Overview
TCU’s newspaper, The Skiff, published this article about Sigma Lambda Alpha and the Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations in the September 24, 1996 edition of the paper. Sigma Lambda Alpha was founded at Texas Women’s University in 1992, and TCU has the Beta (second) chapter of the organization which Carrie Torres who majored in Criminal Justice helped found three and a half years before the writing of this article. Another article includes a picture of Carrie Torres stepping with her sorority sisters for high school students of color who came to tour campus in February 1996. Since its start, Sigma Lambda Alpha has always placed an emphasis on service in the community, which is why it had a community service hour requirement for its members and worked with the other multicultural Greek organizations to bring prospective students of color to campus and put an emphasis on teaching other students about their culture.
Sigma Lambda Alpha also worked in the community to support the cultural atmosphere of Fort Worth, which had and still has a large Latinx population. They volunteered with the TCU High School Conference hosted by Minority Affairs in 1996 which brought students of color to TCU to give them a college tour and counseling to show how accessible college can be, even for poor students of color.
Article Analysis
The article mentions how much of the student body at TCU was Hispanic in 1996, 5.8% which pales in comparison to the US statistics of 17.5% of the population was Hispanic, and Texas likely had a higher percentage than the rest of the US. The article uses the word Hispanic, but if written today it likely would use the words “Latino and Latina,” “Latino/a” or “Latinx” because those words include the experiences of Brazilian people and are more widely used today than Hispanic, which implies Spanish-speaking instead of ethnicity.
Student Reporter Amanda Bronstad writes “that TCU’s Hispanic population…is steadily increasing.” According to College Factual, 12.3% of students attending TCU now are Hispanic. Bronstad’s prediction was correct, but according to the Census Bureau 40.5% of Texas’s population, where most of TCU’s students are from are Hispanic or Latino. Though TCU’s student body has become more diverse over the years, it is still not representative of Texas or the US.
This article implies that this was the second year in a row in which TCU student organizations organized events for Hispanic Heritage month. The last time they did it they only focused on Mexican culture, rather than Latin America and all Hispanic cultures. The students organized a jalapeño eating contest, piñata breaking, and a dance that included a Macarena dancing contest and a DJ. All these events were apparently a step up from the year prior when only two days of celebrations were organized.
One of Sigma Lambda Alpha’s founding principles is leadership, which is important to women who often do not get to showcase their leadership skills in the same way men do. Women of color have even fewer opportunities to achieve leadership positions outside of groups of those who share their identities. According to Chicana Feminism, many white feminists blame the lack of Latina women in leadership roles on the machismo of the Latinx culture
The other article written by Neelima Atluru, which included a picture of Carrie Torres (pictured middle in the acid-washed jeans) is titled Minorites get new perspective on college which explains that TCU invited students from lower income high schools in the area to attend a conference that helped them understand how to apply to college and the benefits of going to college. However, the article does not explain why marginalized high school students may need to come to TCU and learn about how college is accessible to them and how to apply. I believe information about how people of color are still marginalized and go to college at lower rates than white people would have been helpful to readers who may not have understood why TCU’s Minority Affairs brought in students of color to help them with the admissions process.
TCU
TCU’s culture is greatly centered around Greek organizations, but these tend to be the white fraternities and sororities of the Panhellenic and Interfraternal Greek councils which are majority white and do not make efforts at diversity and cultural education like the multicultural and Black Greek organizations do. However, the formals and mixers of the white fraternities and sororities as well as their fundraisers for charities often get more coverage in student popular culture. It is important that articles like these are published in The Skiff and now TCU 360, but not many students read the papers unless they are interviewed or directly affected by the issues written about when they are written. Keeping these records for historical reasons is quite important because it allows us to unearth histories and stories that have been marginalized and subjugated. If we did not have The Skiff or another student newspaper in the 1990s, we likely would not know much about the Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations and how students like Carrie Torres worked for diversity and the recognition of her culture on a campus that was exceedingly white.
TCU also had an office of Minority Affairs which advocated for students of color in the 1990s, which surprised me. Now, TCU has the office for Inclusiveness and Intercultural Services, which sounds more progressive than Minority Affairs, but I do not know if the IIS office brings students from local schools to tour anymore. Inviting students of color to volunteer with the conference was strategic because it would allow the high schoolers to see students that looked like them. Also, the sororities and fraternities strolled to show off the joy one can experience in the communities of color even at predominantly white institutions like TCU. Joy is an act of resistance and very important to the safety and flourishing of marginalized groups, as is community as Patrice Khan-Cullors wrote in When They Call You a Terrorist. These communities create a place of safety where one can learn and grow without the outside pressures of marginalization and allow people of color to heal and validate each other’s experiences.
Bailey Mooney