Hispanic Heritage Month Heads to Hopkins

Consuelo Bowman ’26, co-head of SOL, described the activities SOL organized. Bowman listed, “We are hosting salsa dancers on October 20th, like we had last year, and we will also have a bomba group coming October 10th.” Some Spanish teachers opt to bring their students to the salsa workshop instead of class. Charlie Russell ’26 attended the workshop a few years ago, and “learned [about Hispanic] culture through [...] dancing.” SOL will also be organizing a community altar for Día de los Muertos: “It is a very meaningful tradition that helps our community to come together in times of loss,” said Bowman. SOL will host a festival on November 12. Bowman explained that the festival “will include stations for different countries run by different people in our community, with the same energy of last year’s event.” The festival, which will close out the month of celebrations, holds importance because it spotlights the 20 countries and one territory united by the broadly encompassing term “Hispanic.” Through the festival SOL hopes to “celebrate the diverse and complex backgrounds that each country brings to the table,” Mia Callot ’26, co-head of SOL, commented. Additionally, Becky Harper, the Hopkins Director of Equity and Community and SOL faculty advisor, is excited “to see how the festival evolves this year.”

At Hopkins, Latino students and faculty were not always represented. Becky Harper, Director of Equity & Community and SOL faculty head, noted that during her time at Hopkins, she was “one of very few Latin students and there were even fewer teachers, so to see how [Latino] representation has grown brings [her] joy.” Now, the Hopkins website shows statistics including a faculty with 13% being of color, and the student body being 46% of color. Harper added that “SOL [brings] awareness, celebration, affirmation, community, and pride [to Hopkins].” This connects to Callot’s point of creating a diverse environment, as shown in the events they are planning for this month. 

Callot stated that there are two main goals of SOL: “to help foster a sense of belonging among Hopkins’ Latino students and faculty,” and “to educate Hopkins about the richness of our cultures.” Callot explained that with these goals,  “SOL aims to affirm its students' identities and build confidence by providing opportunities to explore Latino music, traditions, and history.” Additionally, SOL hopes “that shared experiences [within SOL events] create bridges of understanding and appreciation for our Latino community here at Hopkins.” Bowman wrote that “Hispanic Heritage Month is very important to us, as it brings light to all of the different elements of our culture, and we hope that through our events, Hopkins will know more about this community.”