Carlos Silva
EDUCATION | SCHOLARSHIPS
Latino Gay Pride
New Scholarship Launches
David Martinez knows how formative the college experience can be.
As the first one in his family to graduate from high school and go to col-
lege, he didn’t have help applying for scholarships. In fact, he didn’t see
many other people going off to college at all. But he found out that college
can make a big difference in life, especially for sexual minorities.
“College was my way out,” he says. “It was where I was able to move off to
the big city. It was where I was able to get to a place where I could feel safe
and come out.”
Martinez is now the chair of Portland Latino Gay Pride, which this year
has established a $1,000 scholarship for Latino LGBT students or students
of LGBT parents. The scholarship will be officially announced this month
at the Portland Latino Gay Pride Festival.
This isn’t the organization’s first scholarship effort – for the past two years
it has donated $1,000 to a scholarship run by the Hispanic Metropolitan
Chamber of Commerce. But that scholarship was for Latino students in
Oregon. Portland Latino Gay Pride wanted to create its own scholarship
for Latino LGBT students because “that’s what our celebration’s about,”
Martinez says.
and 30 percent
of blacks. One
major barrier to
college enroll-
ment for many
Latinos is citi-
zenship.
Port-
land Latino Gay
Pride doesn’t ask
for Social Secu-
rity numbers or
other proof of
residency so that
undocumented
immigrants will
be able to apply.
Martinez encourages other organizations to do the same so that everyone
who wants the college experience can have it.
“Knowing how expensive education is,” he says, “knowing that in order to
find a good job, the more education you have, the better – we wanted to
support our future leaders.”
“Anyone who has had the experience of going off to college or to better
themselves can tell you,” Martinez says, “that when you’re dealing with
identity and figuring out who you are – figuring out what it means to be
gay, what it means to be Latino — it’s great to be able to do it in a place
that’s safe. You’re able to ask hard questions and be in an environment
where you can figure it out, and I think that’s what college does.”
Only 21 percent of Latinos in the U.S. have college degrees, the lowest
percentage of any ethnic group, according to the nonprofit Excelencia in
Education. That’s compared to 57 percent of Asians, 44 percent of whites
Portland Latino Gay Pride Festival is July 21.
LatinoGayPridePDX.com
PORTLAND AREA BUSINESS ASSOCIATION SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
RISA LUTHER, Franklin High School, plans to go to Macalester College.
Winner of $1,500 Barbara Roberts Scholarship
“I think ignorance is probably the worst problem for people – not hate or dislike of something, just ignorance.
If you don’t understand something, it gives you motivation to not associate with it, and I don’t think that’s the
way to go about it, especially in a city like Portland, where the pride community is really big.”
SAMANTHA MASSON, Portland Community College, plans to transfer to University of Oregon.
Winner of $1,000 general scholarship
“My father is gay, and I’ve grown up around him and his friends and my gay uncle, too, so it’s always been
normal to me. Then when you go to college, you find out it’s not normal for other people. I want to just let
people know that everyone is just people and let them know about issues with the gay community, like equal-
ity. I just want to be a voice for that.”
JORDAN OSSERMAN, Dartmouth College, plans to attend Birkbeck, University of London.
Winner of $1,500 Terry Bean Scholarship
"Working on LGBT issues is important to me because I believe that marginalization on the basis of sexual-
ity and gender identity is fundamentally connected to other forms of marginalization and injustice. As a gay
person I feel particularly equipped to understand, articulate and resist LGBT oppression, and I hope that in
doing so I can contribute to a larger movement for social transformation."
30
JustOut.com
July 2012