Macalester. I love it here, I really do. However, those emotions only extend as far as the classroom and academics in general. For the most part, everything else just seems to be a source of frustration for this C*** girl. I mean, the cultural organizations are great, but it sucks to feel like you carry the burden of making sure they continue. If you drop it, who will teach Macalester students about who I am?!...but oh wait, it seems like people don’t care anyway. To an extent, it seems like some aren’t willing to even learn. I remember that at the start of this year, someone said something about not wanting to have to educate everyone about their community. Afterwards, I was with a group of white students who were mad at her for not being willing to educate others and were trying to figure out what her problem was. When that subject was first brought up, I sat there and took a moment to reflect upon it all. But everyone else just seemed to jump the gun and went straight into how unbelievable such a comment was. Luckily, someone there had actually thought about it and told the rest to put themselves in the shoes of a student of color here at Macalester and to consider what that would entail (and this person wasn’t a student of color, either). For those of you who need some light shed upon what this means, let me help.

Let me start by saying that Macalester suffers from a frustrating “quantity/quality” complex when it comes to building a student of color community. I’ll try my best to explain what this means. First, when you look at the number of students of color who come in with every entering freshman class, the number is not that high. To be real about this, it can be understandable considering that this is a liberal arts college and, to an extent, one must consider its appeal regarding its location. Besides, if you’re an intelligent student of color from outside this area, why would you come here? Chances are that these students have other great choices (as many of us did before coming here). So the question then becomes: why would a student of color want to come to Macalester?

Second is the so-called “quality” issue. I don’t mean to knock anyone in explaining this and please do not think that I’m some radical person who holds a measuring stick to measure levels of “blackness,” “Latinidad,” etc. This is not the situation at all. As a person who identifies and who is active in the Macalester student of color community, let me say that the situation is very frustrating when you see the number of African-Americans or Latinos that are here and then look to see what the involvement is on campus and keep in mind that I am referring exclusively to the cultural organizations. For example, let’s take a look at ¡Adelante! and keep in mind that although it is an organization composed of both international Latino students and domestic Latino students, I am only addressing the domestic Latino population. So when looking at the list of domestic Latinos that come in with every class, we get so excited because there are maybe about two dozen Latino students who are coming in. But then, how many of them identify? And of those who identify, how many will become active and engage in the community? As of now, there are four non-first years in this organization. Four! And three of these four are graduating! There is no one in the class below them and only one in the current sophomore class (which means that out of 800 new students that arrived at Macalester within those two years, Macalester managed to welcome (?) only one identifying, active Latina for ¡Adelante!). Luckily, there are about three domestic Latinos/-as that came in this year and who are active. But that only means that after this year, it’ll maintain the balance of four because we certainly don’t know what the next class will bring, or not bring for that matter.

Though this is the experience of this one particular community of color, some of these trends and circumstances also exist within some of the other communities. So now do you see why sometimes students of color seem a little frustrated and sometimes upset about being here? There are way too few who are burdened to do so much at this campus. To this day, I still have people at home asking me why I left and I always go back to the same answer—I love the academic life here. But what happens outside of the classroom? Some of us get involved with aspects of ourselves we know best—our respective communities. And trust me, this college is not as supportive of the student of color community as it should be. And in referring to the college, I’m really mostly referring to the students at this school. Hopefully, things will change. But I won’t hold my breath.