The Latinx-Hispanic Union, more commonly known as LHU, celebrated its seventh birthday as an on-campus organization Sept. 17.
Event coordinator Daisy Martinez-Jimenez remembers the first event she attended as a first-year at Elon. LHU served carne asada tacos while returning members and upperclassmen got to know the new students. Martinez-Jimenez remembers feeling welcomed.
“It really felt like I had a community there because that was the early days of college, maybe the first one or two weeks,” Martinez-Jimenez said. “Seeing everybody together, people that look like me with similar interests and similar goals in mind really stuck out to me.”
LHU has worked over the past seven years to “provide a welcoming space and create unity in Elon’s Latinx/Hispanic community and foster diversity at Elon University,” according to its website.
LHU vice president Carlos Gomez Lopez said even as a first-year attending events, he could tell that the members worked hard to create a comfortable space, making LHU feel like a home away from home.
“I feel like there's a lot of authenticity in those events, just because the people that organize it took pride in making sure that it was a home away from home for a lot of people,” Gomez Lopez said. “They did that through the type of food they served and the background music that they played in the events, which just made it seem really genuine. You could tell that the people involved really cared and wanted to make that little bit of a difference.”
According to Elon’s Diversity Dashboard, more than 78% of the student body identifies as white, making Elon a predominantly white institution. Martinez-Jimenez said having organizations such as LHU, the Black Student Union and El Centro are important to campuses like Elon to ensure that its students feel like they belong here.
“For minority students, especially within the Latinx Hispanic community, a lot of us are first generation, so spaces like LHU and El Centro, where we meet people who come from similar backgrounds to us, can be super inviting and reaffirming to us that we're meant to be here,” Martinez-Jimenez said. “We're supposed to be here, which can kind of be hard at a PWI where, like in a lot of classes, we don't see people that look like this.”
President Anahy Felipe De La Cruz said LHU provided a place for her and others in the organization to belong and receive encouragement from upperclassmen.
“I think it gives a sense of belonging,” Felipe De La Cruz said. “It's also really good for mental health and emotional health. I feel like a lot of Latinos that I've met are first-gen. I feel like just talking to the upperclassmen has helped me personally, and hopefully has helped others just to see the path they've created, and seeing how they can either reach that or provide advice to them throughout these events.”
Felipe De La Cruz said it is important to celebrate LHU’s birthday and show gratitude to alumni and Latinx-Hispanic community leaders who supported the creation of a space for learning and community belonging on campus.
LHU hosted several events starting Sept. 16 to celebrate its seventh birthday, with Paletas en el Patio or popsicles on the patio. This event invited students to remember the joy of having popsicles as kids on summer days.
Felipe De La Cruz said to promote LHU and its events, they tabled at the Fall Organization Fair and the Hispanic Heritage Month kickoff. De La Cruz said while she believes their table's bright colors and snacks draw people in, they come to events and get involved because the events feel familiar to their culture.
“We talk about what events we do and how it kind of relates to their culture,” De La Cruz said. “Like ‘paletas en patio,’ which is in Spanish. Some people say, ‘Oh, I know what that is, I'm going to go.’”
Following the popsicles Sept. 17, LHU hosted its birthday celebration, complete with cake and pinatas. De La Cruz said she was most excited about the pinatas, which reminded her of birthday celebrations growing up where the younger kids, in this case, the freshmen, got to take their swings first, working up to the older students.
LHU is hosting its once-a-semester La Habana event Sept. 20 at Taphouse to end the week. The event will feature Latin pop music and food from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Each event is open to any Elon students, regardless of the race they identify with. Gomez Lopez says one of LHU’s goals is to be an inclusive rather than an exclusive organization, welcoming students, regardless of race, to its events to learn more about Latino and Hispanic culture.