Abstract
Daisy Verduzco Reyes’s Learning to be Latino: How Colleges Shape Identity Politics is a comparative ethnography of six student organizations, two in each of three college settings. One student organization at each campus was politically oriented. The three college environments are all geographically proximate in California, and the same time frame was used for the fieldwork at all three schools.
The liberal arts college (LAC) in the study is residential, highly selective, and appears to have a national and international student body. Nearly every student lives in campus housing. The research university (RU) is a public research university with 40 percent of students living on campus. It is also selective, admitting fewer than half of its applicants. At both LAC and RU, Latino students constituted 11 percent of the student body at the time of the study. The regional public university, RPU, draws its students mostly from its local area; many of its students are transfers from local community colleges, and they commute to class. At RPU, 45 percent of the students were Latino. Many RPU students live with their families and work at least part-time. One conclusion of the study is that the stratified nature of higher education in the United States ultimately serves to fracture the Latino community.
Reyes is meticulous in describing the details of her field work, including the issues with gaining access to the campuses and to the student organizations. It was interesting, for example, that Latino fraternities and sororities tended to refuse permission for the study. In the end, she decided to use student organizations that included both men and women. She describes how she went about attending the organizations’ meetings and events, the history and structure of the various organizations, and her interviews with faculty and administrators. Her individual student respondents were mostly first-generation Mexican-origin students. The first four chapters of the book and the methodological appendix would be particularly valuable in undergraduate classes that teach general research methods or that focus on fieldwork.
The last four chapters of the book analyze in greater depth how students negotiated their identity, using information from student interviews. Terminology was an important part of this analysis, and campus environment shaped student preferences. Most student respondents disliked the term Hispanic, viewing it as a term developed by government agencies and harkening back to colonialism and neo-colonialism. The term Chicano carried connotations of Mexican origin, and it was therefore potentially exclusionary for student members of these organizations whose origins were in Central American countries such as El Salvador. For others, Chicano also carried connotations of an orientation toward activism of a particular type. The term Latino was described as pan-ethnic in that it included students whose origins were in any Latin American country or from several countries. The RPU students were distinctive in preferring national origin labels, such as Mexican American.
Also important for understanding identity formation is the way that students came to understand the role of Latinos in the racial/ethnic stratification of the United States. Reyes identifies two master narratives from her interviews: meritocratic and oppressive. Chapter Seven skillfully shows how both the college setting and the student organizations affect students’ explanations and filter the ideas to which they are exposed.
An important conclusion from this book is that the three different college environments shaped how the students saw themselves, mediated through the student organizations. The college environment conditioned their experiences of college life and the roles their organizations played in those experiences. LAC was frequently described as a bubble. At LAC the student organizations were well-funded, but the number of Latino students was relatively small. The student organizations tended to emphasize including many different Latin American and Caribbean origins and providing cultural experiences for their non-Latino/a classmates. The two student organizations cooperated with each other’s events and had overlapping membership. These students were the most likely to report hostile incidents from classmates and also from the community immediately outside the college. They were able to recount microaggressions such as being mistaken for the custodial staff. The student organizations provided a sense of belonging and comfort.
By contrast, at RPU about 45 percent of the student body were Latino/a, many of whom would spend only two years at RPU because they had transferred as juniors from a local community college. The RPU student organizations had difficulty attracting members, maintaining their organizations, and developing leadership among their members. Not only were the RPU students on campus for as few as two years, they were also busy working, commuting, engaging in family life, and remaining active in the larger community. The RPU students were the most integrated with the local community, where many of them and their families resided, and community/university boundaries were permeable. The two student organizations at RPU coexisted with no particular overlaps or antagonisms. The RPU students reported less overt discrimination or hostility at the university, but they were more likely than other students to engage in collective action off-campus in the community.
One RPU student organization, Hispanics for Economics (HE), was the most instrumental of the six student organizations in seeking to familiarize students with career choices. HE was quite intentional in welcoming students from any background to come to their events. HE sponsored speakers who described their industries and firms to the students, presenting a recruiting opportunity for both the firm and the students. These speakers tended to be successful Latino businesspeople or entrepreneurs, and their talks fit well with the student members’ curricula in business or economics.
At RU, although the number of Latino/a students was small, there was a well-organized multicultural program. One of the student organizations was officially associated with the university’s multicultural center and the other was not; this institutional distinction led to an imbalance in funding. The two student organizations were competitive with each other, and overlapping membership was discouraged. The better-funded organization seemed to be more overtly political and locally activist; the other organization was explicitly social. Students described their organizations at RU as a “home” for them.
We have much to learn from the often-overlooked role of student organizations. Students spend a relatively small portion of their week in the classroom. Far more time is spent outside the classroom, and student organizations are one way for students to make friends, gain leadership experience, and pursue their interests. Yet the faculty and administrators who were interviewed in this study seemed to have little awareness or appreciation for the role that the student organizations played. Another lesson from this book is that administrators would be wise to consider what they can learn from the student organizations and the student leaders on their campuses. Daisy Verduzco Reyes has shown us why it should be done.