Latino Ivy League Conference unites students around themes of music, community

Saturday afternoon, the third floor of the Towne Building was filled with the sound of Latino music and the sight of students dancing.

This atypical scene was due to the presence of the Latino Ivy League Conference, which was hosted at Penn this weekend. The conference — planned by College juniors Fabriana Larancuent, Adan Juarez and Diana Estrada Alamo — featured 70 students from every Ivy League school, with the exception of Princeton University.

The Latino Ivy League Conference was started in 2005 at Penn as a networking opportunity for Latino students. However, in recent years, it has lost its pre-professional nature and become more about the Latino community.

“We felt that students weren’t benefiting as much and businesses themselves weren’t as receptive,” Juarez said, referring to the decision to drop the business aspect. “Delegates themselves didn’t really care.”

This year’s theme was about exploring “the cultural dissonance in the Ivy League,” according to Larancuent, as well as linking that to music and becoming more active in the community.

“Music is one of those mediums where if you’re not really musically inclined, you don’t know what the potential of it is,” Larancuent said. “So we thought, ‘Let’s talk to these Ivy Leaguers about we can do with it, as a form of communication.’”

Students started trickling in Friday night and began the conference early Saturday morning with a discussion on the state of the Latino community on their campuses.

“I wanted to learn more about the Hispanic community at other Ivy League schools and use what I could take from their ideas and implement it at my school,” Brown University sophomore Elsa Mora said.

After their morning discussion, students went through a series of workshops on music.

One workshop, led by doctoral student Glenn Holtzman, focused on the how music affects the psychological basis of behavior. He discussed how human bodies and brains are linked to how people interact with music, as well as the roles associated with music in different Latino cultures.

“I actually never thought about how bachata was associated with low social-economic status,” Mora said. “It gave me insight.”

Students concluded their Saturday night with a banquet and a keynote speaker, Tony Plana, an actor known for his role as the father in “Ugly Betty.”

Plana spoke about his career and how being an immigrant from Cuba has shaped his life. He urged students to take an active role in their communities.

“You’ve got to look back and say, ‘Who’s behind me? Let me see if I can reach out and help somebody,’” he said.

By the end of the conference, students did start reaching out to each other. After their discussions, many groups identified one issue that they thought was affecting their groups on campus — exclusivity.

“A lot of our groups are very ethnic-specific, and that’s okay,” Juarez said. “But the problem is that in doing what you do, you tend to exclude people.”

In addition to this, students also identified another issue they want to work on in the future: helping each other build up resources at their respective schools.

Juarez explained that he will “try to reach out to the other Ivies to help them out in their funding struggle.”

“People were really happy to be here,” Mora said. “We’ve all learned from each other.”

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