Overcoming adversity was the message keynote speaker Mateo Magdaleno had for members of the Hispanic Hispanic Student Union and the Spanish Club who attended the Hispanic American Leadership Organization conference at Kansas State University on last Tuesday.

Magdaleno used analogies and references about his past and the hard life he had to go through as he helped more than 90 students in attendance connect to his message.

“[My favorite part] was probably the speaker,” sophomore Isabel Chavez said. “[I learned] that we are all nameless cans.”

Chavez interpreted this analogy to mean that we should not judge people, no matter their skin color or ethnicity. Everyone is the same on the inside. She and other students learned many valuable lessons about what it means to be Hispanic.

“I learned how to further my future and become a successful person and how to get awards and do more volunteer hours and stuff like that,” sophomore Lucas Caldas said.  

After Magdaleno spoke, the students broke out into two different sessions. They had two hours to pick two other speakers they wanted to listen to. When the breakout sessions ended the students went to lunch where they were served food from Chipotle and Qdoba. Hispanic music was put on and students from all over got up and danced along once they had finished eating.

“[My favorite part was] the dancing,” sophomore Isabel Porrez said. “Bachata [dancing], that’s my favorite and [there were] some other ones I didn’t know how to do but I did anyways.”

They had many common traditional Hispanic dances that students were able to do, along with some other not so common ones. After the lunch and dancing, there were some surveys taken to recap the day, closing comments and a campus tour to finish it off. Overall, any student who went had a great time and will continue to go in the upcoming years.

“I think it went pretty good,” Caldas said. “I give that a solid nine out of ten.”