{"id":4587,"date":"2019-09-19T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/?p=4587"},"modified":"2021-02-19T11:58:18","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T16:58:18","slug":"voices-of-2020-topher-castaneda-builds-community-as-a-residence-life-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/2019\/09\/19\/voices-of-2020-topher-castaneda-builds-community-as-a-residence-life-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices of 2020: Topher Castaneda builds community as a Residence Life leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Something that I&#8217;ve realized I truly enjoy doing is building community,&#8221; says Topher Castaneda &#8217;20 of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>Which makes Castaneda a great fit among the front-line community builders at Bates, the college&#8217;s Residence Life staff.<\/p>\n<p>This year, Castaneda is a Residence Coordinator team leader. He&#8217;s in charge of six Junior Advisors who, in turn, work with groups of first-years in their residences known as First-Year Centers. He has three first-year residences in his portfolio: Clason House, Milliken House, and Frye House.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #009779;\"><em>Video by Theophil Syslo<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Topher Castaneda \u201920 | Voices from the Class of 2020\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ml-x719R2zo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being so far away from home, I&#8217;ve found ways and places to help structure some sort of community around myself, but also around other people who identify as me,\u201c says Castaneda.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m first-gen, I&#8217;m queer, and I&#8217;m Latinx. How do I build community for those people, but include more stories in the narrative? One really good way is through Res Life.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cA really big thing when building community is making sure that people feel heard.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Castaneda taps into a powerful and fundamental way to forge community: &#8220;Stories are really important because they connect people,\u201c he explains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA really big thing when building community is making sure that people feel heard, and people are also understanding where you&#8217;re coming from \u2014 what your background is, your culture, and what your norm is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His Res Life work \u201chas been just awesome,\u201d says Castaneda. And that&#8217;s partly because, again, of the human connections. \u201cYou get to meet so many different people that you wouldn&#8217;t otherwise get to meet at Bates.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An environmental studies major, Castaneda devoted his summer to supporting community in a different way. Working with Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, he collected water samples from the local municipal water source, Lake Auburn, as part of research into protecting drinking water quality for the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_127239\" style=\"width: 910px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-127239\" class=\"wp-image-127239 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663-900x600.jpg\" alt=\"Topher Castaneda \u201920 (right) sits on a boat with Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, as they do fieldwork on Lake Auburn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/174\/files\/2019\/09\/190815_Ewing_Castaneda_Lake_Auburn_0663.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-127239\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Topher Castaneda \u201920 (right) sits on a boat with Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, as they do fieldwork on Lake Auburn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s Topher&#8217;s story? Using stories to build understanding among first-year students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":4573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commencement-2020","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4592,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions\/4592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}