you look at the book that you get the first year with your picture on it. And you had all these people who came from, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, Guaynabo, we used to get that all the time, but they would never let themselves known walk by you on campus and did not acknowledge you. So social, economic color differences was definitely there when I was there. But I knew that I had ambition. I wanted to go to law school and I have to become involved in whether or not people didn't, would not like what I was going to say. I raised my hand and said it, but not everyone has that courage.
Norma Sanchez:
And I think the administration really needs to... I graduated in 1984, based on what I'm hearing, those things still exist. And it's concerning, my daughter is a freshman in college and she got into Brandeis. I didn't that influence her decision, but I was very concerned about what her experience was going to be. Thankfully, she said she didn't want to be in Boston, she wanted to be in New York. But, that was one of my biggest concerns because I know, although I made the best of my experience at Brandeis, to the point that I got into a great law schools. And I have all of that.
Norma Sanchez:
I'm very grateful for the educational experience I had at Brandeis, because as Cesar said, "I was bombarded of reading all these books, preparing, writing 20 page papers." All of that, that I did not get in high school, I got at Brandeis and it made me who I am today, academically. And when I walk into a room, and people ask, "Where did you go to school?" "Brandeis University," the eyes that are open because of that, their reaction, "Oh, you went to Brandeis. My, niece applied there and didn't get there, and they're Jewish." So that reaction, when I was interviewed to become a judge, the same thing, "Brandeis University. Wow!" So, I do have a lot to be grateful for because Brandeis adequately prepared me for my career, but I was extremely concerned when my daughter said, "Oh, mommy, I got into Brandeis, dah, dah, dah."
Norma Sanchez:
I didn't think she was going to have a problem getting in, but I was concerned. And when she says, "I don't want to go there, I'm going here." But that became a very big thing for me as, as a Brandeis graduate, based on my experience.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you, Norma. That was important feedback. And I want to begin to kind of wrap up and Irma, I think when we all want to both address the many issues that have been raised here in this panel, certainly to rebel and the fact that we had a great academic education, but, Irma how can we as alums, alumni, be a resource to Latinx, both today and to those considering Brandeis and to those like Norma's daughter that might be accepted to Brandeis, and maybe to have them feel more comfortable about considering going there. Irma your thoughts, how can we as alums be supportive?
Irma Reyes:
Yeah. So I think some of the thoughts that you all are already sharing in the chat are a great idea. I think that like Blanca was mentioning, I think a lot of... There's a lack of support for the work that we do. I think, I was talking to some of the current E-Board members and we were talking about how challenging it is to push for change when there's no student support behind that. It's constantly the same group of people doing the same work on top of the super rigorous academics and extracurriculars, and part-time jobs. And everything else that we have to work on. It's very challenging, especially when there's no support from the community itself to implement those changes. And there's also no support from anyone else.
Irma Reyes:
So it's literally just us doing all of that work, which I think makes it really draining and really difficult to continue and push for more and to do things right. Because I think sometimes things kind of fall through the cracks when you're already tired and you're the only one doing the work. So I do think that a lot more support from the alumnus in whatever way that you all can contribute, I think would be amazing. Something that we talked about was potentially, some type of network that would actually put us in communication. A lot of us, I know before I had tried to organize an alumni panel, in previous years and I had reached out to alumni relations, and they never got back to me, even though I emailed them multiple times.
Irma Reyes:
And this was something that I think I shared with Elsie when we first started talking, and telling them, "We have been trying to do this and no one has been willing to support us. There's no way for us to connect with you all. We have no idea..." Before this, we had no idea who was an alumni, there's no records of you all anywhere that we can access, they wouldn't share that information with us. I think I got in touch with Blanca because she was a keynote speaker, what was it? It was around the world, the diversity, for new incoming students or something. And that's how we got in touch with Blanca. And it's really only through events that they're willing to put on that we're able to connect with you all.
Irma Reyes:
And so I think a more direct network would be amazing to ensure that you all are connecting with us as current students. I think a lot of us also struggle with transitioning out of college and finding careers, and having the support of alumni who are already in those careers, and well-established, and could provide networking opportunities for us within those fields, and job opportunities, internship opportunities would be amazing because we have to do all that work ourselves, which is fine. We all had to do the work ourselves, but having those connections would be amazing, because we really don't have very many Latinx professors on campus who are willing to do that for us.
Irma Reyes:
I think this could happen either through a LinkedIn group or a Facebook group where people like alumni are posting opportunities and students are posting questions, advice, requests, things like that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Oh yeah. I think also just staying in touch with us about events that we're hosting and supporting those events. We put on a lot of amazing events throughout the semester and we have a pretty big, Latinx Heritage Month celebration. And I'm always, I mean, when I was organizing those events, I would always reach out to professors and staff, and trying to reach out to alumni, and an inviting you all to attend. And there was almost never any responses or any people actually attending those other than students.
Irma Reyes:
And so seeing that actual support at our events, having those connections with you all, we would love to have more keynote speakers, more alumni panels, more career networking opportunities, things like that would be amazing. And also just in regards to the type of support that we would use, in our activism work on campus, I think there are a lot of institutional changes that need to be put into place. I think a lot of you all have already been through these experiences of sitting in Brandeis and seeing that there's no support from the administrative side that there's just a lot of bureaucracy that happens, that makes things impossible to actually follow through.
Irma Reyes:
In the chat I was talking about, how a lot of our requests for funding gets rejected due to a pretty racist and not culturally aware funding policies that happen through the student union. And even though there has been a lot of pushback from cultural clubs on campus, little has been done to change. And there's also a lot of discrimination and colorism within those policies as well. We as mixed light skin, brown skinned organization end up getting a lot more funding than our black student organization does, than our Caribbean culture club does.
Irma Reyes:
And we've tried to use that to help them out and try to get them more funding, and letting them know, you guys can request more because they are giving us some, and if they're giving us money, they can give you money. And so there's just a lot of moving parts that I think you all can support us in. And I think just being in communication with us would really help, because that way you all know what we're working on and in what ways you can support, Because it's hard to say, "Do this one thing, because that might change next semester, that might look different in six months than it does right now."
Irma Reyes:
And I think just staying in touch is really important and making sure we're building those connections and that community, even as we like move out from Brandeis, because what happened to everyone from before, between the 80s and the 90s, or between 2004 and 2020, we don't have any connections to those people. And I think it's really important to actually building the rest of the story, and knowing how we can support each other moving forward.
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Is there a liaison with the Brandeis alumni connections? I know that often the work is often placed on students to do this kind of work, so they don't have the incentive to support the work that you're trying to put forth, Irma. So that should be something that you should be aware of. Often students are not incentivized to do this work. So, there needs to be structures and administrative positions in place, whether it's somebody in alumni relations that's connecting to the Latino students alumni, Latino student organizations. There should be someone in admissions that's doing this kind of work. But the populations right now at Brandeis, the Latino population does not reflect that those resources are not necessary. They actually reflect that those resources are important. So probably one way to be able to do this work is to push administration to do that kind of connection.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
And, Blanca and Irma, just building on that very important advice, we only have a few minutes. I wanted to ask someone that I think that worked on this for quite some time to say a few words as we wind up. Jose Perez, who's been very active in many ways, bringing us together. And my brother, Jose, can you say a few words about building on Blanca and it was a great advice, and feedback?
Jose Perez:
Sure, Fernando. Thanks. Listen, I agree with what I've heard. And one of the things that we've been doing is as the alumni of color is working to build those types of connections that we need to broaden our outreach, we've been having now on a monthly basis what's called a diversity initiative meetings. My term as vice president of the Alumni Association is up June 30th. And Napoleon who's on here will replace me. I will go back, but one of the things that we're pushing on, there's two things, one is I think the Alumni Association is building on how to be a network to other people, so we can be resources and mentors, and those types of things, and employment. So we need to do better at that. The other thing is which I had also, by the way, Lewis Brooks who's the president of the Alumni Association is on, is the issue of hiring people of color.
Jose Perez:
Because part of the issue about how do you respond to students and alumni needs, is to have people of color do. And we're working on that, there's been tremendous amount of pressure. As a matter of fact, Elsie emailed me, one of the things I'm seeking is to get more people involved because as the old guy from the 70s know, the only way you get stuff done is to create pressure, okay? And make change. So those things are on moving and ongoing. I would encourage everybody to join the alumni, So BConnect, or... And again, I'm not a techie, but this BConnect, and you have a bunch of networks, media networks that are being created in order to break down some of the silos that prevent people from doing that. And, I don't know if Louis or Napoleon want to add a few words, but I know they were both online or at least I thought, because I'm on my iPhone.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Great. Thank you so much, Jose. And let's just have one more comment.
Orlando:
Can I say a couple of words?
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Please.
Orlando:
Just to complete the history. I'm going back to the 60s. I came to Brandeis in 65, in 67, I believe I was taking a course with Gordy Feldman. I was beginning to see a lot of Latinos, Latin people in Waltham. And I was really concerned that nobody knew anything about it. And so I asked Gordy Feldman if he would allow me to do a tutorial, to find out who these people were and what was going on. I conducted a census of the Puerto Rican people in town. I looked at the census data of 1960 and I believe it said something like there were 38 Latin people in Waltham. I did my sensors and I actually interviewed, I think about 138 households of Puerto Rican's, of course I don't need to go into the issues that they had to face in those days. Simultaneously, I think in '68, Mark Kaufman approached me to be part of the Waltham Group that they were creating.
Orlando:
And I said, "No, I wouldn't do that. But I would be glad to create a parallel organization to work, not just in education and tutoring of white kids in town, but also to address the issues of poverty, inequality, and discrimination in Waltham against the Puerto Rican people." So I started the Puerto Rican Group and accessed some of the few Spanish speaking students in the Waltham Group to begin to work with us on issues of education and so on, and so forth in Waltham. So that was the beginning of the Puerto Rican Group, which later became the central Latino. Well, even before that, I will say something that is quite important, in '68, of course, after the death of, the assassination of Martin Luther king, there was one other Latino, non-Wein student I was, Roberto Marquez, on campus.
Orlando:
And Roberto Marquez and I, and many, just a few of them of the African-American students at the time, began putting pressure on the institution, on Brandeis to do something about it. And so that was beginning of the transitional year program. Roberto and I became teachers on TYP. And Roberto started the Third World Organization, to marriage, Latino people in town and the African-American students in town, the new TYP students in the college. One interesting anecdote that is really not really publicly known, is that the day called Ford Hall, actually started at the first meeting of the Third World Organization, with the insight, Ford Hall. I attended that meeting and we hosted an emissary from San Francisco State to talk about what was going on at San Francisco State.
Orlando:
At that meeting. I said, "Look, I mean, you are asking us to sign the paper to support you. I don't think that's sufficient. I don't think that helps anybody. We need to do something else. Something like what was going on at Columbia University with the takeover." I left the meeting and within an hour I was called, I actually left the meeting to go to the Puerto Rican Group office, in the boys club in Waltham. And then I got a call from a friend saying, "Hey, guess what the TYP students just to cover Ford Hall comeback." So I came back to Ford Hall and I became the secret negotiator with Abraham of the so-called non-negotiable demands. So that's just to complete the history. So-
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you.
Orlando:
... we were involved in many different ways prior to the-
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you so much, really appreciate just taking us back to the very beginning. And-
Roberto:
Thanks, Orlando.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
... we have sadly run out of time, a quick comment, Roberto. And we're going to have to close. Please.
Roberto:
No, I think Orlando has pretty well summarized it. The only thing that I would add, as I listened to much younger generations of folks there, is that there was a time at Brandeis when, in an ironic kind of way. And I think Orlando and I are kind of representative of that, in an ironic kind of way, when I got to Brandeis, I was literally the only Puerto Rican on the entire campus.
Orlando:
Yeah. The only one.
Roberto:
The only one and the only Latin American from the United States.
Orlando:
Except for the Wein students.
Roberto:
Exactly. But the Wein students were foreigners, in the sense that they were coming in with a foreign scholarship. So I had absolutely no constituency on campus. Absolutely none except for the Afro-American students, which was a grand total of four people.
Orlando:
That's right.
Roberto:
And because of that, we first began in Afro-American group day, which Lloyd Daniels and I put together.
Orlando:
And Roy Dewberry.
Roberto:
And Roy Dewberry who came later, he came after we actually had it together.
Orlando:
That's right.
Roberto:
He became the president because I was graduating and Lloyd was going on to something else. But what I'm trying to get at is that I'm very, I'm struck by the repetitions of the younger folk, of a lot of the stuff, but also I'm struck by how more isolated than we were even, they sound, because I frankly didn't feel that isolated, I felt lonely, there's a difference.
Orlando:
Right.
Norma Sanchez:
Of course.
Roberto:
There's a real difference between being isolated and being lonely. I was absolutely lonely at that place, but I was not isolated.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Thank you, Roberto.
Roberto:
And wait, no, there's when someone gave the story about the two lines for food things. And I was struck because I had the exact same experience, but a quite different ending. I didn't know that there was anything like a different religious food line. Okay? So I went through that line for no other reason than that it was shorter, I'm from New York, I don't want to be on a bigger line. So I went-
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Me either, I agree with you, I agree with you, Roberto that was in the '90.
Roberto:
... Yeah. I went and I said, "Hey, man, I'm going to get into this line on the shorter line." So I got into the line and I'm coming through, starting to pick up my food and the lady across the way it looks at me and scans, kind of peculiar, but she was kind of, this is the civil rights area too. So she was kind of not sure how to handle it. And then she said, "You don't belong here." Those were exact words, "You don't belong here." And that boy, that was the wrong thing to say to me at that time. And I'm from Spanish Harlem. And I got my hackles up and I said, "What the hell do you mean I don't belong here?"
Roberto:
And she said, "Oh, no, no, no, no. That's not what I meant." She was not talking about race. She was talking about religion.
Orlando:
Yeah. I went through the same.
Roberto:
And she said, "No-
Blanca Elizabeth Vega:
Me too in the '90s.
Roberto:
... She said, "This is at the kosher line." She said, "You have to be religious and you have to do this, that." And we both started laughing, because we were both aware that we both read that as racial.
Norma Sanchez:
Right.
Naomi Vega:
I think that's part of the problem.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
Roberto and Orlando we to thank you. I really regret having to close it up, but we're going to be losing this connection. But Roberto and Orlando, you were the pioneers. You can see how things have progressed into this current generation, much work needs to be done. Let me thank all of you. I wish this was a two, three hour, but I'm hoping, we're hoping this is the beginning of an intergenerational dialogue with all of us and intergenerational connections with Brandeis University and supporting the current and future Latinx students.
Fernando Torres-Gil:
So I just want to thank you all, the chats were very important, a chance to connect. And for all those who brought us together, whether Maria or Naomi, or those who organized us, certainly Elsie, thank you so much. This is only the beginning, this is not a goodbye, but I'm going to thank you all. And we're going to now be signing off, but please follow-up on the chat discussions and your opportunities to stay involved. So wonderful day, enjoy the rest and here's to the future Latinx students at Brandeis. Thank you very much.