Thursday, October 3rd marked the first official meeting for the UNIDOS group at South. The organization is commonly associated with other student-led groups such as ASA, or Asian Student Association. However, Jacqueli Yaurincela, one of the two student presidents, has a focused passion on helping those who struggle with college preparation. Yaurincela herself experienced the strife of applying for college. On this subject of student’s needed help in after high school readiness, the co-president said, “that’s why we have these cultural groups… we don’t know what path to go to.”

With her experience in Student Parliament last year, Yaurincela has skills to plan and set goals for the group’s new year. On the day of the first meeting the leaders asked members what things they wanted to take part in. “It all depends on them, too. I think being president you mostly try to hear everyone’s voices not only yourself’s or the executive board’s,” she said and continued with, “if we make the choices for them, they’re not going to want to come. If we all agree with something it’s a better community.”

Another addition to the leadership team for UNIDOS is Delainia Haug, the Liberal Arts Coordinator and new adviser of the student group. After losing their adviser last school year, Yaurincela and John Loredo came to Haug’s door in hope that she would take the place. “They came to me with a big calendar already sort of broken down into what they wanted to accomplish every month,” said the new adviser recalling the end of the last year year. She added in an extension to the co-president’s capabilities and more on her role,  “I would say they have a lot of ideas and are very enthusiastic about getting more students involved this year… there are a few big events they want to host and they just need an adult to help them get things down.”

The leaders want to make it clear that UNIDOS isn’t exclusively for Hispanic related races. Haug mentioned something that Yaurincela had expressed to her in light of this concern saying, “Our goal is to build a better community within the Hispanic student community and to share perspectives with other students and cultures to create more cross cultural understanding.”

According to Yaurincela, they have already completed their plans for the year. Including community service projects, focusing on more events, visits to a conference or two, and preparing for the yearly auditorium presentation. This presentation is performed for the school closer to the finish of each school year, however the group will start preparing in November. Regarding the co-president’s hopes for the performance she hopes to come up with what she called a “multicultural auditorium” and explained saying, “each one of us does our different one and then at the end we all join together and do a good show for everyone.”

With a new advisor and a new year the UNIDOS intends to support, not only the Hispanic community, but the extremely varied cultures at South.