Senior Profile | Soledad Slowing-Romero
A Voice for Engagement, On and Off Campus Whether she’s energizing class discussions, volunteering in town or cultivating a space for debate at the Amherst Political Union, Soledad Slowing-Romero has established herself as a pillar of the Amherst community. —Theo Hamilton ’22 There is no question that Soledad Slowing-Romero ’20 has left a significant mark on Amherst College throughout her four years here. From volunteering in the local community, writing the first honors thesis for the Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS) department and serving as president of the Amherst Political Union (APU), Slowing-Romero’s combination of determined activism and easygoing charm has consistently enhanced the Amherst community.
First Interests Born into a middle-class home in Guatemala, Slowing-Romero credits her parents for instilling in her a strong commitment to social justice from an early age. Describing the political climate in which she grew up, she noted that Guatemala “is a very reactionary country, [where] racism against indigenous people is pretty much institutionalized.” Like most middle-class families in Guatemala, the Slowing-Romeros hired an indigenous woman, named Tomasa, as a live-in maid. When Slowing-Romero’s parents started treating Tomasa like a family member — inviting her to sit at the dinner table and helping pay for her education — they faced serious backlash from more conservative members of the extended family. Looking
back, Slowing-Romero sees this as one of the first experiences that prompted her to question existing social and economic structures. When she was five, Slowing-Romero moved with her parents and sister to Ames, Iowa, where she quickly settled in. “I loved growing up in Iowa,” she reminisced. “I definitely identify a lot as Iowan.” By her high school years, Slowing-Romero had already begun looking for ways to put her grounded belief in social justice into practice in the local community. She quickly became president of Students Helping in Poverty and Hunger, foreshadowing the dedication to community work that she would later bring to Amherst. At the same time, Slowing-Romero, excelling in her high school coursework, also began to take classes at Iowa State University and turned her eye eastward.
Choosing A Direction Slowing-Romero’s path to Amherst was far from straightforward. Although she became determined to go to an East Coast college after a family vacation when she was just 13 or 14, Slowing-Romero initially leaned towards larger universities. At first, Columbia University was her dream school. Even after Richard Mansbach, one of her professors at Iowa State and a
10 | The Amherst Student | May 31, 2020
Swarthmore graduate, sold her on liberal arts colleges, Amherst was by no means her guaranteed choice. “I was pretty sure I was going to go to Williams,” she confessed hushedly. “They let me know [I’d been admitted] about a month before any other colleges.” Ultimately, Slowing-Romero credits her decision to come to Amherst with the college’s dedication to equality and diversity, noting that “having people of color, having people from different socioeconomic backgrounds is a critical part of having real discussions.” Slowing-Romero wasted no time helping to facilitate real discussions at the college, joining APU — a club dedicated to creating an open space in which students can debate a diversity of political opinions — and becoming a member of its executive board during her first year. Slowing-Romero’s interest in social and economic justice and desire to understand how inequalities are created naturally led her towards the history and political science departments. While she leaned toward focusing on political science at first, she increasingly realized that her preference for concrete stories, as opposed to theory, might be better suited to history. While Amherst still lacked a Latin American studies major during Slowing-Romero’s first year, she found herself naturally drawn
Photo courtesy of Soledad Slowing-Romero ’20
Soledad Slowing-Romero ‘20 was among Amherst’s first majors in the Latinx and Latin American Studies department and the first to write an honors thesis in the department. to taking history classes focusing on Latin America, discovering that “it was really empowering to see all of these people like me in history, and I want to be able to tell their stories that oftentimes aren’t told.” She quickly demonstrated a clear knack for telling those stories. Praise for her academic achievements in history and LLAS is loud and seemingly unanimous. Rick Lopez, dean of new students and chair of Latinx and Latin American studies, has been Slowing-Romero’s academic advisor for the duration of her four years and her thesis advisor as well; he singled out Slowing-Romero as “one of the most impressive students I’ve ever worked with.” Vanessa Walker, the Morgan assistant professor in diplomatic history, is similarly ebullient about Slowing-Romero, praising her passion, healthy skepticism and ability to “balance
serious commitment and levity [with a] willingness to have fun with topics and requests.” Walker added, “she really energized class and allowed other students to think about different dimensions.”
Developing Community Slowing-Romero has been just as influential outside of the classroom as in it. While she has also worked with the Amherst Law Review, Slowing-Romero identifies APU as her most significant extracurricular. After three years on the club’s executive board, Slowing-Romero was elected president at the start of this year. One of Slowing-Romero’s first actions as president was to shift the meeting day so that it didn’t overlap with Black Student Union meetings, allowing engaged and interested Black students to participate in the club.
