By Ni Baliness
Uniting people through books is the driving cause for this year’s Long Beach State’s Bateman Team.
A club for students majoring in public relations on campus, the Bateman Team competes in different competitions yearly, putting their education and experience to the test through the development of PR campaigns for real clients and causes.
This year, the team consists of five women: Sara Cardenas, Arely Ocampo Bartolo, Karolina Rios, Karla Virgen and Lucia Bianchi.
Together, they are Libros Unidos LB.
“Reading LIBROS while staying UNIDOS,” or “Reading books while staying united,” is the statement that powers the team’s mission.
The name is a reflection of the team’s roots, according to fourth-year political science major and the team’s head of social media, “SJ” Cardenas.
“We’re either Latina or Hispanic so we wanted to really emphasize the importance of those communities of where we come from,” Cardenas said.
This year, the Public Relations Student Society of America is challenging students to create a campaign for a pro-library organization called EveryLibrary and EveryLibrary Institute.
According to PRSA’s website, their mission is to “support public libraries on election days, stabilize school library budgets, guard against book bans and engage with state legislatures alongside partner organizations.”
At a time when censorship is being enacted, Cardenas believes that Libros Unidos LB will guard the connection between stories and readers.
“It’s important for our mission to help uplift the different stories and also the characters that represent,” Cardenas said. “Even though the story is the bigger picture, specific characters have a lot of different meanings with others and you can see yourself.”
A Lotería sheet from the group’s recent event on Feb. 18 showcased some of the banned books. Winners of the game were able to win a gift card, necklace or press-on nails. Photo Credit: Ni Baliness
Second-year public relations major, Karla Virgen, is the team’s head of writing.
After being connected by a friend, she joined the team and now gets to experience being part of a group that believes in creating impact.
“The goal of the team is to spread knowledge about the influence of libraries and ensure that the people are aware of how they’re voting and how their contributions to voting affect libraries,” Virgen said. “We’re also spreading knowledge of the consequences when books are banned.”
For Virgen, the chance to be part of a team encapsulates her strong belief in communities coming together and uplifting each other’s voices.
“I believe in the equal opportunity of everybody receiving education and [how] libraries help that,” Virgen said. “Banned books are written by people who have diverse points of view from those who are banning the book so I do believe in amplifying diverse voices.”
Arely Ocampo Bartolo is a third-year public relations major who decided to join the team after discussing with her advisor and liking the mission of EveryLibrary. Now, she is the head of event coordination.
Growing up with Spanish as her first language, reading books helped her learn English.
“My parents worked really hard all my childhood so a lot of the time it was me with my cousin or me with my siblings and books were that bridge between English and Spanish for me,” Ocampo Bartolo said.
Although she said that she does not see many people that look like her, being on the team empowers her to change that. Her inspiration comes from her sister, a Latina woman with a master’s degree.
“I’m doing this for my family and I’m doing this for my sister so that when there is a little girl in elementary school and she wants someone to advocate for her, I’ll be there for her,” Ocampo Bartolo said.
Now within their “implementation phase” throughout the month of February, Libros Unidos LB will be setting up events and creating media alerts surrounding their campaign.
Some events the team has put on so far were a Banned Book Drive where the community can donate some of their own banned books, and a “Petals and Pages” event, where they went around campus giving flowers to people on campus and educating them on their campaign.
On Feb. 27, the group invites the campus to a roundtable discussion about censorship from 6 – 10 p.m.
More information can be found here.
