The Latinx population has significantly transformed the demography of the United States and its institutions of higher education. Yet, despite the increase of Latinx students obtaining their bachelor’s degrees (U.S. Census 2021) and having one of the highest college enrollment rates, Latinxs have the lowest college attainment (Ayala and Chalupa Young 2022). Despite the changing demographic compositions of universities, students from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds experience various forms of racism and oppression on campus (Broadhurst and Velez 2019). And so, engaging in activism is one avenue in which students challenge these forms of marginalization and oppression. Still, there is not vast research which explores Latina undergraduates’ engagement in activism and more importantly how their positionalities shape their experiences. In particular, this dissertation sheds light on how the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement shaped Latina undergraduate students’ experiences with activism. For this dissertation, I adopted Critical Race Theory (CRT), Latina/o Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), and Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE) lenses. I drew on data obtained through thirty demographic questionnaires and thirty semi-structured, open-ended interviews. Findings suggest that Latina undergraduate students participated in a variety of activities such as engaging in difficult conversations, raising funds and providing resources, political activism, and online activism as means to engage in activism. Yet, the insights of these experiences shed light on how their positionalities impact the causes that are important to them, the activities they participate in as means of activism, their support systems, and their relationships and their sense of allyship to communities. While I found that all the participants identified as Latinas, those existing at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities were more frequently allies for multiple communities and causes than white Latinas. Furthermore, the findings also highlighted how Latina undergraduate students engaged in critical hope in their activism by specifically relying on small, but meaningful changes and centering their communities. Lastly, while exploring various hurdles the participants endured during their experiences in activism and as students at their institutions of higher education, I found that the Latina undergraduate students experienced colorism and gendered forms of oppression from men inside and outside of the Latinx community.
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