When Dr. Gurrola approached me with the opportunity to help and be a part of The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, I was unsure if I wanted to pursue this.  

Since the early 1980s, historians have redefined the field of public history’s understanding of audience, stakeholders, and the role of the public in producing community-based research projects.  Public historians have embraced the idea of collaborating with a community to share the authority on storytelling and to gain buy-in on local historical narratives.  

El Paso Community College (EPCC) is one of many institutions that serves a unique student population.  The majority of its students are Hispanic or of another minority ethnicity, are often first-generation students, and also tend to come from low-income backgrounds.  These traits often become pre-disposed labels that accompany differential treatment that can occur not only in the education system but also in the judicial and carceral systems.  

I had always assumed A.D.H.D was a phenomenon that only manifested in young boys.  Stereotypical and diagnostic characteristics included being disruptive, hyperactive, inattentive, male, and Caucasian.  My diagnosis as a young adult in college had severely disrupted this lens, as I was seemingly the opposite: quiet, timid, female, and Hispanic.

What does it mean for a sound to be amplified?  Are they made to be more noticeable?  When a sound is amplified, it is expanded. It is made to be louder and heard.  The sounds I hear in one area with more activity may immediately catch my attention, but they are not any less noticeable to what I hear in another area with less activity.  They are of a different ambience as sound stands in different volumes—in different layers.