Latinx students create petition

A group of Latinx students formed to improve the experience of Latinx students on campus released a petition on Friday to increase support for and representation of Latinx students.

The petition has 517 signatures as of 7 p.m. on Monday.

Latinx is a term used to be more gender-neutral and inclusive of all gender identities, and is also the name of the group of students that have composed the petition and report.

Representatives from the group declined to comment.

Along with the petition, the group also released a report on the needs of the University Latinx community, based on the discussions at a Nov. 18 Latinx Town Hall where Latinx students identified the major challenges they face on campus.

“I think everything is important basically,” Mimi Orro ’18 said. “I mean not everything pertains to me per se, because I define myself as Latina but there are certain parts that have never personally affected me but you have to understand where they’re coming from and why it’s so important because this issue has never been addressed in the school’s history.”

Moreover, there are systemic issues on campus and there has never been a movement contributed, Orro said.

The report notes that the Hispanic/Latinx population in the student and faculty body, 9.2 percent and 2 percent respectively, is disproportionately low considering that Hispanic/Latinx population makes up for 17 percent of the U.S. population. The report calls for a retention plan for Hispanic/Latinx professors and to “emphasize the recruitment of senior faculty of color with tenure.”

The group articulates a call for at Latinx Studies program within the new American Studies department and mandatory cultural competency training for all faculty.

The petition also states that they too should have a cultural space in the Fields Center and student representatives alongside the Black Justice League in the General Education Task Force meeting Dec. 8.

Furthermore, because the experience of Latinx students frequently includes the difficulties of undocumented immigrants, the group wants to make the presence and experience of undocumented students more visible and create a resource center for them.

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Such demands are similar to those of BJL articulated in their list of demands signed by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.

Sri Nimmagadda ’18, who said he supports the petition, explained that he sees some of the issues of Latinx and African American students as similar.

“I know a lot of Latino students from come lower income backgrounds,” Nimmagadda said.“They face a lot of the challenges that African American members do in terms of being seen as people who got in because of reservations, rather than their actual merits, which is not very justified.”

Orro said she thinks that the Latinx population at the University is hidden because there is not a formal community. She noted academic discrimination is a difficult issue for Latinx students because few faculty members look like or share backgrounds with Latinx students.

Orro noted that there is little institutional support for Latinx students at the University and said that she thinks the University needs to more explicitly support Latinx students like other universities such as Duke, which has “Latino Day” for admitted Latino students.

However, Nimmagadda said he was worried about the reactions on campus about the petition, noting that the reaction to the BJL was not entirely positive.

“I almost fear that this very legitimate cause is somewhat undercut because of the adverse reaction people have been having to the BJL,” Nimmagadda said. “It’s not justified, but it’s very possible.”

Nimmagadda said that some of the conservative students on campus see the group as another group complaining.

Yet he added that this could be an opportunity for the University.

“I think Princeton has the opportunity to be a real trailblazer in terms of like socio-racial, culture, you know, if they choose to be progressive on this particular issue,” he said. “You’re not going to ever be comfortable, but that’s not the point. The point is that there are people hurting right now and that those people’s needs have to be met in a community where Princeton prides itself upon being inclusive and providing everything for its undergraduates.”

Orro said she hopes the petition will bring more than just administrative changes.

“I hope that everyone in the school is able to read the petition and actually understand where the Latinx community is coming from, and maybe if they don’t empathize how the Latinx community grew up, their culture, their background, their beliefs, they will be able to at least sympathize to the cause and be able to at least understand how we all have to be in solidarity to fix this problem,” Orro said.