Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) is losing two presidents this semester. As university president Vanya Quiñones packs her bags for Pomona, Associated Students (AS) president Natalie Navarro prepares to graduate, sights set on law school.
Navarro was energetic yet relaxed during a 50-minute interview with the Lutrinae, enjoying a poke bowl while sitting in the grass outside Wave Hall reflecting on her experience at CSUMB. Her casual demeanor seemed at odds with her impressive resume – not only as AS president, but a third-year psychology major and pre-law minor months away from an early graduation.
“My favorite thing about being president, it’s a lot of fun. I genuinely have so much fun, like, every day. And yes, like 70% of it is meetings, but just all the random side quests I get to do as president,” said Navarro.
Her undeniable optimism didn’t stop her from being frank about the weight of her responsibilities. “When you do become president of something, you are so f*cking busy. Genuinely, my days are planned out from eight in the morning to, a lot of times, like seven at night, right? So it’s like a 12 hour day almost every day.”
Juggling such a schedule with Navarro’s apparent ease may be hard for some students to imagine. Her secret? A deep appreciation for Monterey Bay, the CSUMB community and her “powerhouse” AS cabinet (Jasmine Torres, Andrew Nino, Thorn Perez, Gaby Weedon and Gurpreet Kaur).
“I really love the campus, and it’s been really good to me, and I kind of wanted to give back,” said Navarro. “I think passion is something that every single person who’s running an office needs. You can be the most qualified person on the planet, but if you have no passion for anything, then there’s no use putting you in this position. “
Navarro decided to run for AS president after realizing her background positioned her as an ideal representative for the student body at CSUMB, where the majority of students are women, a relative majority (47%) are Latino, and nearly 50% are first-generation college students. While she is not first-generation, her parents are immigrants who she says finished their degrees later in life: “So I definitely did not have as much help when it came to navigating the whole college thing.”
Another cornerstone of Navarro’s identity is her experience as a queer woman. She attended Catholic high school in a Southern California community she describes as conservative-leaning. “I have identified as lesbian for, oh, girl, like five years or something like that. So, been out and proud…I was one of [three] gay girls in my entire school. I took the third one to prom. And I couldn’t even write her name on the bid, because our school didn’t allow gay [couples].”
The cultural contrast with her hometown was among the factors that drove Navarro to enroll at CSUMB, joining a community she fondly describes as “gay galore”: “I feel like a lot of people I meet here are queer, even in, like, class or whatever. And they’re just really unafraid of expressing their identity, which I think is so powerful.”
By serving as president, Navarro aims to uplift other queer and Latina women who may not have imagined themselves in a student government or leadership position. She also makes an effort to connect with members of her community and factor in her own lived experiences when advising administrators on how to approach divisive issues.
Navarro represents the student body at regular meetings with the Cal State Student Association as well as CSUMB officials like President Quiñones and Ben Corpus, vice president of enrollment management and student affairs. In January, a last-minute notice about the arrival of a Department of Homeland Security representative on campus drew criticism from students; the school asserted it had only been provided a time frame, and moved to follow legally-required notification protocols as soon as they knew the representative was arriving that day. Navarro met with Quiñones to push for change to those protocols.
“My suggestion in that meeting was, for even a time frame, would be much appreciated by students. Like, they don’t need an exact date. And, yes, it can cause anxiety, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s causing any more anxiety than the emails about how graffiti is everywhere,” said Navarro. “It’s better for people to know…Ignorance is bliss, but not when it comes to matters like that.”
According to Navarro, engagement remains one of AS’s biggest challenges, despite extensive outreach on social media and at in-person events like Otter Thursdays. She encourages students who feel disconnected from the CSUMB community to take a chance on one of the school’s many organizations and clubs, including AS.
“You have such a better quality of life here when you join things, and there are so many lovely people in all of these areas,” she says. “We have like 80-something clubs. There’s at least one or two things that you can join…it’s never too late to get started on something.”