LatinX Student Union Hosts Multicultural Week: A Celebration of Diversity and Unity

By: Donya Hassanshahi

Throughout the week of May 1st to May 5th, LatinX Student Union [LSU] will be hosting Multicultural Week that will consist of dress-up days Monday-Friday. These include:

• Monday- National Sports Team Jersey
• Tuesday- Tacky Tourist
• Wednesday- World Peace Pajama Day
• Thursday- Unity Day: Rep your School Colors
• Friday- Culture Day: Rep your Culture

The assortment of dress-up days is intended for students to embrace their culture and further expand on their knowledge for other cultures.

Mrs. Ambar Rodriguez is one of the advirsors for the club. Located in the Academic Building in room 42, she is a first-year teacher at Redwood High School—teaching World History.

In the Fall semester of the 2023-2024 school year, Rodriguez is going to begin teaching a dual-enrollment course regarding Ethnic Studies.

She says her goals for this upcoming class are “…so students can also feel comfortable and safe to talk about the nuances of ‘what’s race?’ and ‘what’s ethnicity? what’s nationality?’,’ and to bring more appreciation of self and identity because when you’re comfortable with yourself.”

Alongside Rodriguez, Mr. Leppke, Mr. Rojas, Mr. Gallixtro, and Mrs. Mendoza are advisors for the club. Rodriguez says, “I am lucky that I tag-teamed with other first-year teachers here at Redwood.”

As for the title of the club, she says, “We use LatinX to try to be inclusive. The ‘X’ is to be gender-fluid, and recognizing that it’s more than just Mexicans that exist within the space—it’s people from Honduras, from Columbia, Guatemala—and we want the students to feel as comfortable as possible.”

Rodriguez says she recalls that sixty-four percent of students are students of color at Redwood, and yet these students still do not feel represented. “…They feel excluded because the music is in English or going to the dance or the quad, it’s very English-based language, despite our students being a high-percentage of students of color.”

On Friday, May 5th, she says she looks forward to the ‘Rep your Culture’ spirit day, “What I want to try to do, especially for next Friday, is bring awareness between appreciation and cultural appropriation. Appropriation is pretending you’re another culture; you have that bias and prejudices or stereotypes that Mexicans ave a mustache or wear a sombrero, or maybe a poncho.”

She shares an exchange she and her student had in preparation for ‘Rep your Culture’ day. “This morning I had a student who shared, ‘Hey, how am I supposed to dress up for this if I’m White?,’ and then so we impact it by saying, ‘Okay, let’s trace your European origins. Are you Irish? Are you Italian? Are you Greek?’ From there, we were able to pin-point that she’s Irish, and then representing Irish culture,” says Rodriguez.

Rodriguez says, “Although people categorize their race, ethnicity, as White, that whiteness it European descent and how can we trace that back to do cultural appreciation, versus appropriation.”

During the Fall, the club will be hosting a LatinX Youth Conference at the COS campus. The club president, Annalissa Lira, ’25, recently applied for a grant and won the $5,000 that are making this event possible.

At the event, Rodriguez says approximately 200 students will be present. She says it will be “open to high school students of Tulare County who identify as Latino, Latina, or Latinx.” Another term now being used by the community is “Latinè”.

With the dress-up days this week, and the upcoming events the club has in store, Rodriguez says, “We just want to keep spreading awareness and make it a safe home for our students and our students of color in Tulare County.”

To remain updated on the latest, students can find the LatinX Student Union club on Instagram @rhslatinx.

Tags: clubs & lifestyles, Donya Hassanshahi, Latinx club, LSU, rangers, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers, rhs