Alum speaks on influencing Penn's minority community

Even though Pedro Ramos today holds one of the highest positions in Philadelphia's education system, he still occasionally feels the same type of isolation he experienced as a Penn student more than 20 years ago. Ramos, the president of Philadelphia's Board of Education, spoke to about 30 students yesterday afternoon as part of the week-long Festival Latino 2000, a program which he himself helped launch when he attended Penn. Ramos' half-hour lecture focused on how his experiences at Penn as a minority student influenced his desire to find a sense of community on campus. "Getting to Penn was literally like landing on Mars," Ramos said regarding his experience of arriving on Penn's campus in his family's 1974 Chevy Impala his freshman year. "I saw all these cars that I had only seen on TV." Ramos attributed his difficult transition to college life to his upbringing in an insular Puerto Rican community. At Penn, Ramos continued, he found very few other students who were like him. Ramos, a Philadelphia native and the first Latino president of the Board of Education, described his experience at the University as his first introduction to mainstream American culture. It was also the place where he learned the true meaning of bureaucracy. "What was more shocking to me besides this sense of isolation was when you reached out to people and you felt this competitiveness," he said. But, Ramos said, he learned that in order to adjust, he had to immerse himself in activities that would allow him to meet people and replicate the strong sense of community he experienced at home with his family. As a result, he soon became involved in organizations for Latino and Chicano students like La Asociacion Cultural de Estudiantes Latino Americanos and El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, which were much smaller at the time than they are today. Through these groups, he began to realize that he was not only Puerto Rican but Latino, as well. Ramos, along with other students, began a push for more Latino faculty members and a Latin-American studies program. When it looked less and less likely that these two needs would be met, the students decided to instead work on the creation of the Latin American Living and Learning Program. Today, the program occupies two floors in Harnwell College House and provides a housing option for Latino students to live together. "If you are tenacious enough, they eventually give," Ramos said. One of Ramos' guiding principles is to "never let them see you fight." For a lobbying group's members to at least seem unified is of great importance, according to Ramos. Several students said they were moved by Ramos' speech, especially by the fact that he had once been exactly where they are now. "His speech shed some light on his experience as a Latino and experiences for me that are yet to come," College junior Duare Valenzuela said. In introducing Ramos, College junior Jeff Camarillo, who has been working with Ramos for the past two months as an Urban Studies major, described Ramos as "a true role model for me in every sense." Ramos closed the night by discussing his experiences in the education system. "When you go someplace, someone remembers that you were helpful and, to me, that is so important," he said.

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