A look back: Latinx at USC

Tucked away on the fourth floor of the Gwynn Wilson Student Union lies La CASA, a space on campus dedicated solely to Latinx students. Before activities went online for the rest of the fall semester, La CASA provided a physical space dedicated to cultivating a family among all those who identify as Latinx. Its lime mural walls illustrate the decades of Latinx history and stories formed at USC. 

La CASA is situated in an institution that has remained predominantly white since its founding, a stark contrast to the surrounding South Central area, where about 80% of the population comprises Latinx individuals. As of Fall 2020, only 15% of USC’s student population identifies as Latinx. On campus, members of the Latinx community have worked to create a safe space for themselves and for future generations. 

The emergence of the Chicano movement during the larger civil rights movement in the 1960s empowered Latinx college students across the country to organize and amplify their voices, fighting for institutional expansion of representation, spaces and programs. At USC, a Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán chapter, which aimed to promote the success of the Latinx community through higher education, was established alongside hundreds of others at universities across the country. 

The move to create La CASA, then known as El Centro Chicano, was spearheaded by the Latinx activists on campus in 1972 to provide a place for personal, professional and cultural growth for Latinx students. A year later, USC created the Mexican American Alumni Association, after the executive director of USC’s Mexican American programs, Raúl Vargas, and eight Mexican American alumni saw a need to assist Latinx students with their development through higher education and the cost associated with it. Today it exists as the Latino Alumni Association to reflect how the association provides scholarship aid to students of all Latinx identities. And a year after that, the special interest community El Sol y La Luna Floor emerged in 1974 to build an atmosphere that would make the transition to college easier for incoming freshmen. 

Throughout the decades, the experience of Latinx students at USC has been varied. While the University has cultivated more spaces on campus for Latinx students since the 1970s, some say there is still a ways to go. Here are three accounts from both past and current Latinx students at USC. 

1980s: Professor Laura Castañeda

When Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism professor Laura Castañeda attended USC in the mid-1980s, she felt unable to connect with the Latinx community around her. With most of her peers being white, Castañeda felt isolated from others, but more than anything, her biggest fear was failing to prove to herself and to her family that going to USC was not a mistake, she said. 

“There were so few of us and there wasn’t a lot for us,” said Castañeda, who graduated from USC in spring of 1985. “We didn’t really have anything like La CASA … Was it a safe space? I mean, I don’t know. I had a really hard time my freshman year, a really hard time.” 

Impostor syndrome was prominent among Latinx students on campus back in 1981, Castañeda said. She felt going to USC was a mistake and feared her home community would judge her. 

“It was kind of like that impostor syndrome that I was putting all this pressure on myself,” she said. “I had to succeed because otherwise people at home would think, ‘Oh gosh, there’s a smart girl [we] sent off to school and what, she can’t hack it?’” 

While at USC, Castañeda sought a community of other Latinx students. She found and became a member of MEChA de USC, a Chicanx/Latinx organization on campus that celebrated students of color. 

While at USC, Castañeda also found her home at the Daily Trojan. Along with being a reporter, Castañeda worked in multiple roles on the paper, including assistant features editor, editorial director and managing editor. Castañeda eventually ran for editor-in-chief but lost the election. Had she won, she would have been the first Latina editor-in-chief in the paper’s history. 

“There were not a lot of Latinos/Latinas, but the ones I knew were good friends of mine,” Castañeda said. “The [Daily Trojan] actually was very diverse so there were cool people there.”

After graduating from USC with her bachelor’s degree, Castañeda worked as a professional journalist for five years and studied business and economics reporting at Columbia Journalism School before once again returning to her alma mater in 2000 as an assistant journalism professor.

It was odd to teach alongside her former professors whom she had admired, she said. 

“I really had to wrap my head around that at first, but they were great, they were very welcoming and really, really kind to me,” Castañeda said. “They showed me the ropes so to speak. Also it was just a real honor, I mean it sounds kind of corny but what a real honor for me to come back to my alma mater and teach.” 

Castañeda eventually served as the associate director and assistant director of the School of Journalism from 2010-14 during which she oversaw curriculum revisions for both undergraduate and graduate students. As a professor, she got involved with La CASA to support the network she never had as a student. She backed the center’s move to change its name from El Centro Chicano to La CASA when conversations about moving away from the Chicano label surfaced in 2018, saying the organization needed to become inclusive of all Latinx identities. 

“It needed to change to be more welcoming to all Latinos,” Castañeda said. “Not just the [Latinos] that identify as Chicanos [and/or] Mexican American.”

1990s: Alumnus Jaime Rojas Jr. 

Attending USC in the early 1990s before the dot-com boom meant that the first time 1996 alumnus Jaime Rojas Jr. learned about El Sol y La Luna was through a tri-fold brochure he had received in the mail. He knew he wanted to live on campus and believed living on Fluor Tower’s Latinx floor would be the best way to connect with others of similar backgrounds on campus. There weren’t many other ways to do so, he said. 

“It helped [with the] transition going into school,” Rojas said. “It was a great experience by different people from all walks of life … from first-generation to second-, third-generation as well from different parts of the country, public school, private school, transfers.”

The floor also provided the resources for residents to join and create Latinx organizations. In turn, membership in these clubs resulted in students’ gaining confidence to branch out and join clubs that were not necessarily Latinx-oriented, Rojas said. 

“[Having] that safety net, as a group on the Latino floor, also helped some of the students participate in organizations that weren’t necessarily Latino-focused … different programs, different clubs and … a variety of different things, even just the Greek system.”

His senior year, Rojas worked as a resident assistant on the Latinx Floor and helped establish a more thorough application process. The RAs wanted to find the best students they could: Ones who would be involved leaders on the floor and at USC. These efforts created a cohesive group of residents, who Rojas said included a group of women who started the Latina sorority, Sigma Lambda Gamma.

However, while the Latinx Floor gave its residents a place of comfort and support, Rojas said the Latinx community still faced adversity on campus. 

“We dealt with some students coming up to the seventh floor, writing crap on our boards,” he said. “At one time, someone … actually lit on fire the information board.” 

The fear incited by these incidents was heightened by the civil unrest that was happening in the streets of Los Angeles during the 1992 Rodney King riots following the beating of King, a Black man, by officers in the Los Angeles Police Department. When the policemen were acquitted, even though the beating was caught on camera, the incident fueled five days of uprising during which people took their anger to the streets. 

“We got to see [the unrest] from the seventh floor,” Rojas said. “We got stuck at ‘SC watching as the city around us was just erupting in protests and violence and fires, watching the National Guard tanks going down Jefferson and Hoover.”   

Regardless of how much these events shook the community, Rojas said they were significant in bonding Latinx students of all backgrounds. The riots also forced dialogue about racial discrimination and Latinx representation on campus, pushing students to fight for a more just, inclusive environment. 

In the mid-1990s, discussions also rose about offering Chicano studies on university campuses. Rojas recalls hearing about students at UCLA tying themselves to buildings with the hopes of forcing the hands of the UC system to implement a Chicano studies program. 

While at USC, Rojas said there was a behind-the-scenes movement to bring Chicano studies to campus. In response to the uproar, USC decided to put together a team of key University leaders to improve the American studies department because they wanted to avoid the same level of protests as the UC campuses.  

Rojas was a part of the select group of students in the Price School of Public Policy who worked on the initiative to establish a Latinx and Chicano studies program. Since 1994, students have had the option to major in Chicano/Latino studies, which incorporates courses with an emphasis on the historical, political and cultural experiences of Chicanx and Latinx communities in California and the West Coast. 

On campus, the impact of the work of student activists like Rojas is clear. In Founder’s Park, a memorial honoring Cesar Chávez was dedicated in March 1997. The plaque was commissioned because of the push by students and staff who wanted to commemorate Chávez’s visits to USC and significance to Latinx history and pride. 

The dynamics of Latinx activism at USC have changed since Rojas was a student in the ’90s, but by no means is the struggle for representation over, he said.  

“Yes, it’s changing dynamics,” Rojas said. “And changes could take long, it’s going to be generational.”

2020: Junior Alexia Sambrano

George Floyd’s killing in late May sent a wake-up call across the world. Hundreds of students participated in demonstrations across the nation against police brutality and systemic racism. At college campuses, which have cultivated hubs for activism, some students — including those in the Latinx community — have initiated and engaged in discussions surrounding Black Lives Matter. Some students have shared posts about the toxicity of machismo and the anti-Black rhetoric often used within the Latinx community. However, according to Alexia Sambrano, a junior majoring in neuroscience and cognitive science, there is still much work to be done.  

Sambrano said they recognize the importance of intersectionality when fighting for not only Latinx representation but also the representation of all marginalized groups at USC.

On campus, Sambrano is the co-director of the Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment, an LGBTQ studies minor representative for the Sexuality Studies Undergraduate Council and the co-diversity, equity and inclusion chair for the USC Helenes, one of the University’s oldest service organizations. Additionally, Sambrano founded the USC Care Collective in March to provide helpful resources for USC students who come from marginalized communities.  

Sambrano spearheaded the chair position in Helenes to help members of the historically white organization unlearn and proactively relearn issues like gender inclusivity, implicit biases and systemic racism. 

Sambrano’s belief in taking action has also manifested in her work with USC Care Collective, which shares resources on Instagram and promotes a GoFundMe page to support USC students and student-led initiatives such as AffordableSC and Reimagining Public Safety USC. Their website provides updated information on Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights and the Free Palestine Movement, among others.  

“We wanted to make space for resources, whether it be emergency funding or mutual aid funds or links to donations sites or even just links to the other student orgs at USC to provide solidarity and support in community sense,” Sambrano said. 

Sambrano has also turned to their social media platform to speak out about social issues that are prominent at the University and across the world. On their Twitter and Instagram, Sambrano has consistently called USC out on issues that they deem problematic, including nomenclature behind what was previously the Von KleinSmid Center and reform for the Department of Public Safety.

“As much as I love being a student here and can’t imagine myself at any other university,” Sambrano said, “I’m still able to recognize why the work I’ve done and other students have done and the students before us have done is still super relevant now and important and should be compensated and paid attention to.”

Sambrano does not consider themself an activist, for their actions speak louder than the activist label. However, Sambrano said they are always thinking about how they can be a better ally through meaningful action and discussions. 

“I personally don’t really like to label myself things like ‘activists’ or ‘allies’ for communities that maybe I’m not a part of,” Sambrano said. “I’d rather show that I’m an ally or that I’m an activist by the actions that I’m doing [such as] donating, providing resources, sharing those resources with people … pushing people to engage in conversations that they otherwise wouldn’t really have in their normal community spaces.”