25
SUPPORT EVERY DAY Dayanna “Day” Martinez-Soto is a fourth-year Social Work major from Des Moines. Day serves on the CLAS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, which aims to identify, understand, and change institutional structures that perpetuate inequity. During a conversation with Dean Sara Sanders, who also chairs the DEI Committee and is a Professor in the School of Social Work, Day shared her experience as a first-generation, LGBTQ+ Latina student in the College.
What has your experience at Iowa been like as an underrepresented minority student? Day: My first year here at the university was really hard. I was in Iowa Edge before classes started, and that really helped me. I met a lot of people who also identified the same way I do. It was just a little family. But then classes started, and that’s when it was like a huge cultural shock. It was just very lonely. I was an hour and a half away from home, and I wasn’t guided to more resources. I didn’t know who to go to with identities like mine. As a first-gen student, I don’t have that backbone at home, where I could go to my parents and tell them what’s going on and they would know what to do. I didn’t have that, and it really made me lose myself and who I was as a person here, for a while. Throughout the years, I learned to rely on myself to be successful. I did create relationships with professors, but I felt like I still couldn’t relate to anyone who was like me or had the answers I wanted.
How did you get involved with Iowa Edge? Day: I got an email from the university. It was this cool thing. We moved into the dorms a week early, and we just spent all day together for a week. But then after that, we went our own ways, and I would still see a lot of them around campus, but it wasn’t the same. What do you wish would have happened? What did you need? Day: I just wanted someone to come behind me and just tell me, “You’re doing it!” I needed people to acknowledge what I’ve been putting up with, what students like me have to endure, over and over and over again. It’s so frustrating. I have to dig deeper and work harder to do the same thing my partner (who is white and grew up here) is doing. I see other people who seem to be easily making it through, paying for school and having emotional support from home and the people around them who share their experience. They don’t have to worry about the same things I have to worry about. It was a daily battle for me.
LEARN MORE ABOUT IOWA EDGE
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker