Now at Brown: Young Leader from El Cerrito High

To listen to talk about the work she’s done to bring attention to the needs of LGBT youth at , you’d think you were speaking with a seasoned activist. But Rojas-Carroll is only 17. She graduated in June and began her new school life at prestigious Brown University on Aug. 30.

In an interview before she packed her bags for Rhode Island, Rojas-Carroll described her motivation for taking over and revamping El Cerrito High’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). The student group aims to make the school a safe and accepting place for all people, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

And in her role as president, Rojas-Carroll brought more than her inherent leadership skills to the group — she also brought vision. She created a constitution for the organization, developed an outreach plan and led efforts that held El Cerrito High administrators accountable to its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. She was even featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Rojas-Carroll said that she owes this drive and commitment to both her parents.

“My mom — she has an almost saintly sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. She passed it on to me,” Rojas-Carroll said as we sat across from each other at a cafe in El Cerrito Plaza. “My dad — he just told me not to settle for what’s unjust.”

Her mother runs an undergraduate research program at UC Berkeley. Her father is a teacher’s aide at Dover Elementary. They have always pushed her to do well academically and instilled in her a sense of hard work, said Rojas-Carroll. They are also understanding. When she came out to her parents at the beginning of her senior year, they didn’t flinch.

“I was nervous, but it was fine. They said, 'Okay, we still love you,'” said Rojas-Carroll. “It was mostly a struggle within myself to find my own self-confidence and just be comfortable with who I am.”

She had joined the Gay-Straight Alliance her freshman year of high school, hoping to find a safe place where she could be herself. It soon became a space that also allowed her to grow into her own as a student leader and activist.

When all the members of GSA graduated at the end of her sophomore year, Rojas-Carroll decided to keep the organization going. “Basically, I knew that not everyone at school was accepting and I knew that that could be changed,” she said. She took over as president of the group.

She felt so passionate about what the organization could do, that when she attended Brown Women in Leadership the summer before her senior year, the first thing on her mind was what lessons she could pick up to improve GSA and make visible changes at El Cerrito High. The young participants were given the task of presenting an action plan of what they wanted to change in their school or community. Rojas-Carroll took this opportunity to design and present a series of workshops aimed at preventing the bullying of LGBT students.

With the help of other GSA members, she implemented these workshops at El Cerrito High. They reached out to teachers and visited their classrooms to discuss with students what the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender mean. They informed their fellow classmates how they could be allies to LGBT students and prevent future bullying. They also reserved the last 15 minutes for an anonymous question and answer session. Students got to write a question they may have about the topic on a post-it note and pass it to the front of the class for the facilitators to answer at random. Rojas-Carroll said that creating this space for dialogue has been one of the best things the group has ever done.

“If people can ask questions without feeling like their peers would judge them, we find that it really helps,” she said, noting that most questions have been pretty thoughtful.

“A lot of it was like what was your experience coming out? What’s the best way to react if people come out to me? How can I help?” said Rojas-Carroll.

Rojas-Carroll said she could see the climate at El Cerrito High begin improve, which she describes as generally welcoming toward LGBT students, but work still needed to be done. Students occasionally used anti-LGBT slurs. While teachers and administrators were very supportive of their cause, they didn’t always know how to help.

For example, during Rojas-Carroll’s last semester, a student approached her and another GSA member saying that they had heard someone use derogatory words against LGBT people. They decided to file a complaint against this person, said Rojas-Carroll, and went to the school office. What they found was that the complaint form was difficult to access and that the school’s non-discrimination policy did not include language specific to LGBT students.

“It’s like people weren’t ready to address the issue,” said Rojas-Carroll. 

She and other GSA members worked with former El Cerrito High principal, , to make sure the policy was updated with language that explicitly protects LGBT students from being discriminated against. Reimann was helpful during the process, said Rojas-Carroll, and they worked together to update the policy. That was the first time GSA members had looked at what was actually being provided for LGBT students in terms of official protection. It was a significant moment for Reimann as well.

“I was very proud to be able to step up in that regard,” said Reimann.

“It was great to work with a young person who has a good grasp of the larger impact individual decisions can make,” said Reimann, noting that Rojas-Carroll is one of the “very few young people that are able to articulate and advocate for what they believe in.”

For Rojas-Carroll, she described this episode as one of the most personally challenging.

“Probably the hardest thing when I was sitting down with Mr. Reimann was standing my ground as a youth to an administrator who had so much more power and showing that I did know what I was talking about,” said Rojas-Carroll.

Rojas-Carroll said that being so involved and interacting with a wide range of people has helped her grow. She knows other students look up to her as a role model, which in turn motivates her to step up to the plate.

“It’s been amazing. It’s kind of like a cycle that helping other people improves my self-confidence,” she said.

Abby Carlstad, an incoming junior at El Cerrito High and GSA’s co-president next year along with Hanna Landsman, said the group is planning to build on the work Rojas-Carroll has already set up for them.

In efforts to continue reaching out to the entire student body, “we’re going to create more activities that involve everyone and have more in depth discussions,” said Carlstad.

Rojas-Carroll has big plans for her time at Brown University. She’s not sure whether to major in political science or gender and sexuality studies or urban studies or education, but she already knows she’s going to join Queer Union, the university’s LGBT activist group. She also wants to join the wind symphony and start a figure skating club. And while Rojas-Carroll acknowledged her accomplishments, she also knows there is still more path to tread.

“Through all of my personal and activist experience,” said Rojas-Carroll, “I’ve learned that I’ll never be done growing and changing.”

Postscript: In response to a question from Patch about how she's liking Brown, Rojas-Carroll said in an email yesterday, Sept. 14:

"I LOVE Brown! There is no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice about where to go for college. Everyone is super friendly and also passionate about what they do, I love my classes (and being able to choose them without any restrictions), and almost every extracurricular activity that I can imagine exists here. It's great."