“I feel like I can take anything right now.” The thick New
York accent charges through the words like an Olympic sprinter. “After four years of this, anything you
throw my way, I’m like, I got this. I’m not going to complain that I don’t have
what they have, ‘cause everyone has a different calling and plan. I’m the type
of person that’s not going to give up. I’m going to help kids that come from
the same type of environment as me. And I want to help them get to the top.”
Meet Miladys Perez from South Bronx, New York. If you’re
used to a Southern drawl, don’t count on catching every word from this
fast-talking city girl. But do count on catching the fever of whatever she
happens to be talking about a mile a minute – Miladys has mastered the art of engaging
conversation and drawing you in simultaneously with a no-nonsense attitude and
a genuine smile. In typical city girl fashion, she’ll shoot it to your
straight, but you always get the feeling that this girl is in your corner.
(Although anyone who decides to wrong her family in any way – you’ve been
warned.)
Miladys, a Religious Studies major and Director of McTyerie
International House, brings a flavor to the Vanderbilt student body that is not
only bold, but likely caffeinated. Our conversation lasted almost twice as long
as any other Bursting the Vandy Bubble interview, and our range of topics ran
the gamut, from her experience growing up in a low-income neighborhood to her
culture shock in coming to Vanderbilt.
Miladys plans to go back to South Bronx and become a social
worker, helping children in foster care and recent immigrants. “When you come
from a neighborhood like mine, you need someone who grew up in this,” she
explains. “I want to go back and help my community. I was raised by my mom to never
forget where you came from.”
Forgetting where you came from would be difficult when
you’re constantly reminded that your current situation is about as different
as, well, New York and Nashville. She
recalls her experience in the first few months of at Vanderbilt: “The work
wasn’t that hard at first. Like, I thought ‘if I focus I can do this,” she
says. “But it’s intimidating to speak up in class. I didn’t know I had an
accent ‘til I got here,” she laughs. “And sometimes they don’t take you
seriously. But I can’t brush [my accent] up. If I do, it doesn’t flow as
nicely.” (Personally, I would be devastated if Miladys tried to get rid of her accent.)
Her
culture shock in coming to Vanderbilt was made slightly easier by a group of
students who were also a part of her scholarship program, Posse.
The Posse Foundation was created after the founder saw too many inner-city
students drop out of college–including one who said he would have succeeded if
only he’d had his “posse” with him for support. It’s the leading college access
program in the country, sending more than 1,800 inner-city students to college.
Vanderbilt was the first university to partner with Posse, beginning in 1989
when it brought five students from New York City to Nashville on full-tuition
scholarships. Today Posse has 28 university and college partners and draws
students from Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington,
D.C.
“We support one another. But they say ‘we want you to branch
out, meet new people,’” Miladys reflects. But she says it’s not only inner city
kids on the New York Posse scholarship that came to Vanderbilt: “Not everyone
in the group is of the same socioeconomic status. It’s a range, because it’s just people from the same city.
It has nothing to do with financial need. Some people were already used to some
of the Vanderbilt culture, like ‘oh you wear that, I shop there’, stuff like
that.’”
She notices things about Vanderbilt that had never been a
part of her life in New York. They range from the superficial:
“Girls say things like ‘I have to go on a diet because
formal is coming up’ and these are things I had never heard before,” she says
incredulously. “And I didn’t
understand Greek life because I’m first generation to go to college and I’m
like why do you feel that you need to prove to something to some guy, or how
you dress, all these materialistic things that at the end of the day, I’m like,
that doesn’t define you.”
To the substantive:
“So one of the biggest things at Vanderbilt that I couldn’t
stand was how it’s so polarized,” she says. “You’re white or black and
everything in between has to find a side and I think a lot of that comes from
how much money you make. It’s just like if you’re considered a minority, but
you have a lot of money, you can probably stick on the white side….But it’s
very two sided and you just have to pick whatever floats your boat.”
So where does Miladys think that we fall in terms of our
generation? Is our generation as materialistic and image-conscious as the
Vanderbilt population or is that just us being bubble boys and bubble girls?
“I feel like Vanderbilt students are pretty apathetic,” she
says matter-of-factly. “They generally don’t really care for the greater cause.
They feel like if they electronically sign a petition, they’ve saved the day.
You know what I mean? Or that they bought a pair of Tom’s.” She pauses. “I
mean, those things are great but it doesn’t show you the bigger picture. We
make it too easy for people to feel good about themselves. Not that these
things don’t help, because they do, but on a larger scale, I don’t feel like it
does as much as it could.”
Furthermore, she thinks Vanderbilt can make strides in the
field of diversity:
“I feel like there is a lot of geographic diversity and
socioeconomic diversity and ethnic diversity. But they have a lot of people who
are coming who live just outside of a city,” she reasons. When I look at her
quizzically, she explains: “Regardless
of your ethnic background, growing up in the suburbs has a very similar
experience. Vanderbilt doesn’t recruit on the south side of Chicago, or Compton
or the bad parts of Miami or even where I’m from. They say they have people
from all these cities, but are they really from the cities? They recruit in New
York City all the time but they recruit at the specialized high schools, which
makes sense because you have the best and the brightest there but I went to
school with some really bright kids too. They just get overlooked because
historically places like Vanderbilt don’t recruit in those areas.”
She considers her statement: “So I guess I just feel like
they are diverse but it’s a work in progress.”
Regardless of the issues she feels Vanderbilt faces, Miladys
is happy she attended school here. At the end of the day, though, her Nashville
stint was just temporary, and the New York girl is heading home after
graduation in May.
“Like, I tell people in the Vanderbilt community that I
thank God for the opportunity to come here because I probably would not have
come to college if I hadn’t come here. I got a full ride, I can’t complain. But
at the same time, I do miss home. Home is where it’s at,” she laughs. Then
suddenly, more serious than I’ve seen her yet: “In the Latino community, family
is above everything. You never put anything in front of family. But I came to
school so I can go back and work.”
She has a smile in her eyes, but determination in her voice
as we wrapped our conversation, and we returned to her passion: the kids of her
neighborhood. Her words flew at breakneck pace and I wanted to hang on to each
one. “The kids that I’ll work with…if they want to be doctors and lawyers I
need to be that middle man trying to help them. People who go into this need to
have passion because they are over worked – they are overworked and underpaid.
I feel like this experience here, crunching down, getting my work done, losing
sleep, it will help me when I go into the field. If I have 60 cases and they
need to get done, they’ll get done and they’ll get done well. So I definitely
think Vanderbilt prepares you to bring your A game.”
Bring it, Miladys. We’ve been privileged to have you on loan
in Nashville for four years. South Bronx can’t wait much longer for you to
return.
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