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This year 20 Lafayette students are helping educate the campus community on the rich heritage of Latin America and the experience of Latinos in the United States. They are members of the Heritage of Latin America (H.O.L.A.) living group located in Ramer Hall.
“The H.O.L.A. floor is a great asset to Lafayette because it promotes the College’s ideals to diversify the campus and allows for the College to represent its diverse environment,” says this year’s president Joseph Peralta ’09 (Corona, N.Y.). “The H.O.L.A. members work as a support group for the academic and personal development of all its members and non-members.”
The ideal of the H.O.L.A. floor is to encourage cross-cultural communication on campus while assisting its members in developing leadership skills. The group strives to be a model of diversity for students and act as an agent for social change toward greater cultural diversity at Lafayette.
“I think that it is important to have places like H.O.L.A. where people of similar background or people with interest in that specific culture can get together and teach one another,” says the floor’s resident adviser Adekemi Egunsola ’09 (Rabat, Morocco), who is pursuing B.S. degrees in chemistry and mathematics.
Students do not have to meet any specific requirements to be a member of the floor. They only must demonstrate a desire to contribute to the club’s goals.
H.O.L.A. currently participates as a group in the Landis Community Outreach Center’s Kids in the Community program. Each Tuesday, they work with children in downtown Easton on arts and crafts and discuss the value of maintaining a positive environment. They also have attended events the Hispanic Society of Lafayette has organized in celebration of Latino Heritage Month. Members are organizing a brown bag discussion for the campus community later this semester to address the racial slur found on a bulletin board in a campus residence hall last month.
“The H.O.L.A. floor has given us the experience of having hard work pay off,” says Peralta. “As a floor, we are trying to become more proactive on campus and in the Easton community. Holding out a helping hand and having someone grab it has given us the experience that we will try to promote to the Lafayette community.”
Last school year, the H.O.L.A. floor organized a date auction for the entire campus, with proceeds going toward hurricane and earthquake relief efforts.