Coming from Viewpoint School, a small private school in Los Angeles, Calif., Young was not initially interested in activism, but she developed a passion for it while at Amherst. During her four years here, Young has devoted her time and energy to various organizations, including the Chicana/o Caucus, MassPIRG, Community Outreach, the Committee for Educational Policy and El Arco Iris. As co-chair of the Chicana/o Caucus, Young has been actively involved in increasing the diversity of the campus since her junior year, and she has been especially interested in promoting the formation of a Latino studies major at the College.
"[The Chicana/o Caucus] is a really wonderful group of people to celebrate Chicano culture and history," said Young. "I decided to become a part of this organization because I'm half Mexican [and] I've become very active on campus fighting for Latino classes on campus."
The Latin American dream
While the College does not currently have a Latin American studies major, there are courses offered that concentrate in Latin American studies. However, Young wished that there could be more. "Eight [students] took Chicano Culture and History ... [but] it's frustrating for me to search for courses that represent half my identity when they don't really exist here," she said. "I've met with five of the Committee of Six, written to [Dean of the Faculty Lisa Raskin] and encouraged people to write letters to all those people and to [The Student.]"
Currently, only a Five-College Certificate for Latin American Studies is available for interested students. "I've never taken a Five-College course, but my focus is on Amherst," said Young. "It's not a good response for Amherst to say: 'Well, you can just take a course at one of the Five Colleges."
Young's interest in Chicano culture, and Latin American culture in general, also extends to the education of the campus at large on Latin American culture and history. "We're educating the campus on issues that aren't really thought about," she said. "When we put the graffiti up [in the Campus Center game room], the Caucus brought artists from California to paint it and people were saying how 'ghetto' it was and how it didn't belong there-they don't realize that that represents some people's identity."
Despite Amherst's shortcomings, Young is appreciative of her time here. "In the past years I feel like I've grown a lot and been given a lot of opportunities here that I wouldn't otherwise have," she said. "Before I came to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and Amherst helped me figure out where my passion's at."
The growth that she has experienced at the College has been facilitated by the students as well as the professors. "I feel like so much of my growing and learning has been [from] talking with people. We're constantly having such intense conversations," Young said.
She is also especially grateful to Assistant Professor of American Studies and Anthropology/Sociology Karin Weyland and Professor of English and Black Studies Rhonda Cobham-Sander.
"I was fighting for the reappointment of Professor Weyland and when she wasn't reappointed, that was really upsetting," Young said. Thanks to the influences and guidance at the College, education has become a central tenet of Young's interests that she plans to continue in the future.
Lesson plans
"Basically, what I want to do with my life is educational policy," she said. "There are glaring educational disparities in this country, so I want to fight to minimize those disparities." Young is a member of the Committee on Educational Policy here, and she has also tutored at Holyoke High School and with El Arco Iris, "an arts after-school youth empowerment program."
"At Holyoke High School, which is considered the inner city of Western Massachusetts, the disparity in educational opportunity was very apparent," she said. Young had originally tutored at Holyoke High as a part of English 6: "Reading, Writing and Teaching" with Cobham-Sander. "That class helped me realize what I wanted to do with my life," said Young. Although only required to teach at Holyoke High for one semester, Young continued through the school year. "I loved the class and I felt like I made a commitment to my kids and I wanted to keep going," she said. "It was hard at times, digging my car out of the snow at 7:30 a.m."
Her teaching experience at Holyoke High helped Young to understand the problems in the educational system and to realize the possibilities for improvement within it. "I worked in a ninth grade English class, and my kids wrote and read many levels below what they should have," said Young.
"They're mostly Puerto Ricans, and I tried to create fun, educational things that affirmed their heritage," she added. One of the most memorable times at Holyoke occurred when Young was reading poetry from the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. "I asked a student, [who was] probably the least engaged and failing the class, to read a poem and he said, 'Wow, I didn't realize poetry could be like this,'" she said. "It was about a young kid living in the inner city, and I think he saw himself in the poem and could relate to it."
Young has also tutored with El Arco Iris. "It complemented my experience at Holyoke really well," she said. "I interned at Holyoke High all last year, so last year I was going to Holyoke twice a day on Fridays." Young also spent the summer after her junior year as an intern in Washington, D.C., for a non-profit organization on educational reform, which focused on multicultural curriculums and distributes multicultural resources to teachers around the country. "It teaches teachers how to teach," she explained. Young has also used her passion to initiate change on the political spectrum. She has worked with the Community Outreach Program as the Outreach Council co-chair, which she described as "incredible."
"I just wish the Outreach Program was supported more and recognized more for the work it does," she added. She also spent the summer after her freshman year as a receptionist at the campaign headquarters for Gray Davis, the current governor of California. "It was great to see politics in action," Young said. "I flew back to California for election night, so I was there when he won. It was great."
Since her sophomore year, Young has also been an active member of MassPIRG, a statewide organization with 24 chapters across Massachusetts, holding various positions from director of the Hunger and Homelessness campaign to chair of the Amherst chapter of MassPIRG and treasurer of the Executive Board of MassPIRG. "I think it's a great way to empower students to effect change," said Young. She has also organized the Hunger and Homeless campaign for several years and was also heavily involved with the Five-College Hunger Cleanup and the Amherst auction for hunger, which raised around $2000 for the Amherst Survival Center.
Because of her hectic schedule during the academic year, Young needed to use the summer after her sophomore year to study abroad in Spain. "All my extracurriculars are so valuable in their own way that I wouldn't give something up," she said. "I've just added to my plate every year [because] so much I've learned at Amherst I've learned outside the classroom."
To study Spanish, Young stayed with a host family in Barcelona and traveled a lot around Spain. "I went to Pamplona to the running of the bulls," she said. "If I ran with the bulls, I probably would've been in the front and wouldn't have seen anything. Instead, I was right at the barricades and the bulls were right in front of me."
Head of the class
After graduation, Young will be working at the Los Angeles Elementary School with Teach for America, a program that places recent college graduates in under-resourced, low-income areas to teach for two years. Young is excited about her post-graduation plans. "I want to do educational reform, so it's a really good next step for me to take," she said. "I feel like it's imperative to get the background before I go on to do educational reform work."
With the advantage of hindsight, Young still would not change anything about her college career. "Obviously, there are so many more courses I would've liked to have taken-there are always more," she said. "But I'm definitely ready to graduate."
Although she might have appreciated a significant change in the Western Massachusetts weather, Young has thoroughly enjoyed her four years at Amherst. "The first time I drove my car in the snow was not fun, but I'm going to miss the people [and] no longer eating off a tray," she said. "I'm a little anxious about graduating and getting my own apartment but someone once told me, 'It's not [an] ending; when you get out of college, you'll just do things differently.'"