She got involved with The Muhlenberg Weekly, the college’s student-run newspaper, as a first-year student …
“I wrote my first story for the Weekly toward the end of my first semester. I remember coming in to look at [the staff’s] edits and challenging them on something, proving my point, and being right about it. After that, they were like, ‘We want you.’ Before the semester ended, they asked if I wanted to be an editorial assistant in the spring, and I said yes.”
… and now, she’s the Weekly’s editor-in-chief.
“It’s a full-time job. I knew it was a lot, but I wasn’t expecting just how much it was going to be. Every single day, you’re putting out small fires, answering emails, talking to section editors, making sure [the ads are] getting in on time, and just talking to people and trying to get new writers. And of course writing stories, because the nature of the editor-in-chief job is that the very time-sensitive stories fall on you. It’s been stressful but in a rewarding way.”
A dance class at Muhlenberg helped inspire her to explore her Dominican heritage through summer research …
“My mom spoke to me in English growing up. Whenever I’d see family who came from DR, they would always be like, ‘What do you mean you don’t know how to speak Spanish?’ and not in a kind way. That pushed me away from even trying. I was also confused about my race. I grew up knowing that I wasn’t white, but I was also raised to believe I wasn’t Black either. In a jazz class I was taking with [former Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance] Anito Gavino, she was teaching Latin dance — merengue and bachata — and she was saying, ‘This, too, is Black dance. This is social dance.’ It was so fascinating to have a validating voice be like, ‘This is a part of this bigger diaspora.’ I would talk to Anito about how I felt this imposter syndrome with my culture and with Blackness. That’s how the research project came to be — we wanted to be immersed in African and Dominican [dance] spaces and find the intersections. Our culminating experience of the project was going to the Dominican Day Parade. It was my first time ever going. It was such a beautiful experience because I got to see just how diverse we are, from the whitest and blondest of blond to the Blackest and the kinkiest hair. It was so lovely.”
… and that project inspired her to spend a semester studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa.
“I always knew I wanted to go abroad. Because of all the African dance I was doing, I was like, ‘Okay, Africa, but where in Africa?’ I decided on South Africa after looking at the course options and the university I would attend: the University of Cape Town, which is the top university on the continent. The education I received was absolutely phenomenal. The people I met were amazing. A goal I had for myself was to be friends with the local community, and that’s something I definitely achieved. By the time I left Cape Town, I would go to a random place not expecting to see anyone I knew, but then I’d hear someone call out my name. Dance-wise, too, it was so fruitful. I’m the kind of dancer who will see something and try to replicate it. I picked up the dance style of Amapiano fairly fast. So I’d be out in a club and I’d be dancing and I’d make random friends on the dance floor. They would see me dance and think I was South African because of the way I could move. It further cemented how dance crosses so many borders.”
“A goal I had for myself was to be friends with the local community, and that’s something I definitely achieved. By the time I left Cape Town, I would go to a random place not expecting to see anyone I knew, but then I’d hear someone call out my name.”
She’s applying for opportunities that would allow her to live in the Dominican Republic after graduation, including the Fulbright program, for which she’s a semifinalist.
“Anito was the one who pushed me to apply for the Fulbright, a seed she began planting around the same time that we finished the research project. When I was in DR [in January] for my birthday, that cemented it, like, ‘Yeah, I need to be here. My people are so beautiful.’ I’m getting better at Spanish, I’m a pro at my cultural dances, and I listen to so much more of our music now. [Recently,] I was talking to a grad student who’s also Dominican American who was there for three months. It was so interesting to hear what she had to say about what it was like to live there and how people don’t view her as Dominican because she’s not fluent [in Spanish] or because she wasn’t born there. It helped me take off my rose-colored glasses a bit and be like, ‘OK, this experience is actually going to be a little hard.’ It made me nervous. I was like, ‘Wait, is this something I actually want to do?’ But I do because I want the hardship, and I also want to learn my language. With my culture, it’s been a really interesting journey but a rewarding one. I feel so much closer to who I am.”
Zachary Mannheimer ’99, a theatre and philosophy double major, is founder and board chair of Alquist 3D, a company that 3D prints commercial and residential buildings.
Muhlenberg’s 23rd varsity team had a successful first season, and the pool of recruits is only expanding as the sport continues to grow at the high school level.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies Tiffany Montoya explains how she chose to study philosophy and, specifically, the concept of flourishing.
