Q&A with Latino Coalition chair Angel Contrera

Last week, the Latino Coalition elected its new officials for the 2012 board. Wharton and College junior Angel Contrera will begin his second term as chair of the coalition, the umbrella organization that contains 25 Latino groups on campus. He recently sat down with The Daily Pennsylvanian to discuss his plans for the group.

Daily Pennsylvanian: How will the Latino Coalition groups work with faculty and staff to ensure the Diversity Action Plan is catering to the Latino community?
Angel Contrera: In the past couple of years, we’ve been asking the University to do something new to let us know what their plans are. They release the minority equity progress report every three years telling us their progress, but we want something more future looking — you’re telling us what you’ve done, but we want to know what your plans are. Part of it has been a push from minority coalitions to really see this come into fruition.
Latino faculty are very much underrepresented. Two percent of the standing faculty is Latino, [and] it’s a very low number. We’re actually the lowest among the Ivy League.

DP: What are some of the challenges the Latino Coalition faces?
AC: Moving forward, my goal is to have more collaboration between the groups [in the Latino Coalition] … One of the first things I’m doing next semester is meeting with each individual president of our constituencies to see what it is they want. I then plan to meet with the groups together … and say, “Okay, here are major things that stood out — what part of these plans do we want to take on?”

DP: What are some of the big events you are looking forward to during the spring semester?
AC: Festival Latino is the biggest. It’s the 13th anniversary [this year], so we’re working with the vice provost and director of Penn Libraries to look back and see how much we can find on Latino history at Penn. Last year, we had about more than 800 people come in total. This year, my goal is to really make Festival Latino [in March] big and make sure everyone on campus knows what’s going on.

We also work with Student Financial Services. We did a program in the fall where we bring them in to talk about people’s financial aid packages. [The discussions are targeted] especially for people coming from lower income backgrounds who say, “I can’t do this” because it might be too expensive. All of these are misconceptions because SFS does a really good job of helping students out.

DP: As the struggle for undocumented students continues, how does the Latino Coalition plan to support those particular students?
AC Our organization isn’t supposed to be a political organization — we don’t take sides unless our constituency groups want us to. We will continue to advocate to the University to ensure that this is a safe space and open space for undocumented students. [The] Latino Coalition will continue to be supportive of any initiatives any of our constituents take.

DP: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
AC: Two years ago, we had a community summit where “15 by 2015” came up. [It’s a concept about] getting Penn to be 15 percent Latino by 2015. Clearly, we didn’t reach that goal. I think [15 by 2015] is a call to action for our community, more so than it’s a quota. We continually work with the Admissions Office … to ensure that the Latino population here is represented and [that they also] feel like this is a space they belong to.

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