Catalina Pinto Wilkins Learning Beyond the Classroom: Creating Space at UVA

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Catalina Pinto Wilkins | she/her | CLAS ‘16

B.A. in Philosophy

Catalina Pinto Wilkins grew up moving from college town to college town due to her fathers job as a University professor. She dreamed of going to college in a large city, but ended up in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia when her family moved to Richmond, Virginia right before the cutoff deadline to make Pinto Wilkins eligible for in-state tuition. Though she wished to be in a large city, the affordability factor alone bound her for UVA. Upon her arrival, she quickly found a home for herself by joining clubs her first year such as Madison House, the Migrant Program, VISAS (Volunteers with International Students, Staff and Scholars), Student Council, PMP (Peer Mentor Program), and her involvement through her Office of the Dean Of Students internship, where she helped plan La Gala; further, she found community in her suite style dorm, Gooch-Dillard. Evidently, Pinto Wilikins entered the University wishing to leave her mark.

“I went into UVA hoping to make an impact, that’s just what I really wanted to do. It wasn't even about formal education, let's say. It was just ``I want to go to this new space, I want to be able to offer whatever I can and make a positive impact, particularly for the Latinx community.”

La Gala- an event held in the spring semester by the Bolivar Network to celebrate the Hispanic/Latinx community that Pinto Wilkins assisted in organizing her first year through her ODOS internship.

Members of the Latino Student Alliance preparing for the Lighting of the Lawn

By the time of Pinto Wilkins’ second year, the campus climate began to change and became marked by large tragedies: the disappearance and murder of Hannah Graham, the Rolling Stones Article “A Rape on Campus”, and the brutalization of Martese Johnson by ABC officers on the Corner. All of these events occurred within a span of months.

“That year was just so traumatic, it felt like when you are standing in the ocean and you cannot find your footing to get air.”

These events, among many, shaped much of the student experience at the University. Despite and in light of these events during her second year, Pinto Wilkins continued to carry out many of the initiatives she had begun her first year. During her first year, she audited the meetings of the Latino Student Alliance, which discussed how the needs of Hispanic/Latinx students were not being met by the University. For example, the full extent of resources provided by Multicultural Student Services were the staff in the Programs and Council Offices, who were dedicated to working with marginalized communities. Consequently,the Hispanic/Latinx, Native, and Middle Eastern communities were all supported by one sole staff member. The lack of staff and space ultimately did not provide students with adequate centralization of support or resources.

To address these shortcomings,LSA released a list of demands in the spring of 2014 that was largely inspired by the demands that Black students had put forth in order to create the Office of African American Affairs (OAAA) many decades prior.

One of the last demands was the creation of a physical student center for students of multicultural backgrounds. That following summer, Pinto Wilkins interned with ODOS, where she pitched the idea of a Multicultural Student Center, but was told that the creation of such a space would take a lot of work.

In spite of this, with the help of Scott Rheinheimer, Assistant Director of the LGBTQ+ Student Services, Pinto Wilkins dedicated the rest of her summer to come up with a plan that would push the administration to open up a multicultural student center. Once again, much of the work done was inspired by past student activism—in this case, Scott pulled up old documents on the opening of the LGBTQ+ center. By the fall, Pinto Wilkins was ready to hit the ground running and begin collaborating with five other students on the Multicultural Student Center Initiative, a student research proposal working to make the Multicultural Student Center a reality.

“At the end of the day the University(and our research indicated this) was comfortably 10 years behind the average university and certainly our peer institutions with regards to opening a multicultural resource center. If the university wanted to have a multicultural research center we would have had it.”

After hearing the news that the University wanted to open a Multicultural Student Center, Pinto Wilkins stayed in Charlottesville for the summer between her third and fourth year in order to prepare for the grand opening of the Multicultural Student Center in 2016. She worked with staff in the PAC as well as Vicky Gist from Housing and Residence Life, a group which eventually became the Multicultural Student Services team. The MSC was opened in the basement of Newcomb Hall—later relocated and expanded to the Gameroom in Newcomb—and Pinto Wilkins was selected to serve as the inaugural student director of the center.

The MSC quickly became a hub for multicultural students and was able to provide them with more centralized, more robust resources than ever before. For example, the day after the 2016 Election, Pinto Wilkins remembers getting to her desk in the MSC early in the morning, only to find upwards of thirty students already gathered there. Pinto Wilkins and the MSS staff put out food, tissues, and offered support particularly for those with marginalized backgrounds.

“I was very overcome with emotion in that regard because that is precisely why we had worked so hard for the last two to three years to open up the center. People could feel like they had a home, a place where they belonged, and a place where they could feel very supported at UVa.”

Though the turnaround time for the creation of the MSC was relatively short in comparison to the original six to eight years that Pinto Wilkins was told it would take to construct, and students now had access to more centralized resources, she believes that there was still room for improvement. In particular, the University needed to start financially supporting multicultural student organizations that were executing crucial activities that would not have existed were it not for the work of these CIOs.

Though Pinto Wilkins achieved her goals of creating a legacy of advocacy and change at UVA, she states that she has gained much more from the University than she has given—mentors, experience in leadership, life long friendships, and even her husband of over a year, Isaiah.

“UVA gave me my best friend and husband and so many of my life long friendships and for that alone I will be eternally eternally grateful.”

Pinto Wilkins’ time at UVA was marked by her involvement outside of the classroom and her service to others at the University. She says that the best piece of advice she could give to any incoming first year students would be to find your mentor. UVA can be overwhelming to navigate, so having an advocate who is willing to teach you and show you the ropes of the University is crucial for success.

At now husband’s senior night for Virginia Basketball 2017.