Founded in September 2023, the Brown Latine Leadership Council is a new club dedicated to uniting the Latine community on campus.
According to Co-Founder Fabian Antunez Lopez ’25, the club, which now has approximately 40 members, hosts leaders from across Brown’s existing Latine organizations and clubs to form a space centered around celebrating identity and fostering empowerment.
“There was no formal organization that really unified all of the leaders of these respective organizations,” Antunez Lopez said. “That’s what the Brown Latine Leadership Council is intended to do.”
Co-founder Camila González Vásquez ’25 recounted “feeling quite thrilled about” Antunez Lopez’s idea. “It was just what we needed to keep the momentum of our community’s growth on campus going.”
For Alejandro Jackson ’25, another co-founder, the formation of the club represented a significant shift towards a strengthened network of Latine students on campus.
“The Brown Latine Leadership Council is important to me because it seeks to make the multitude of Latine-based cultural groups feel like a part of something bigger,” Jackson said. “Students who have moved in and out of the same spaces are meeting each other for the first time.”
According to Jackson, leaders met early in the club’s development to create a constitution, work out meeting logistics, coordinate calendars and brainstorm events. They also worked together to submit an application with the Student Activities Office for a formal club recognition, currently pending approval, according to the co-founders.
Within the club, students can volunteer for different roles, and some represent multiple on-campus groups — including González Vásquez, who also represents the Latinx Student Union and Colombian Student Association.
Beyond bringing together leaders of Latine organizations at Brown, the Council hopes to connect with members of the broader Latine community in Providence and at other schools and universities in the Northeast, the co-founders explained.
They also highlighted the Council’s biggest goal for this upcoming semester: to organize La Feria, a week of events organized by Brown’s Latine community and open to Providence community members. They hope La Feria will expand the club’s presence “and establish a precedent for future years, ingraining it into the fabric of student life at Brown,” González Vásquez said.
As the club enters its second semester, its co-founders expressed optimism for the future. “There is deep excitement for what is to come,” Jackson said. “I truly do feel like the community is forging new connections amongst its members.”
“I hope people will truly feel … the magnitude of our community, because with magnitude comes voice, and with voice comes power,” González Vásquez added.
Sophia Wotman is a senior staff writer covering activism. She is a junior from Long Island, New York concentrating in Political Science with a focus on women’s rights. She is a jazz trumpet player, and often performs on campus and around Providence.
