Building Together
A Reflection on Chocolate City at MIT
By Pedro Polanco, MIT ’17
“Looking back, I don’t know how I could have made it through MIT without Chocolate City.”
I graduated from MIT on June 9, 2017. There are countless memories and lessons from my time as a student that will shape my life moving forward. Naturally, some of the most meaningful lessons I learned stem from my brotherhood in Chocolate City.
A Minority Among Minorities
During my junior year, I attended the Latino Cultural Center (LCC) spring retreat. It was probably the second time during my MIT career that I attended a non-recreational Hispanic club event. There, I put names to some of the faces I already recognized from La Casa and other places around campus. I connected with three fellow students during a conversation about our favorite TV shows. Afterwards, we worked together to win ice breaker challenges against other teams, and later went out to eat tacos near Harvard Square.
While eating, someone brought up an important question that seemingly confronts all under-represented minority groups at least once a year:
Why don’t all Hispanics on MIT’s campus actively contribute to the LCC community?
Surely, the Hispanic community is open. And surely, they could use more active participation from Hispanic students across campus. So why were only a few actively engaged? The question hit home for me because I often asked myself a related one: why did I, a Hispanic male, choose to become a member of Chocolate City over La Casa?
At the end of the day, I realized that I’m not like the people in the LCC. I don’t miss the same home cooked meals, I don’t blast the same music in my headphones, and I don’t follow the same novelas. In fact, I don’t follow any novelas. My Hispanic identity, my individual experience growing up on Walton Ave in the Bronx, and my unique schooling through the Regis High School REACH program in New York City differentiated me from the people in La Casa.
I chose Chocolate City over La Casa (and, in turn, the Black MIT community over the Hispanic MIT community) because the Black community is what I know. While many of the students I met at LCC ate tacos and listened to mariachi, I ate platanos and listened to bachata. Our experiences were simply not the same.
Over my four undergraduate years, I invested a lot energy into MIT’s Black community. I pushed myself to give until I suffered real psychological and academic repercussions. Despite my inability to do more for the Hispanic community, I don’t regret giving my time and energy to uplifting the Black community at MIT. Of course, I wish I could have given more of myself to the LCC to make the Dominican subset of what’s supposed to be an eclectic community shine.
But the truth is, given more time, I would have given myself to the Caribbean Club, the greater Boston Dominican community at large, the Black Women’s Alliance, or the Society of Women Engineers, because these communities feel closer to home than the predominantly (but not exclusively) Mexican student population at the LCC. Until about the age of 11, I spent over 90% of my life surrounded by the many women in my family. Only occasionally would papi be home, my cousin Erner visit abuela’ s house, or my uncles visit town.
Self-discovery is essential for maturation, and was key to my success at MIT. Living in a predominantly Black living group where as a Hispanic male, I was in the minority, I discovered a lot about myself. Most importantly,I’m personally driven to give of myself to those with whom I can identify. This is the most integral strand of my being. I’m someone who cares terribly about those around me. My undergraduate career has been largely defined by the ways in which I’ve given all I could to the people largely represented in two Facebook groups: Black Collegiate Boston and Dominicanos in Boston. I’m certain that my career and my life will be similarly defined by this part of me.
Finding My Voice
At the end of my sophomore year, I was elected co-chair of Chocolate City. The year that followed was easily the most intense and challenging year of my entire life. Mind you, I say that even after going through an 81-unit spring semester during my senior year. Here’s why:
House meetings are loud.
House meetings are tiring.
House meetings are fun.
House meetings serve as the primary source of collective action in Chocolate City. If an organized collective effort is to be exerted, this is where it be discussed and fleshed out. During house meetings, CC brothers close off the halls of Chocolate City to outsiders, assemble in the third-floor lounge, and discuss anything and everything worth discussing according to a pre-established agenda.
Biweekly house meetings are where community events are planned, achievements are celebrated, and failures are analyzed. House meetings often get emotional too. Strong opinions are voiced by engaged and passionate brothers. In other words, house meetings are NOT for the faint of heart. House meetings are where elected leaders get formally assessed by fellow brothers, and informally chewed out by the rest of the house for falling short of goals or benchmarks. Only those with battle-tested skin make it out of house meetings without feeling ‘some type of way.’
At each house meeting, the two co-chairs of CC sit at the center of a quarter circle of 20+ brothers (and sister: our Graduate Resident Tutor, or GRT). In this group, respect must be earned to successfully be heard. I learned that as a co-chair, if you raise your voice to tell everyone to cut their side-conversations, and people continue speaking, you lose your social capital. If you bring up a stupid idea, you lose social capital. If you take too long to get your idea out, you lose social capital. In this setting, social capital is the quintessential element of your ethos, so you must choose your words meticulously. The CC house meeting was where I learned to become a more confident public speaker.
Although I wasn’t terribly afraid of public speaking, I certainly was not comfortable doing so in front of large groups of my peers. Yet, I volunteered to put myself into these high stakes situations day in and day out. Prior to being co-chair, I always took care to plan my sentences before uttering a word. As a result, my voice often sounded far more reticent than my racing mind in 1-on-1 conversations.
Yet, every other week in Chocolate City, I practiced looking my highly intelligent brothers and sister in the face, and projected cogent, concise, and complete thoughts. For me, speaking at such a high speed about complex matters, and while staring at others who were eager to retort, was a huge breakthrough. I had spoken up in classroom settings plenty of times in high school. However, this setting was where I really developed a high level mastery of speech, using simple rhetorical devices like pausing midway through sentences to finish collecting my thoughts.
In the hot seat of co-chair, I was often grilled by 20+ highly intelligent and vocal individuals who incessantly demanded answers and order. Sitting there forced me to step outside of my comfort zone, and to speak and think with newfound promptness and cogency. The experience taught me that thinking on my feet is in fact not a talent, but a skill. Being a novice, I remember amazing myself when I opened my mouth to say the 5 or 10 words I had already mentally prepared, and smoothly produced another 10 or 20 words without missing a beat.
There are plenty of other pivotal moments during my tenure in Chocolate City that helped me grow as a leader. When I failed to attend a meeting early in my tenure as co-chair, backlash from then seniors Markus Bradford CC’15 and Ikenna Enwere CC’15 helped me learn about the necessary evil of calendar-keeping, and other painstaking organizational habits. A short meeting with Rasheed Auguste CC’17 drove home the value of asking for help, and envisioning large tasks as collections of small manageable action items. A conversation with Prof. Larry Sass (past CC GRT and brother of Chocolate City) helped me truly understand the importance of inspiring others to promote successful accountability.
All in all, Chocolate City taught me about people management. Those two semesters as co-chair of Chocolate City introduced me to the ins and outs of leadership. And while I still have a lot to learn, I’m now very confident in my ability to lead, and my willingness to rise to any occasion.
Building a Brotherhood
Sometime during my junior year, a few upperclassmen were roasting the Chocolate City class of 2019. At one point, we criticized their underwhelming class unity. Anthony Rolland CC’19 pushed back on the sentiment. He was about to ask what the rest of CC17 thought of his class, but stopped himself and said something along the lines of, “Well, since I know what Pedro thinks, I know what you all think. Y’all are a monolith.” That was the first time I heard someone call my class a “monolith.”
It’s true that over the past four years, I’ve gotten exceptionally close to CC17. We’ve spent our spring breaks together, broken bread with each other’s families, and spent weekend upon weekend off campus together. We’ve schemed together, made mistakes together, and saved each other, time and time again. We’ve fought with each other, wept on each other’s shoulders, and failed alongside one another. We’ve won awards together, gotten each other jobs, and now, we graduated together from one of the top institutions in the world.
Many will tell you that the CC17 Monolith™ is a well-known and much felt presence in the greater Boston community. We’ve built (and rebuilt) bridges with other organizations across the greater Boston area, touched the lives of underrepresented middle and high school minority students, consistently attracted students from as far as New York to attend our sold-out parties, and given the Institute the guidance necessary to progress into the future of diversity and inclusion.
As early as our junior year, my CC class was forced to fill the shoes typically filled by seniors due to an unusually small senior class presence. A couple of us were used to this level of responsibility; both Chris Harmon CC’17 and Alberto Hernandez CC’17 had already served, one and two semesters respectively, as co-chairs of the house. From their wisdom, and from the insights of alumni that came before us, I learned a lot about fostering community within this brotherhood.
Chocolate City is built upon three foundational pillars: academic, social, and professional. These values guide all of our work, both internally and externally. The goals that we set for our social pillar are the foundation for the relationships that we build internally. Because of this, I believe that the social pillar comes a priori; without meeting the goals of the social pillar, the academic and professional goals cannot be met. Beyond both the planned and spontaneous brotherhood outings, everyday interactions gradually nourish each brother’s comfort level with every other brother in the house.
In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that some of the brothers in the house practice building bonds through emotionally intense, yet infrequent interpersonal interactions. Here, I mean interactions that have the potential to transform a relationship between two friends from casual to indispensable, such as a 2:00 am heartfelt conversation about family, a discussion about life aspirations, or an honest heart to heart about anxieties and fears.
In my experience, while these kinds of interactions can be very meaningful, their infrequency often lends itself to strained ties between brothers. I believe that it is also important to integrate lighthearted and fun interactions as well, like playing video games, playing sports, sharing meals, listening to music, and cracking inside jokes. Some people are hard-wired for emotionally intense and heartfelt conversations, but for most people, forming strong and lasting bonds requires something more; they simply need more frequent attention and time for trust in one another to take root.
We’ve all heard the cliché, “you’re only as strong as your weakest link.” Well, this applies to Chocolate City too: the brotherhood is only as strong as the weakest bonds between brothers. I hope that the current and future generations of undergraduate brothers in the house recognize that brothers build relationships in a diversity of ways, and are deliberate about how they spend time with each other.
Community building is multi-faceted. To build one, it’s critical to support one another at sporting events, robot demos, thesis defenses, musical performances, award ceremonies, and even in hospital rooms. But, I have learned that it’s equally important to “waste time” with one another in seemingly insignificant everyday interactions.
Trust is rooted in consistency of presence. Without that trust, the brotherhood of Chocolate City would not be what it is today.
Looking back, I don’t know how I could have made it through MIT without Chocolate City. I’m indebted to the brothers of the house, both past and present. One of the most difficult parts of graduating is letting the brotherhood go, and allowing the younger generations to take the wheel. Despite all of the criticism, all of the concerns, and all of the CC17 Monolith’s™ reservations, I have faith that these young men and our future GRTs will steer CC into a bright future.
I look forward to seeing these guys again at the 45th Chocolate City Reunion. But for now, it’s on to bigger and better things….
Pedro Polanco is a first-generation Dominican American from the Bronx, New York. He graduated from MIT in 2017 with an S.B. in Mechanical Engineering. As an undergraduate, he served as co-chair of Chocolate City, programs chair of NSBE-MIT, and BSU PAC committee member. While at MIT, he pursued his passions for assistive technology, people management, and mentorship through his coursework, work experience, and extra-curricular involvement. He will start as a full-time associate for Accenture Strategy in September 2017.
About Chocolate City
Chocolate City is a brotherhood of MIT students and alumni who identify with urban culture and share common backgrounds, interests, ethnicities, and/or experiences. By cultivating a tradition of social, intellectual, character, and leadership development, the Brothers of Chocolate City exemplify a high standard of excellence which is founded on continual growth. We seek to enrich the MIT and greater global communities by embodying the principles of our brotherhood.
