La Unidad is a cultural organization at Mount Holyoke College that was established in 1976. During that time period, a large part of the organization was made up of Latinx students and allies to our community. In the past, LaU members have attended and contributed to several conferences, including a conference hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our home is located in the Eliana Ortega Cultural Center, founded on November 15th, 1995, and named after Professor Eliana Ortega. Alongside Professor Ortega, we have Professor Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, who was taught at Mount Holyoke for 30 years and was the longtime advisor for LaU.

Given this brief history and Mount Holyoke’s time of existence, we want to highlight that it wasn’t until the 1950s that Mount Holyoke began to address its problems with exclusion of historically underrepresented people. With the creation of the Cultural Centers on campus during this time period, we want to acknowledge that there is still more work to be done, and we want to include that in the conversation we will be having with Professor Alberto Sandoval.

That being said, today we want to discuss the experience of being a Latinx person coming to Mount Holyoke, as we all come from very different locations and backgrounds but hold a similar identity that unites us here. We will be asking Professor Sandoval questions about his time adjusting to MHC as a Latinx professional and asking him what we as students can do to adopt better practices that curate a stable, long-lasting space on campus for future MHC students. We will bring in alumni who have been in conversations with Professor Sandoval and ask them questions about their experience at Mount Holyoke. The Latinx identity can be a very ambiguous one due to the nature of racial formation in the United States. Identity shapes our experiences, but how did alumni navigate their identity at a PWI? What advice can they give to current students when applying to internships and jobs to prepare for after graduation? We want to connect our current Latinx students with past ones in order to gain a better sense of the history of Latinidad at Mount Holyoke College.

(We invite all BIPOC students, staff, and faculty to attend our online panel.)

Facilitators: Nazareth Castro, she/her, Alumni Liasion of La Unidad, Jude Barrera, he/they, Editor-in-Chief of Vida (under La Unidad)
Panelists: Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez