Reigniting Tradition & Building Community with Latinos Unidos

          A leading presence on the Lawrenceville campus celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month is Latinos Unidos. Co-advised by Josefina Ayllón-Ayllón and Laura Noboa-Berman, Latinos Unidos is an affinity group for students, an open space to all students who identify as Latine or Hispanic. According to Ayllón, the club’s mission has always been to “provide a space for Latine and Hispanic students to express their culture and share it with the Lawrenceville community.” 
         

          While the club has a significant presence on campus by organizing many events both during and after Hispanic Heritage Month, co-president Ally Calderon ’24 recalls that this productivity was not always the case. Entering the School in the midst of the pandemic, Caledron said the club had “lost a lot of their traditions over Covid-19.” As this year’s leader, Calderon wanted the School to “remember the collective memory of what Latinos Unidos was,” which eventually led to them redefining it. Hearing that the club was dying out at the beginning of her time at Lawrenceville, Calderon made it a goal to improve the affinity group during her period on the board. From the first two months of the school year alone, Calderon said Latinos Unidos has already “done a great job of being very active”— a thought echoed by co-president Josue Ramos ’24. Transitioning from the pandemic, the club, according to Ramos has “been able to hold in-person meetings, which is what [the club] is meant for.”

          During the current school year, Latinos Unidos has held an impressive number of campus-wide events. From holding its first Almuerzo en Español session where students practice their Spanish-speaking skills to hosting a “Lunch and Dialogue” exploration, Latinos Unidos has offered a variety of events for all types of interests. The club conducted its first closed meeting of the year, during which students ate cultural foods. As Vice President Sofia Bonilla ’24 explains, these meetings, compared to school-wide events, focus more on providing “a space where [students] know that everyone else there shares some aspect of culture with [them].”

          When asked to define what Latinos Unidos means to them, the board members shared similar sentiments about the feeling of community they found in the club. Bonilla felt that it was “a big part of [her] feeling more comfortable at Lawrenceville.” Similarly, as co-president, Ramos believes that the club is “a community in which [students] can share [their] identities.” Calderon sums it up with her goal to help Latine students “feel welcome and connected to each other” as a minority group on campus. Although Hispanic Heritage Month has come to a close, the club has prepared several all-school events for the coming weeks aimed to further its goals of sharing Latine culture to the wider community at Lawrenceville.