History in the Making
"I had no idea ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË could be such a catapult. One thing ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË has given me is redemption. It's allowed me to realign my academic trajectory with the one I have always wanted." – Armanis Fuentes '19
Google "Armanis Fuentes" and "¿ì²¥³ÉÈË" and up pop stories that celebrate an engaged city youth with a bright future.
for instance, as an 8th grade ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË at the Morgan School, Fuentes received an achievement award from ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Medical Center.
, as a 15-year-old sophomore at ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË High, he was named a "Rising Star" for his "academic achievement, leadership and service to the community and school," service that included work as a peer leader for the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Equal Rights Association, an LGBT youth empowerment group.
A page one story in the of the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Sun included a picture of Fuentes and other teens at City Hall, as Mayor Alex Morse honored members of the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Youth Commission, which Fuentes served for a time as president.
"I was a high potential kid," Fuentes says. "I was in AP classes. I thought I was going to go straight to either an Ivy League college or to some sort of fancy, selective school. And then life didn't really work out that way."
Despite the early accolades, Fuentes slowly stagnated, his promising journey derailed by problems at home and, mostly, problems at school, where he says he felt unfairly treated by some administrators and teachers who disproportionately punished ¿ì²¥³ÉÈËs of color and dowsed their ambitions. "No one should have to feel like an underdog all the time," he says.
His rough experience there culminated in the middle of his senior year in what he describes as an unprovoked altercation with a school resource officer that left him with a scar above his eye and a lot of bad feelings. That same day, he dropped out.
"I can say wholeheartedly that the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË I was going into ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË High isn't the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË I ended up becoming while I was there," Fuentes says. "It was a total departure from who I was – and who I am now."
Fuentes is now a 21-year-old Springfield resident, a history major, honors ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË, award winner, scholarship recipient, and soon-to-be graduate of ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Community College. On Sat., June 1, at the MassMutual Center, he will receive his associate degree in liberal arts with high honors and deliver a keynote speech at ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË's 72nd annual Commencement.
Come September, he will attend Williams College, one of the most selective schools in the country, on what is essentially a full scholarship.
"Being from ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË, I didn't want to come to ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË," he says. "I definitely stigmatized it. I had no idea ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË could be such a catapult. One thing ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË has given me is redemption. It's allowed me to realign my academic trajectory with the one I have always wanted."
That realignment took some time. Fuentes finished high school in Chicopee, then took a few business classes at ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË. At the time, he wanted to be a paralegal, but he left after one semester and moved to Boston. Living in Dorchester, he commuted nearly three hours a day back and forth to Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown while juggling jobs at a hair salon and a law office. It was all too much.
He returned to ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË in 2016 and decided to give ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË another go. Financial aid complications forced him to go to work instead, at a gas station and a warehouse, where he got a glimpse of a life he didn't want "making pallets and being a slave to a company," he says.
A job as a file clerk in a Northampton law office, though, gave him a window into another life. Soon, with a little money in his pocket and a lot of support from colleagues, he re-enrolled.
Fuentes quickly regained his academic footing, inspired by a Learning Community course called "Cops, Crime and Class," which explored the economic underpinnings of criminal behavior and spoke to his own experiences growing up poor in South ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË, raised by a single mother and seeing many people he knew go to jail.
"I've seen the relationships that police have with their communities, the good and the bad, since I was a kid," he says. "It was nice to have a place where I could speak about my own life. It was the first time in a long time that I felt really engaged in a classroom setting."
Other courses reinforced that feeling: "Caribbean Identities in History and Literature," "Aliens, Anti-Citizens and Identity," and "The Immigrant City," a political and historical study of ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË held jointly with Amherst College.
Through the latter, Fuentes discovered the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË History Room at the public library. Discouraged by the "thin scholarship" on Puerto Rican history in the archives, he interviewed his ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË friends for an oral history project. That led to a deeper, independent study that earned him first place this year in the ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Library's annual BUILD research competition, titled "Networks of Puerto Rican Power: Building Bilingual Education in ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË Schools, 1960-1990." He presented his report earlier his month at the annual University of Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference.
"I'm interested in history," he says. "I'm interested in Puerto Rican history. I'm interested in the Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S. I'm also interested in education equity, because my whole life has been fighting for education equity, in a way."
He plans to study history at Williams with a concentration in Latinx Studies and after that, perhaps go on to a PhD program followed by a career as a writer and researcher, or a professor and academic scholar.
"I'm a lot less enchanted by the idea of a high salary career as I was in my youth," he says. "For a long time, I thought money was it because I was always poor."
Given that Williams is offering him such a generous scholarship, Fuentes should graduate with little if any debt.
"It's an amazing luxury," he says. "If I wanted to come back to ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË to do community work or be a teacher for a while just to meet some kids, I could do that. Through the opportunity I've been given I want to make sure other ¿ì²¥³ÉÈËs of color know what they can do at ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË and where they can go from ¿ì²¥³ÉÈË."
Read Armanis's Commencement speech ...
STORY and PHOTO by CHRIS YURKO: Armanis Fuentes.
