For many, college is a long-awaited opportunity to branch out from the mundanity of hometown life, create distance from structures of familial roles and craft a personalized experience. But with a total enrollment of approximately 31,000 (according to MU Analytics), it can be easy for any student at the University of Missouri to feel isolated as they find community on campus. Luckily, MU proudly boasts just under 750 student organizations that are intended to lessen that overwhelming load.
According to MU Engage, Mixed at Mizzou is the first identity-based student organization for multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural students at MU — aiming to include people that may feel stuck between different collectives and offer a space for them to come together.
“Sometimes, being a combination of two cultures can lead to feelings of not fully belonging to either side,” said Sara Caauwe, the treasurer for Mixed at Mizzou and a junior majoring in mechanical engineering. “I definitely noticed this with my dad’s family, which is all white. I accept this part of my identity, but I don’t feel complete.”
Caauwe is half Costa Rican and spent the first decade of her life living in mid-Missouri. When she was 11 years old, she moved to Costa Rica with her mother and initially struggled to find a balance between these parts of her identity.
“My first language was Spanish from the ages of zero to five,” Caauwe said. “But then, as soon as [my family] put me in kindergarten, it was like English, English, English.”
Caauwe said she often felt at odds between two different family dynamics and sets of cultural values — not to mention two languages accompanied by their own social norms and expectations that she felt she had to unlearn and relearn constantly.
Martín Leija, a senior majoring in computer science and programming coordinator for Mixed at Mizzou, described his experience with cultural dissonance like a game of tug-of-war. Until the age of seven, Leija lived in Hillsboro, Oregon, a town with a prominent Latino population.
“I lived in the kind of spot where some companies wouldn’t serve you if you didn’t speak Spanish,” Leija said. “And then moving to central southern Missouri, where not many people speak Spanish, I kind of lost the language a little bit.”
Leija said that during his childhood he struggled with navigating and representing the different parts of his mixed identity around his peers, with each validating a different idea that others had of him.
“There’d be times where I’d be ‘the Mexican friend”… and times where I felt like ‘el gringo,’ or ‘the white guy,’” Leija said. “There’s always just that kind of ‘not Mexican enough’ or ‘not white enough.’”
Leija’s father emigrated from San Luis Potosí, Mexico to the United States in the 1980s. After earning his high school diploma, Leija’s father graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business management while simultaneously learning English. Leija credits his father for instilling in him a sense of determination and teaching him the currency of hard work.
“I was fortunate enough to [grow up] in a small town where they cared more about how hard you worked as opposed to the color of your skin,” Leija said. “But my friends would talk to my dad and they would ask me what he said. I guess to them, he had a really thick accent.”
For Leija, growing up mixed felt isolating at times; he said he was the only Latino in his high school graduating class. Part of what makes Mixed at Mizzou such a crucial resource for the MU student body is its emphasis on the unique multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural experiences. This focus played a significant role in helping Leija, and other students, develop a strong sense of identity.
“ I get a sense of feeling more comfortable with who I am,” Leija said. “Knowing I’m Martín and … I’m appreciative and I love and I, you know, adore the cultures I’m a part of.”
Caauwe, who joined Mixed at Mizzou in 2022, the year it was founded, said the organization has brought her some of her most lasting friendships. For Caauwe and others, these relationships are forged on a common understanding that intentionally creating a space for multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural students is necessary in bridging the gap between what can feel like different worlds.
“We share solidarity, even if we don’t share the same ethnicities or cultures,” Caauwe said. “We understand what it feels like to not belong, and that understanding helps us build bonds.”
Now that both Caauwe and Leija are upper-level students, they are dedicated to growing the organization and increasing outreach to current and incoming students who might be navigating similar complex feelings about self-image and identity they did.
“It does take a long time to get out of that rut of grappling with the two parts of your identity,” Caauwe said. “Once you get to the other side or once you make baby steps to accept yourself completely, you come out of it feeling more liberated because you’re not trying to hide or repress any part of yourself.”
Mixed at Mizzou strives to establish a balance between events that offer opportunities for socialization and developmental events that focus on pertinent topics impacting mixed students and communities at MU and beyond. Caauwe and Leija said that Mixed at Mizzou has opened their eyes to the values of diverse groups of people, and they plan to carry those values into their future careers.
The goal of Mixed at Mizzou, above all else, is to serve as a space that can guide multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural students during their time at MU and encourage them to feel authentically themselves.
“My different experiences, whether they’ve been a part of my cultures … they’ve made me who I am,” Leija said. “And I like who I am.”
Edited by Molly Levine | mlevine@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Avery Copeland and Natalie Kientzy | nkientzy@themaneater.com
Edited by Emilia Hansen | ehansen@themaneater.com
Edited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com
