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Jeannette Marie Sepulveda was a top-achieving Latina. She knew the ropes. As an International Baccalaureate student, she was in rigorous college-prep classes with other honor students, almost all of them white. Where were her Latino peers?

"Most of them were in regular classes, taking minimum requirements in science, math, and language, and not getting the resources they needed for getting into college," says Sepulveda, now an undergraduate at the UW. "As an I.B. student, I was always getting information on what colleges were looking for, when to take the SATs, and all that. My Latino peers didn't get that information.

"And while my I.B. peers were really involved in volunteering outside school, doing student leadership, starting clubs, my Latino peers weren't. They'd just go to class and go home. No one had explained to them how important it was to build up your resume."

Sepulveda and a friend decided to start a Latino Club in this suburban, predominantly white school north of Seattle. "I was on the right track, in the right classes, but, being surrounded by white students, I didn't always feel comfortable — I didn't feel like 'all of me' was there. I wanted to reconnect with my heritage," says Sepulveda.

Reaction to the club proposal wasn't what she had hoped for. "The woman in charge of clubs at the school told us to just join the multicultural club. She said that if she gave us the OK, she'd have to say OK if a group of white students wanted to start a white supremacist club."

It took Sepulveda two more years to finally get the thumbs-up. The club was an instant success. "We had so many Latino students joining — and other people of color, too," she says. Soon club leaders were inviting guest speakers from the UW and other universities to come talk to club members about the students' aspirations and opportunities.

The club also moved out into the community, and was recognized by the local city for its volunteer work. "Most Latino students, they want to give back to the community — but they don't have the resources or the encouragement to do so," says Sepulveda.

Sepulveda won a Martinez Scholarship and a Minority Achievers Program Scholarship out of high school after finishing her honors thesis on the Chicano movement — a topic that was skimmed through in her history classes, she says. Her thesis adviser was UW associate professor Frances Contreras, director of the Higher Education Program at the College of Education, who calls Sepulveda a "high achiever who really helped her peers."

The UW undergraduate keeps busy these days with a double major in American ethnic studies and in law, societies, and justice. She's proud to report that the Latino Club she started at her high school is still going strong. "It's something that connects students to their community," she says. "For me, that was one of my biggest battles in high school — trying to find out how to connect the two worlds."

 

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