Carolina Espinal: Defining Your Space at UVA
Carolina Espinal | She/her/hers | CLAS ‘00
B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Latin American Studies
As a first-generation American, there were many elements of the college admissions process that were daunting for Carolina Espinal. Coming from a small high school in Virginia, she lacked the support and direction to guide her through the confusing and scary process. However, what she did have to guide her were her convictions and a strong sense of self. Growing up in a large family, with undocumented immigrants regularly in her home until they received asylum status, Carolina knew that she wanted to pursue a career in government and politics. This path initially led Carolina to the University of Maryland at College Park. Mid-way through her first year, however, Carolina found herself applying to transfer into the University of Virginia. She was drawn to UVA by its rigorous curriculum and in-state affordability. But Carolina knew nothing about the University before she was admitted.
She found the transition very difficult in part because of the lack of a visible community of Latinx students. Metaphorically speaking, Charlottesville felt far from home. The UVA community was limited in diversity and felt unlike any environment where Carolina had ever felt safe before. Having been raised to be proud of her Nicaraguan and Dominican heritage, but also distinctly American, Carolina was used to establishing a sense of belonging across communities. At the University of Maryland, she had met many other students with similar backgrounds who could oscillate fluidly between worlds and cultures. At UVA she didn’t see any of that and it took months for her to find people with similar experiences. The other difficult aspect of her transition was finding her place as a transfer student. Carolina felt that she had missed out on a huge part of the bonding that happens during the first year at UVA. There was also a huge learning curve that she would have to overcome. When Carolina arrived at UVA, she was placed in Copeley dorms, over a mile from central grounds. She arrived at her dorm with no idea how to take the bus or get to her orientation. Fortunately, a friend from high school who had spent his first year at UVA helped Carolina navigate the physical but also social landscape of the University until she got settled. It would take a while, however, for Carolina to understand how student organizations worked and how she could find her own community.
When she first saw a flyer for La Sociedad Hispanica, she thought she had finally found her people. Carolina’s expectation was to find a forum and space where Latinx students with backgrounds like hers would talk about their experience at UVA, collect information and data, and engage in larger political conversations about the state of the Latinx community in America. What she found was a social outlet of primarily international students. Despite La Sociedad Hispanica not meeting her expectations, Carolina kept going to meetings and ultimately leveraged the connections she made in LSH to form her own organization, El Pueblo (The Community/People). El Pueblo was designed to be Carolina felt was missing from LSH. Leading El Pueblo, Carolina hosted several forums, events, and workshops to discuss issues of politics, identity, and representation. Debora Freitas was a partner to Carolina throughout the formation of El Pueblo and helped her navigate the process of becoming a CIO and the formal landscape of UVA’s administration. By forming this new organization, Carolina found likeminded individuals and began cultivating friendships.
Outside of El Pueblo, Carolina began to find other positive outlets. She spent a lot of time involved in community service, working specifically with an organization called Migrant Aid. Through her involvement, she had the opportunity to go to some of the migrant camps in and around Charlottesville where she would spend time teaching English to some of the migrants and playing with children. For Carolina, this felt like a worthwhile endeavor and made her feel comfortable in a new environment as it resembled experiences she’d had at home. Gaining confidence in her new space, Carolina began to carve her own niche. The distance and isolation of Copeley dorms that initially made the landscape confusing, ended up facilitating relationships with many of the other students of color who lived in that area. An extension of this space was the Black Bus Stop, which was an informal gathering place on McCormick road where Carolina grew accustomed to seeing her friends during the day.
Old friends, however, would be a big part of Carolina’s UVA experience. Some of the friends she had made at the University of Maryland would drive down to Charlottesville on the weekends. At their school, they had joined a Latina sorority and began to bring other members with them on their drives to UVA. Through these visits, conversations began about what it would look like to form a similar organization at UVA, united by sisterhood and the minority experience. Carolina formed an interest group to see whether bringing one of these Latina organizations would be a possibility. After receiving a small grant from Dean Aaron Laushway, Carolina went to New York to scout at a conference with Latinx Greek organizations. Along with the interest group, Carolina voted to bring Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. to Grounds, attracted to its emphasis on and commitment to service. She continued to work with Dean Laushway to go through the formal process of receiving sponsorship from one of the Greek councils. After encountering resistance and realizing the complexity of securing approval from the councils, Carolina decided to go it alone and pledge the first class without approval and without backing from a council. The first class consisted of three members, Carolina Espinal, Debora Freitas, and Aisha Brown.
The pledging process was above ground, unlike the covert process of the black fraternities and sororities. It involved rigid discipline and a strict dress code. Each pledging member was to dress in all black, including a black trench coat brandishing the flag of the pledge’s country of origin. Witnessing this kind of demonstration was very shocking to many members of the UVA community. Though the pledging process was different, like the Black greek organizations, Omega Phi Beta also had a probate show at the end of the pledging process to formally and publicly recognized the efforts of the women of the first class of the Iota Chapter of Omega Phi Beta. During the remainder of Carolina’s time at UVA, Omega Phi Beta had an emphasis on service. They hosted events on domestic violence awareness, building healthy relationships, and hosting public events.
“It was rewarding because people saw us. When we were walking around in our uniforms people saw us. They were curious, they wanted to know so they started asking questions… I felt like they were seeing us for the first time. Who doesn’t like being seen when you’re so used to not being seen?”
Despite the communities Carolina was able to create, the climate at UVA meant that her experience was often a lonely one. Only 3% of the student body was Latinx and though various organizations offered a sense of solidarity, there were still many elements of their time at UVA that they had to go through alone. There were many reminders for Carolina that it was not a space designed for or welcoming to people of color. The Latinx community had a tradition of painting and decorating Beta Bridge during Hispanic Heritage week. One year their work was vandalized by members of a predominantly white fraternity. The men wrote racially charged and sexual slurs on their work, defacing it in an act of cowardice and hatred. Through a tip, officials were able to identify who had vandalized the bridge, but in response, the vandals were forced to paint the bridge white, formally apologize, and the manner was “handled internally” within the fraternity. This, unfortunately, is just one of many examples of bigotry that Carolina experienced during her time at UVA.
“It felt like the lines of privilege were visible all the time.”
Overcoming this level of adversity was difficult and took its toll on Carolina. However, from this adversity came moments of immense pride. In Carolina’s fourth year, Pablo Davis was the Dean of Hispanic and Latino Students in the Dean’s Office. Together, Davis and Carolina hosted forums on topics such as the afro-Latino experience and the silencing of that narrative. They also orchestrated a program called Nuestra America, a platform for student’s artistic expression, which was inspired by the Jose Marti poem by the same name. In reflection, Carolina wishes there were greater administrative support of this caliber as well as a counselor to help students of color navigate the social-emotional complexities of life at a predominantly white institution. It was accomplishments like the Nuestra America program, El Pueblo, and her sorority, Omega Phi Beta. Graduation day was a culmination of this pride. It was a moment she was able to share with her friends, who had all experienced so much together, but also with her family, her parents who weren’t college graduates had the opportunity to cheer her own as she walked the lawn.
“Why do some people get to walk away with this sense of pride and legacy and inclusion and tradition and we don’t”
Knowing the difficulties she experienced and the adversity that still exists for students of color and first-gen students at UVA today, Carolina has four pieces of advice. The first, don’t be afraid to be yourself. Acknowledge that it is going to be scary, that there will be a lot of things that you don’t know, but that it is okay. If you don’t know yourself, you can’t be proud of yourself. Second, speak up. If you don’t raise your voice than people won’t hear you. Third, if you don’t find your community then build it. And lastly, keep your eye on the prize.
