New position created for first year Eve Nañez

It’s a month into the semester and students, between writing papers and attending lectures, are working on and off Reed campus. Students have a host of jobs, from commons to the library, the theatre department to the MRC. 

Eve Nañez, an indigenous first year student from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, is one of these students. She’s the MRC’s new Indigenous Diaspora Event Coordinator. The Indigenous Diaspora Event Coordinator is a new position, specially made for Nañez. The job is “for someone to plan and coordinate events for indigenous kids and do outreach to the indigenous population,” in Oregon, says Nañez. She wants to work with “local high schools that are underfunded, because typically, under funded high schools are full of minority students. And so, to be a resource for them and eventually…go to these high schools and be like, ‘Hey, I know it’s difficult right now. If you ever need any help, you have someone that you can talk to.’” 

It’s not just local high schools that she wants to work with, but also the local indigenous people in and around the Portland area. She wants to “really connect with the native people in the surrounding area, because it’s really important to acknowledge that we’re here on their land, and it’s a privilege to be here.” 

Nañez hopes that her position not only reaches indigenous students, but all minority students, present and future. Nañez wants Reed to become of place of “diversity,” simply. “With all these event coordinator positions at the MRC?” Nañez explained, “I want to gain enough notoriety that people within and outside the state are like, ‘Hey this school is like a champion of diversity and was like really engaging with their minority students’, so that other minorities are like ‘Hey, I want to go there for college.’”

Nañez’s plans for her job as the Indigenous Diaspora Event Coordinator to go beyond the associations of the job title alone. Nañez is bringing her own experience as a minority student and hopes to change things so that students don’t feel alien, and to make Reed a place where minority students aren’t simply admitted and forgotten. She hopes to do good, and not just throw resources at minority students, but cultivate a place for them to thrive.