Future of Latino Cultural Center uncertain as Sin LíMITe, Latino CPW events face low turnout in spring semester
Cabrera: “We just weren’t seeing as many students as we have in the past two years showing up to our events.”
The information presented in the following article comes from an interview between The Tech and the current executive board of the Latino Cultural Center.
Enrollment numbers for the 2024 Sin LíMITe cohort reportedly dropped by more than half of its previous-year enrollment statistic, according to student sources, undercutting a two-year period of growth for the program.
First implemented ahead of the 2018 Campus Preview Weekend, Sin LíMITe—meaning “without limit”—is a three-day residential weekend program for newly-admitted students, traditionally those from a Latino background, to learn more about the Institute’s Latino community. In its current form, Sin LíMITe is organized as a collaborative effort between the MIT Admissions office and the student group Latino Cultural Center (LCC), which administers cultural programming, directs the functions of other Latino-centric student organizations, and oversees the LCC lounge in the Student Center basement.
The program, which has admitted students participating in numerous cultural events and being introduced to the LCC’s many member organizations such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and Mujeres Latinas, was formerly implemented by MIT Admissions through an exclusive selection process.
As part of their collaboration on the joint program, MIT Admissions is responsible for the selection of students being offered entry to the program and participating students’ travel while the LCC handles event programming and logistics.
Prior to 2023, prospective Sin LíMITe participants were chosen from the application cycle’s Latino adMITs by an emailed invitation from MIT Admissions. Through this system, student enrollment for the 2021 and 2022 programs were around 45 and 50, respectively, according to executive members of the LCC.
“They had a selective system of inviting students that we don’t exactly know what it was,” LCC Vice President Giuliana Cabrera ’25 said.
In the former system, the LCC executive board had no input nor insight on the Latino-exclusive selection process.
Prior to selection of the 2023 cohort, who were on campus for the program between April 7 through April 9 of that year, then-LCC President Isabella Salinas ’23 reportedly persuaded the Admissions office to “increase the bandwidth of resources” for the program to invite all new Latino admits, according to Cabrera. Student enrollment for the program significantly increased to over 100 Latino-identifying students that year. The Tech was unable to reach Salinas for comment by the time of this article’s publication.
“We were really growing as a community, and we were really thriving,” Cabrera, who was the group’s secretary for the 2023–2024 school year, said.
But this peak in the program’s enrollment and the associated success the group enjoyed with its bolstered membership was short-lived.
Following the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to strike down affirmative action from college admissions processes, targeted minority recruitment was no longer considered “race-neutral.” Targeted admissions programs such as Sin LíMITe and Ebony Affair, a similar program meant for Black-identifying admits, underwent pronounced structural changes to adhere to the new standard.
The Spring 2024 cohorts for Sin LíMITe and Ebony Affair were both opened for all admitted students, regardless of cultural or ethnic identification. Sin LíMITe’s 2024 cohort dropped in enrollment to around 40 students, which also included some participants who did not identify as Latino—a first for the program.
Ahead of the 2024 program, MIT Admissions sent out a list of on-campus events—including Sin LíMITe—for all new admits from the Class of 2028 and did not conduct targeted invitations for the cohort, according to Director of the Latino Leaders Assembly (LLA) Javier Garcia ’25.
The number of registered students for the 2024 cohort was originally around 30 before spring break, said Director of Sin LíMITe Janine Medrano ’26, who added that not all students who applied for this year’s program had their flight costs covered. The enrollment only increased to its eventual tally of around 40 after an anonymous donation was made in the last week of registration, according to members of the LCC executive board.
Cabrera claimed that the past two years’ cohorts had fully-covered flight costs, which The Tech could not independently verify. This year’s travel budget limitations occurred despite the reported implementation of an initiative to “[increase] the admissions budget to cover all travel costs” for Sin LíMITe and other admitted student programs, according to a page on the Faculty Governance website published in April 2024.
Declined participation statistics for Sin LíMITe’s 2024 cohort also coincided with lower CPW turnout at LCC events, including events hosted by LCC’s member organizations. “Even at CPW, we just weren’t seeing as many students as we have in the past two years showing up to our events,” Cabrera said.
LCC President Ernesto Gomez ’26 noted a similar trend. “In previous Midways, we typically got sign-ups for nearly 100 students… It was [difficult] to get a dozen,” Gomez said.
The observable drop in admitted student participation with the LCC across its various programming efforts in Spring 2024 elicited concerns among the group’s executive board regarding the potential demographic makeup of the incoming Class of 2028, which has not yet been made available to the public, and any possible ramifications. It is not immediately clear that these circumstances are directly connected to the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision or are representative of a broader trend regarding the incoming class year.
The Tech was unable to reach the MIT Admissions office for comment by the time of this article’s publication.
“This past year was a significant drop in whom we expect to be joining our community; that was pretty disheartening,” Gomez said.