Growing up in a small New Hampshire town, Jevan Sandhu was one of only a few people of color. 
 
In high school, she tried to "fit in with the majority culture." She didn't realize it at the time, but trying to fit in caused her "to develop feelings of self-hatred and wanting to shun that part of [her] identity."
 

Now a Bates senior, Sandhu not only understands her own past but has become someone who is creating positive change at Bates around equity and inclusion. "Why does it have to be somebody else?" she asks rhetorically. "I'm able to look at these very difficult topics from a lot of different lenses, which I feel is very, very valuable."
 
A psychology major, Sandhu is now a confident student and critical thinker — not to mention a key contributor to the softball team, as a right-handed pitcher with a career 3-1 record, a 4.28 earned run average and one save.
 
Events of the past year — chiefly being America's ongoing, national racial reckoning — have only accelerated Sandhu's personal process of developing her critical skill, turning her attention to racial inequities in her own college community, and developing a passion for transforming the culture around her into one marked by more openness, fairness, and supportiveness.
 
Bates is a predominantly white institution located in a predominantly white town in northern New England. Those are familiar qualities to Sandhu, whose hometown of Plymouth, N.H., is whiter (95.6% in the 2010 U.S. Census) and smaller (population 7,000) than Lewiston. Throughout her childhood in Plymouth, the contrast between Sandhu's brown skin and Indian heritage and the whiteness of the community, friends, classmates, and teammates around her couldn't be ignored, like it or not.
 
"When I got here and I started taking these courses in psychology, and more specific courses like Racial and Ethnic Identity Development and Multicultural Education, I was able to put some of those feelings that I was having when I was younger into models and theories," she said. "[I was] reading about other people that also have these experiences, and realizing that I'm not the only one who had these feelings."
 
Last spring, Sandhu and softball teammate Dulce Alcantara '21 (Far Rockaway, N.Y.), along with Assistant Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Services & Internal Operations Jess Duff, organized a workshop on racial equity for their team. 
 
For Sandhu, having a time and space for her teammates to learn from one another and speak openly about uncomfortable subjects was a breakthrough moment. 
 
"It was very powerful. We did scenarios and we broke down different definitions of things like white privilege and white fragility," she said. "And I think it's very important that we incorporate these types of workshops and education resources for all teams on campus. I feel like it should be something that is incorporated with every team, as well as the student body in general."
 
While examining racial inequity more closely, Sandhu also began to see what she might offer in the fight against it: she is armed with coursework in psychology, gender studies, and education. She's also a varsity college athlete, a scholar, and a woman of color who spent her formative years in a rural and predominantly white community.
 
"Especially in having conversations with other people of color and other students of color throughout these very difficult times, [I'm] seeing that I can be the person who's creating this change."
 
Sandhu is now working on her senior thesis about the racial experiences of students of color who come to Bates from both predominantly white and racially diverse places. 
 
And she is applying to graduate schools, with an eye on working in higher education with students of color — "how they can better be supported, how they can feel like they are a part of a college campus and not ostracized or separated from other students, which I feel like is often the case and is definitely the case here at Bates, unfortunately.
 
"I'm completely changing my trajectory of what I want to do," she said. "I want to go into social work, do something with social justice," she said, specifically citing the desire to improve matriculation and graduation rates of young people of color in higher education.
 
Sandhu is intent on challenging racial inequity in her remaining time at Bates, too. A member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, she is also involved with the newly formed Bates Athletics Agents of Change and the South Asian Students Association. She is ever ready to engage in more uncomfortable conversations about race, and looks forward to doing much more of it. 
 
Though the pandemic has taken away games and contents, it's given athletes like Sandhu more "opportunities to be able to get together and get closer, and create what we want our team cultures to be like," she said. 
 
"Although they can be difficult and make people feel uncomfortable at times, they're still very important conversations to have. And in Bates athletics in general, we should take advantage of this extra time to have these conversations and prioritize these really important things that are going on right now outside of Bates."