Senior Michelle Esparza, president of Latino Student Union, has been working on her journey to introduce Roseville High School to Latino culture ever since she joined LSU her sophomore year. Latino culture is interesting and important for students to learn about.
“It can show students to get used to diversity, teach kids that not everybody is the same, and educate them about different ethnicities and their cultures,” Esparza said.
When Esparza joined LSU, she was shown a message by the current president of the club at the time. They taught Esparza what being a member of LSU really meant.
“She explained to me what the concept of LSU was. That it was about embracing, educating, celebrating Latino culture, and I really thought it was interesting,” Esparza said.
Esparza wants students to know that anybody can join LSU. She wants to break the stigma of it being a “only Latino club”, and open up to all cultures.
“They assume it’s just a Mexican club, or you can’t join if you’re not Mexican. Literally anyone can join, you don’t even have to be Latino to join, you can be like Asian and White, we want all sorts of variety in our club”, Esparza said.
Esparza is helping host an upcoming dance at Roseville High School called the Baile. This dance is a Latino styled dance that any student at RHS can attend. Esparza believes that this could be the perfect way to get Roseville students to be involved in Latino culture. She thinks it gives a taste of a real Latino dance, food, and music.
“We have the Baile coming up, it’s going to be on April 5th. It’s going to be in the cafeteria and at the moment we’re talking about decorations and other things”, Esparza said.
Being a club, Esparza has to help host fundraisers to gain the money to be able to do activities within the club. With more funding, she’ll be able to share even more Latino culture with the students. Along with that, she also wants to do team building activities, to strengthen the relationship between LSU members.
“Right now we’re trying to do more fundraisers. We are trying to do more team building activities to build connections so that there is a greater bond in our club,” Esparza said. “It’s not just doing fundraisers and events, it’s also like our members, we are like a family. We all love and support each other.”