Taking place from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 each year, National Hispanic Heritage Month has long been a time to celebrate Hispanic and Latino culture. In years past, St. Louis U. High has acknowledged Hispanic Heritage Month with a week of morning prayers for the Hispanic community. Although many Hispanic and Latino students hoped to see more celebration this year, SLUH was unable to do any more than the week of morning prayers and a bulletin board.

Hispanos y Latinos Unidos, a club dedicated to providing a voice for Hispanic and Latino students, was central to planning the events for Hispanic Heritage Month. They wrote thoughtful prayers about people of importance in the Hispanic community and put together a bulletin board outside Campus Ministry addressing questions to consider during this month. Still, students felt like this was not enough to acknowledge such an important month for the Hispanic and Latino community.

“I'm extremely disappointed in what SLUH has done, specifically with regards to Hispanic Heritage Month this year,” said senior Ismael Karim. “This is the largest month for Latinos and we've been asking for recognition for over four years now.”

Hispanos y Latinos Unidos tried to plan more activities for Hispanic Heritage Month this year. but for a variety of reasons, the plans did not come to fruition.

“Why couldn't the school do more to celebrate this year? I will take responsibility or blame for that,” said Director of Equity and Inclusion Frank Kovarik in an email to the Prep News. “I didn't think ahead to reach out in advance to the students and collaborate with them on a celebration that would more closely match with their hopes. I hope they hear my regret and will forgive me for that lapse.”

In addition to the miscommunication between the club and school leaders, the lack of more Hispanic Heritage Month celebration can also be attributed to scheduling conflicts. With so many other school-sponsored events taking up time during the school day, the concept of any mandatory activity for this purpose seemed improbable.

“It’s not easy to feed all of these events into the school schedule,” said Hispanos y Latinos Unidos moderator Javier Moreno. “Obviously we are a minority group, but there are a lot of other minority groups in our school. That would mean that we would probably have to create spaces for 5, 6, 7 minority  groups during the year.”

While promoting diversity and inclusion at SLUH, ACES leaders also hope to promote equity, which involves impartiality to any particular group. Therefore, they try to make sure each minority group is given equal opportunity to share their culture and history with the school.

“I think with careful planning and if you think about creative ways so it doesn't become a repetitive event, if it's some sort of activity or some sort of workshop, you know, that can at least be a reminder for us to be more aware of what's going on,” said Moreno.

Nevertheless, as Karim points out, Hispanic Heritage Month is still receiving far less attention this year than Black History Month.

“We've always been limited to doing something on the intercom, it's never been anything major, and seeing what was able to be done for Black History Month, we were expecting that something after asking for it could be done for us as well. But nobody acted on that,” said Karim.

This was the only all-school acknowledgment of the month, but the Foreign Language Department has done some work behind the scenes to increase awareness of Hispanic culture during this time.

“It's also becoming a more important part of our curriculum for Spanish classes,” Moreno said. “We're trying to raise awareness about the contributions of Hispanics and Latinos to the United States, so we're trying to make that become a more permanent piece of our curriculum as opposed to something that is optional, and that is up to every teacher.”

While steps are being taken to progress toward better representation for Hispanic students and their culture at SLUH, Hispanic students feel that this month should be a higher priority for the school administration.

“I think it was failed leadership in terms of like, equity and inclusion in those who sit up top,” said Karim. “We're the largest minority group in the country and for us not to be recognized this whole month is unacceptable. There’s a white supremacy idea that minority groups should be against each other. In terms of the minority groups, the Black Student Union, Latino Student Union, Ongoing Conversations, I feel like we’re always competing for attention.”

“We felt that this certainly did not represent our culture, it did not represent us as Latinos, and so we just felt, you know, definitely underrepresented,” said sophomore Sam Hernandez. “We felt like we weren't being heard and that we weren't being given the respect that we felt that we deserve.”

Hispanic Heritage Month is an important time to recognize the roles Hispanics and Latinos have played in this country’s history. 

“It's a celebration of my culture, of my roots. It's a time to recognize Latino excellence, both in and out of classrooms. It's a time where I get to share a bit of my culture with everyone and I get to learn about others’ cultures,” said Karim.

Younger members of Hispanos y Latinos Unidos hope to use this opportunity to brainstorm how to better celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in future years.

“I think we can incorporate food and music, which are huge parts of our culture,” said Hernandez. “I think that like with our new chefs downstairs we can incorporate maybe one week of Hispanic or Latino originated foods, which I feel like people would really love.”

“Though I am sad to have disappointed these students, in a larger sense I feel hopeful because they are speaking up for themselves instead of feeling silenced. They are presenting us with an opportunity for growth,” said Kovarik.