The growing number of these raids left many first generation and immigrant populations at Wellesley feeling anxious and uncertain about their futures. Paloma Ayala ’27, a Houston native, expressed her initial thoughts about the mass deportations occurring throughout the US Ayala explains that her family had been preparing for a Trump presidency for a while, and rushed to get their citizenship before he took office. 

 “Knowing that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE is now detaining naturalized citizens and residents, I am not only scared for my parents but also for my loved ones, the family of friends and my neighbors,” she said. “I feel helpless and every day I pray that nothing will happen to my mom or dad.” 

She emphasized that her parents are hardworking people who have sacrificed so much for their family, much like many immigrants, residents and naturalized citizens. 

“My heart just aches at the thought of so many families being separated,“ Ayala said.

Houston is a blue city within a predominantly red state. While it shares many of the same progressive views as other liberal-leaning cities, it exists in a state that supports more conservative policies. Despite this, Ayala explained how the Houston populace has come together in support of immigrant rights and have led numerous protests. 

“I am happy our community is speaking out on these issues back home. People of all ages are heading out to the hot spots in Houston to speak out against all of the mass deportations. There have been sightings of hate groups during these protests, and that is one of the things that scares me. I just wish there was more support with our state government, it feels like we are being left out,” Ayala said. 

On Jan. 14, disruptors carrying Nazi flags and white supremacist imagery gathered on an overpass in Houston, in response to recent demonstrations. This  is a reflection of the broader, dangerous ideology shared by these right-leaning groups, which continue to promote hate and discrimination across the country. Meanwhile, ICE agents have been criticized for acting on their own biases, disproportionately stopping individuals who appear to be Latinx. The hasty generalizations of immigration agents have led to the detainment of naturalized or birthright citizens. 

Another Houston native student at Wellesley College called the actions of ICE agents inhumane because of their tactics for arrest — often targeting places of community and culture. This has made people in the Houston community fear being in public spaces. They comment that while the Houston residents have protested, universities, which enroll many concerned students, have either remained silent or failed to provide adequate resources to support them. The student sees that same lack of action at Wellesley. They point out they haven’t seen any explicit aid from the administration or even statements that support students during a time of increased federal raids and intimidation. Ayala echoes this, saying she has only seen actions undertaken by students and the Office of Intercultural Education.

“Some clubs have been hosting support groups and there have been some emails that have been sent out by some individuals, but I have yet to hear anything from the college. Many students on this campus are terrified for their families, loved ones, and themselves. I think the least the college can do is to send out their support to the student body. The students are waiting for a bit of compassion,” said Ayala. 

Both students expressed that it is important for all community members, whether in a city or at a college campus, to come together to offer mutual support during such a confusing and stressful time. Ayala highlighted how it is disheartening for many students to witness a lack of proactive support from administration, especially when she believes their role should be to protect and progress the college and university collective, regardless of their immigration status. She believes it is through unity and shared compassion that people can ensure no one faces the challenges created by the new administration alone. 

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn

“As a Latin music scholar, a lot of people are shocked that I like to do Zumba because the music is corny and seems very inauthentic,”Rivera-Rideau said.

The idea for this book stemmed from a conversation she had with another Latinx studies scholar, Professor Juan Flores, where she conveyed that she wished someone had written a book about Zumba. Flores was a former professor of Latinx studies at New York University, and one of Rivera-Rideau’s mentors.

“The topic of Zumba fitness came up [in a discussion], and Juan teased me about my love [for the] classes. I mentioned to him how I was waiting for someone to write about all the contradictions in Zumba fitness … [He responded], ‘Why don’t you write it?’” writes Rivera-Rideau in the acknowledgements in her book. 

When Rivera-Rideau initially began writing, she struggled to immerse herself within the community because she lived in rural Appalachia in Virginia at the time. However, once she started working at Wellesley College, it was easier to write about the fitness program because Boston and New England are a part of “a vibrant Zumba world.” For many Zumba enthusiasts it provides a space to do high-intensity dancing without feeling like they are working out, and for the Queer and trans community, the space can serve as a place of affirmation.  

Rivera-Rideau explained during the event that despite Zumba promoting itself as a space for love and cultural appreciation, it subverts this outward messaging behind a licensing system that prevents many people from legally being able to enjoy this fitness program. With the required fees and conventions, many instructors cannot rely on Zumba instructing as their main source of income. For many instructors, legal or not, they do lessons for the “sense of freedom” and culture. Rivera-Rideau said she quickly noticed the irony in this motivation. 

“I think one of the things that makes Zumba tricky is that it is supposed to be a positive space. It is supposed to be a place that promotes cultural appreciation. All the people I was talking to were motivated a lot more by the idea that they were spreading cultural knowledge to the world, than by making money,” Rivera-Rideau said. 

In 2005, the Zumba Fitness, LLC organized a fundraiser to support recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria. While this event strengthened the evidence of the company’s dedication to the Zumba community and their commitment to their stated mission of “spreading love,” some controversial decisions made by the Zumba Fitness, LLC prompted skepticism about whether their message and values truly embody the spirit of love. Specifically, Zumba markets itself as a place for freedom and letting oneself go, but this message can inadvertently reinforce racist misconceptions about Latinx culture. 

“Many of my [interviewees] would say ‘Anything goes in Zumba and you can do anything for an hour. It is so amazing you can act in all kinds of ways, you could never act elsewhere’ … [but] what they really mean by that is you can be sexy and … that is, you can do body rolls and shake your butt … [So, you can do this] because it is Latin and the stereotype of Latinos is that we are party-loving animals, we love to dance and have no morals,”  Rivera-Rideau said. 

Rivera-Rideau hopes her book will encourage people to have healthy, critical discussions about Zumba while respecting the existing communities that find connection and benefit from the activity. To support her goal, she chose to forgo the short readings typical for a book release and to instead educate attendees about the complex world of Zumba. Zumba is more than just dancing; it represents an intricate web consisting of a company facing ethical concerns from the public and a strong, loving community. 

Image credit: Duke University Press

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn and Diya Khanna

 There were a few first-time performances, such as “Yongnam Nongak” played by KSA’s Sameul Nori and “Jindo Arirang” sung by Ehyun Kim, accompanied by Jung Hee Oh. Kim is a transfer student from Yonsei University, Korea, and they study mathematics and comparative literature & culture. This is their second semester at Wellesley, and they were eager to participate in the culture show to share more diverse aspects of Korean culture. 

Initially, Kim began their act as a one person show, but over time added in accompanying roles to help create a collaborative performance. 

“I had originally planned to sing the folk song alone with no accompaniment at all. It was a wild idea when I recall it now, but it seemed reasonable back then. Then several miracles happened: Lauren Lee in the Samulnori team volunteered to play the puk, and Junghee Oh, a professional gayageum player, also reached [out] her helping hand on the performance day. All of a sudden three of us were performing together on one stage, and I am so grateful for Lauren and Junghee Oh,” Kim said.

Consequently, Kim spoke about how being in the United States and the show influenced them and their artistic practice. 

“I started to self-learn and practice traditional style singing once I came to the States. It has been about half a year since I began and my singing is very clumsy, yet I have not regretted for a moment that I performed. Through participating at Seoultice, I learned that I can contribute to the community even when I am far from perfection,” Kim stated.

They noted that it also helped that the KSA was a supportive group that had Kim’s back when they sang upstage. 

“It was so heartwarming to see performers backstage cheering each other’s teams, exchanging small words of ‘That was great!’ and ‘Good job!’ I think it is impossible to know how huge a support these little words convey without having been right back from the spotlight,” Kim remarked. It’s clear that the members who contributed to the culture show worked hard and supported one another to make sure that the performances were truly a journey through time. 

 Wellesley KSA’s Seoulstice also had many special guests including Harvard’s Taekwondo club, who demonstrated traditional taekwondo and added their own modern spin via Taekwonmu, a combination of Taekwondo and dancing. After the performance, audience member Vanessa Chen ’27 commented on the club’s inclusion in the show, saying, “I really liked Harvard Taekwondo, it was really cool and funny especially how they made it somehow relate to Wellesley.” 

Although presented as a humorous storyline about KSA members traveling through time, Wellesley KSA’s mixture of older and newer Korean performances served to preserve and educate the Wellesley community about the rich cultural history ofKorea. Cultural shows like these are an important way to keep these traditions alive at Wellesley, and it is key for students to participate in them as well as collaborate to ensure these events can continue.

Sureni Weerasekera, a bright Sri Lankan-born performer from California, who moved to New York after dropping out of college to pursue their comedic goals, began the show. In their set, Weerasekera was very open about their queerness, sexuality and their rough relationship with their mother. Weerasekera’s ability to include these types of topics in their comedy made them all the more relatable, especially in a diverse community like Wellesley College. 

“It was cool to see someone up there who I could look up to. That could be me up there. It was nice to see someone with a similar background and parental trauma that I could relate to,” said an audience member. 

One student asked how each of the comedians got into stand up, and Weerasekera responded that they were actually in-between exploring majors at UC Berkeley when they developed a knack for stand-up comedy. They encouraged the audience to continue exploring their interests until something “stuck with them.”

The second comedian to take the stage was LeClerc Andre, another New York-based stand-up. Andre’s set went in a different direction than Weerasekera’s: ranging from living in New York to being a father. Andre has more than a decade’s worth of experience, which was evident from his ability to make the entire crowd laugh, as well as seamlessly incorporating crowd work into his set. During the end of his set, he pulled Sureni from backstage so that together, they could find three Wellesley students their perfect match. However, Wellesley students proved too tricky of a match for Andre, with the unfortunate result of no matchmaking.

Interestingly, this was not the most memorable moment of the night; that came when Andre and Weerasekera gave the crowd an opportunity to ask them questions. 

“What is some life advice you could give us?” one student asked.

Weerasekera provided the crowd with someone they could relate to and Andre gave everyone the perfect end to the night leaving the audience with some of his wisdom, “Be your most authentic self as soon as possible, so that no one can say you changed and always know you for the crazy person you are.”

The suite includes four prints of traditional northern plains dresses that draw inspiration from the Sioux dress with a dentalium shell yoke in the Smithsonian Museum. White Hawk meticulously studied dresses at the Smithsonian for 10 days and then asked her friends to send videos of them in their dresses to observe the fabric movement. Then, when she was creating her piece, White Hawk was advised to start small and with one yoke. However, she insisted that in the end, she would still need four to satisfy her ambitions and properly represent all the figures in her life. 

“They are very unique. They are very tied to the lineage of my work and my practice, but they are unique in that they are more representative of real-life objects than my work tends to be … They would have only existed through the opportunity to make prints,” White Hawk said. 

Although the work specifically serves as an ode to her veteran mother, White Hawk celebrates all female figures. White Hawk notes that Native American communities have the most veterans per capita, even after considering their history with colonialism. Fallen soldiers and veterans are often honored in the community for their sacrifices and protection. White Hawk’s prints are closely related to her relationship with her family, specifically, the women who should be honored like soldiers. 

“I was thinking about the ways non-military veterans also do this. I kept thinking about how our female relatives stand guard and protect our communities in various ways; they bring, nurture and protect life. [In general], all of the ways our female relatives contribute to the protection, continuity and preservation of our communities, cultures, families and individuals. For me, that is what this series is about, recognizing how women protect our communities in ways I feel at times are equal … to our veterans,” White Hawk said. 

White Hawke noted that the prints represent a diverse variety of women in her life and community, both as individuals and in their collective role as members and protectors. 

“When I look at those four prints I think about them in relational terms, as certain ages, certain personalities within a community. It is also representative of different times and eras. So the navy blue one is like the grandma since it references an older style of adornment,” White Hawk said. 

From left to right, White Hawk relates the garments to her grandmother, an older but blinged-out auntie, mother and another auntie. Despite their differences, the garments all include quillwork, a traditional northern Native American practice. White Hawk’s work is also one of the only prints in the collection that includes this traditional practice. Quillwork is one of White Hawk’s favorite art mediums, however, when she transitioned from a school for Native American students to a traditional American institution she felt conflicted about whether she could continue her practice. 

“I thought that if I started making a pair of moccasins I would have to conceptually justify them as a part of my practice and as a part of my studio practice; that just felt wrong to me because I did not feel like I needed to fight that fight. I knew why they were valuable. I knew why it was important,” White Hawk said.

She eventually gave in and brought quillwork to her graduate school work. Unfortunately, quillwork required a lot of labor and White Hawk needed to figure out how to fit it into the “academic calendar.” She focused on how to balance the contradicting value systems of embracing home and still doing graduate work that she can be proud of.

White Hawk was recently awarded the McArthur Fellowship, which is commonly known as the “genius grant.” Today, her art utilizes mixed media to combine painting with Native American art forms to preserve and protect Native American culture. Much like the women she wants to honor, White Hawk preserves her community through her specialty in art.

Thomas never expected to get into writing as he hated reading for a majority of his life, however, he recalls when his parents would often leave him at the local library so that they could go grocery shopping. In this library, he would soon discover the books that he loved, typically falling within the young adult genre.

 Later in his teenage years, Thomas took to Tumblr where he wrote fanfictions of various popular novels including “Harry Potter” and “The Hunger Games.” There, he garnered a mass following and his fanfictions became household names in the community. This led to Thomas writing his debut book, “Cemetery Boys,” a young urban fantasy novel about Yadriel, a young trans boy fighting to have his family accept his identity and prove himself as a true “brujo.” 

When proposing the idea, Thomas wanted to ensure that his main character being trans wasn’t the central plot point, however, he also felt a desire to change the portrayal of the trans community in literature to a more positive depiction.

“I’d rather just write a story about a character who happens to be trans, but at the moment when I wanted to do this, all the trans stories were very polarizing. It was either the family was immediately the perfect ally – they just know everything that is right to do or say — or it was the opposite, where the child was rejected completely. It is really traumatic and horrible, [and so] most of the stories for trans folk were really sad, only focusing on the suffering. It was really empowering and exciting for me to write these stories,”  Thomas said.

Thomas wanted to implement normal representations of a trans and brown kid being happy and navigating the world, much like he had and continues to do. As a result, Thomas decided to write young adult novels rather than the new adult genre. 

“I really wanted to reach the audience that probably hadn’t seen this kind of representation before … That felt really radical for me to write, and I found out later that it was really radical for others to read,” Thomas said.

While “Cemetery Boys” has received overwhelming support from the trans community and allies alike, the Texas legislature proposed banning Thomas’ book for numerous reasons, including the depiction of drinking, drugs, profanity, sex and violence. And yet, Thomas responds to this with clear enthusiasm that he is doing something right. He hopes to continue writing about the trans community, and potentially  expand to the new adult genre in hopes of giving the trans community greater representation.

 Wellesley College, like many other institutions, has their own chapter of this fellowship, and opens applications for sophomores in their spring semester. Once selected, the fellows begin their research project during the summer before their junior year.  For example, Wellesley Senior Deyra Aguilar’s research project is an analysis on masculinity in rap culture. The analysis will not only look at how portrayals have changed over time but also how to look at the music genre as a form of resistance to white supremacy and social issues. MMUF Faculty Director Professor Irene Mata, and Program Director Teofilo Barbalho, work with these students to make sure they receive the mentorship and scholarly development they need to not only create a presentation for the regional undergraduate conferences, but also prepare for graduate study in their respective fields. 

“One of the things that makes our program especially effective is the role that mentoring plays. So, our fellows work with a faculty mentor in our department, that helps guide their research and help as they begin going into academia. They get mentoring and advice on graduate school and potential graduate programs. In addition, they get mentoring by myself and the director, Teofilo Barbalho … That is the horizontal mentoring, but there is also the vertical mentoring. [Where] the seniors mentor the juniors because they are in the program together. The senior [fellows] not only mentor the juniors but they also mentor each other,” Mata said.

With help from mentors, fellows are able to design a presentation which they display at the “MMUF Northeast Regional Undergraduate Conference”, in front of other MMUF fellows. Recently, the Wellesley Mellon Mays fellows attended the regional conference at Yale University on Oct. 5. While their research is important for understanding disparities and social issues, as students it is important for them to experience speaking in an academic space about these problems. 

“I think what is most important about the conferences is that they allow students to engage with their peers in an intellectual community that is solely focused on supporting their research, and their identities as young scholars,” Mata said. 

Mata reflected on the past conference as not only the faculty director but also as a first-gen professor that cares deeply about her students. She hopes that her fellows will take something from this experience and that it helped strengthen their confidence. 

“I hope [what] they take away from the conference is a sense of confidence in their ability to be themselves as scholars… The other thing that’s really important for students to take away is that they’re part of a community of supportive scholars, being in academia can be very isolating. Actually feeling like you’re part of a community, that helps that sense of seclusion that one can feel,” Mata said.