Lucia Castellon Soria has been a student ambassador at Marshall High School since her sophomore year. In this role, she works to include all students in the school community. She also creates a welcoming environment for new students, guiding them through the clubs and societies that they could join.

As a student ambassador, one of her main activities for new students is to give them tours around the school. This helps them get familiar and feel comfortable with these spaces. Lucia also checks in on these students periodically to make sure they have found a trusted adult to feel safe in the school environment.

Lucia is also the president of Latinos Unidas, a group of Latino students at Marshall that shares Latino cultural, schedules fun events and creates cards to sell for scholarships. As part of this group, she participated in a conference last year to help solve issues often occurring at Marshall. Working in groups, the student participants were able to get ideas and share experiences that would help combat what they perceived as abuse of power, non-transparency and inadequate consequences. The result was several new rules and ideas that will help mitigate these issues. These included the school creating open spaces where students can express their frustrations to the administration.

Lucia had also heard stories from Latino friends about how recent ICE activities have caused fear among them and their families, prompting some of them to stay home.

She wanted to help, and worked with one of her teachers to have a student meeting where she could share her ideas and help them feel more safe and comfortable at school. Lucia knows what many of her Latino friends were feeling because she came to the U.S. from Bolivia at age 13.

Between 50 and 60 students from all grades showed up for the meeting. Much of the talk centered on the recent activities of ICE, and the students’ rights as human beings. Lucia addressed their fears and the students embraced her ideas. Lucia was also able to talk about the situation that the country was facing and what they could do to inform other people to keep going and improve the community. She told them that they are not alone and that many other people are facing these same issues. She talked about their rights and showed them Red Cards with their rights written on them. Many of the students were surprised because they didn’t know what their rights were or what to say if they were confronted by an ICE agent. She also told them to stay current with the news about ICE activities.

This led to frequent meetings where Lucia spoke with Latino students to get to know them better. Her goals for this year as president of Latino Unidas are to make students feel they are a family together, and can feel welcome to share their thoughts. They continue to meet and do activities like teaching one another English, chatting together, or watching a movie. Lucia wants students to interact with one another to share their