Student Gets Involved to Improve School’s Reputation

“I hated Arlington until I got involved,” recalls Eve Vang.

What makes a good leader? For Eve Vang, her training started at home. She grew up as the oldest daughter in a large household. “You have to play second mom in a big family,” says Eve, an 18-year-old student leader at Arlington High School in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Eve’s parents expected her to do well in school, plus cook, clean, and help tutor her four younger siblings. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes, the family lived on donated canned food and dry milk. “We’ve come a long, long way,” Eve says.

Eve’s parents came to Minnesota in the late 1970s from Laos in Southeast Asia. After years of hard work, they own a home and run a small business. Eve’s family is Hmong, a close-knit Asian ethnic minority group.

Like many Hmong, Eve’s parents had to flee their homes during the Vietnam War. They survived by living in a refugee camp in Thailand. They often went hungry. Eventually, they came to the United States.

In junior high, Eve often felt like an outsider. There weren’t many other minority students in her classes. Then, in 1999, she started at Arlington High. The school had many other Hmong students, which made her more comfortable. Yet there were new challenges.

Arlington had a bad reputation. Students performed low on standardized tests. Many people in the community had a negative image of the school. At first, Eve didn’t want to go there. “I hated Arlington until I got involved,” she says.

Then, Eve joined the freshman volleyball squad. She got to know some students and teachers. Soon, she saw that Arlington didn’t deserve its bad reputation.